Well provided with ammunition, food, drink, rugs, and bedding, the Anglo-Indian sets out for two or three days sport, wandering from place to place, sleeping in the open sided "zayats," near the hpoongyi kyaungs, and spending the day in the jungle, in eager search after the Englishman's great desire "something to kill."
Some of the native "shikarries" who accompany these expeditions are splendid men. They are very silent, very uninterested in, even contemptuous of, things not connected with sport, but devoted to their profession, and as keenly excited, as delighted at success, or disappointed at failure, as any good sportsman all the world over; and possessing moreover a knowledge of the habits and customs of the jungle folk scarcely surpassed by "Mowgli" himself.
A form of sport much indulged in by the Shan chiefs in the past, but which has been strenuously discouraged was "Collecting Heads." The last exponent of the game dwelt in the hills on the Shan State border, and was the hereditary leader of a large tribe of men as fierce and savage as himself. He was an ancient chief, proud of his race, his power, and position; proud too of his home, and above all proud of his wonderful bodily strength. Many and marvellous are the stories told of his extraordinary doings. On one occasion, unarmed, he fought and killed a tiger, clinging to its throat until he throttled it. He bore the marks of the contest, huge scars upon his head, and throat, and chest, until his dying day.
It was his custom (as doubtless it had been the custom of his ancestors, and of many of their neighbours) to descend periodically from his mountain heights alone and spend a few weeks in the neighbouring plains, engaged in his favourite hobby of collecting heads. He was not particular what heads he collected, but he preferred human ones when he could get them. He would remain in the plains for a while, way-laying, hunting, and slaying as many of his fellow creatures as he could meet with (occasionally perhaps varying the sport by killing a tiger) and at last when he grew for the nonce weary of this amusement, he would return in triumph to his tribe, and display to their admiring gaze his ghastly spoils.
The placid native suffered his hostile inroads with that fatalism with which they regard all misfortune. But one day the Chief made a slight mistake by adding to his collection the head of an Englishman (who was no doubt poaching in the Chief's country) and for this departure from the accepted rules of the game, he paid penalty.
A detachment of soldiers was despatched, who soon scattered the tribe and captured the offender. I met the subaltern who had been in charge of the escort, which brought him down to the plains, and he described to me the desperate efforts the fierce old man made to escape. He was bound hand and foot, watched night and day by four men, and his bonds were inspected every hour; on one of these inspections it was discovered that the ropes were frayed and gnawed half away. But his efforts were of no avail; though he had the strength of a giant he could do nothing against such overpowering odds.
When at length they reached the plains, he turned to have a last look at the vanishing shadows of the hills, which no doubt he had loved with that silent, passionate love felt for their home by the inhabitants of all mountainous countries, and after a final desperate effort to kill himself, he suddenly seemed to relinquish all hope, and resigned himself stolidly to his fate.
His defiance and strength seemed to pass away with that last sight of his beloved hills, and a broken-spirited, weak, helpless, old man was all that remained. They brought him to Rangoon and banished his old, worn-out body to the Andaman Islands, but his proud, fierce spirit fled back with that last look at the hills, and haunts the wild regions where he loved to roam.
