[166] The colonists have followed the example of the aborigines. Little, however, can be said in favour of our nomenclature. There is a Snowdon, without snow; a Saddle-back Hill, whose dorsum resembles anything as much as a saddle; an Avalanche Hill, without avalanches, and so on.
[167] Dr. Baikie (in 1834) mentions that one of these animals had held possession of a thick wood close to the cantonment for some years. The same spot is still tenanted, it is said, by a cheeta, but whether it be the original occupant, his ghost, or one of his descendants, men know not.
[168] Not Buffon’s elk. It is the Cervus Aristotelis, or black rusa of Cuvier; the “Shambara” of classical India; the Gavazn of Persia; and the Gav i Gavazn of Affghanistan and Central Asia.
[169] Upon this part Nature has provided the animal with a bony mass, impenetrable to anything lighter than a grapeshot, occupying the whole space between the horns, and useful, we should suppose, in forcing a way through dense and thorny jungle.
[170] This “jungle sheep” is the Cervus porcinus, the hog-deer or barking-deer of Upper India, which abounds in every shikargah of delectable Scinde. In Sanscrit it is called the Preushat (“sprinkling,” in allusion to its spotted hide); in Hindostani, Parha; and in Persian, the Kotah-pacheh, or “short hoof.”
[171] A shola is a thick mass of low wood, which may be measured by yards or miles, clothing the sides, the bottoms, and the ravines of the hills and mountains.
[172] I.e. ten or twenty dogs and curs, young and old, of high and low degree, terriers, pointers, spaniels, setters, pariahs, and mongrels, headed by a staunch old hound or two.
[173] There is a large kind of solitary jackal whose cry is never answered by the other animals of the same species: the sound somewhat resembles the hyæna’s laugh, and has been mistaken for it by many.
[174] Gardener.
[175] A species of squirrel.