The Bee-Hunter Being Provided With Vessels Formed From The Rind Of The Gourd Attached To Ropes, Now Cuts Up The Comb And Fills His Chatties, Lowering Them Down To His Companions Below.

When the blossom of the nillho fades, the seed forms; this is a sweet little kernel, with the flavour of a nut.

The bees now leave the country, and the jungles suddenly swarm, as though by magic, with pigeons, jungle-fowl, and rats. At length the seed is shed and the nillho dies.

The jungles then have a curious appearance. The underwood being dead, the forest-trees rise from a mass of dry sticks like thin hop-poles. The roots of these plants very soon decay, and a few weeks of high wind, howling through the forest, levels the whole mass, leaving the trees standing free from underwood. The appearance of the ground can now be imagined-a perfect chaos of dead sticks and poles, piled one on the other, in every direction, to a depth of between two and three feet. It can only be compared to a mass of hurdles being laid in a heap. The young nillho grows rapidly through this, concealing the mass of dead sticks beneath, and forms a tangled barrier which checks both dogs and man. With tough gaiters to guard the shins, we break through by main force and weight, and the dogs scramble sometimes over, sometimes under the surface. At this period the elk are in great numbers, as they feed with great avidity upon the succulent young nillho. The dogs are now at a disadvantage. While they are scrambling with difficulty through this mass of half-rotten sticks, the elk bounds over it with ease, leaving no path behind him, as he clears it by leaps, and does not exhaust himself by bursting through it. He now constantly escapes, and leaves the pack miles behind; the best hounds follow him, but with such a start he leads them into the unknown depths of the jungles, over high mountains and across deep ravines, from which the lost dogs frequently never return.

There can be no question that it is a bad country for hunting at all times, as the mass of forest is so disproportionate to the patinas; but, on the other hand, were the forests of smaller size there would be less game. Elk-hunting is, on the whole, fine sport. There are many disappointments constantly occurring, but these must happen in all sports. The only important drawback to the pleasure of elk-hunting is the constant loss of the dogs. The best are always sure to go. What with deaths by boars, leopards, elk, and stray hounds, the pack is with difficulty maintained. Puppies are constantly lost in the commencement of their training by straying too far into the jungle, and sometimes by reckless valour. I lost a fine young greyhound, Lancer, own brother to Lucifer, in this way. It was his first day with the pack.

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