It is all that gives me courage to face the reading
public as a writer of fiction and attempt to depict to it the fascinating
world of an Indian jungle, the weird beasts that people it, and the
stranger humans that battle with them in it. The magic pen of a Kipling
alone could do justice to that wonderful realm of mountain and forest that
is called the Terai--that fantastic region of woodland that stretches for
hundreds of miles along the foot of the Himalayas, that harbours in its dim
recesses the monsters of the animal kingdom, quaint survivals of a vanished
race--the rhinoceros, the elephant, the bison, and the hamadryad, that
great and terrible snake which can, and does, pursue and overtake a mounted
man, and which with a touch of its poisoned fang can slay the most powerful
brute. The huge Himalayan bear roams under the giant trees, feeding on
fruit and honey, yet ready to shatter unprovoked the skull of a poor
woodcutter. Those savage striped and spotted cats, the tiger and the
panther, steal through it on velvet paw and take toll of its harmless
denizens.
But, if I cannot describe it as I would, at least I have lived the life of
the wild in the spacious realm of the Terai. I would that I had the power
to make others feel what I have felt, the thrill that comes when facing the
onrush of the bloodthirstiest of all fierce brutes, a rogue elephant, or
the joy of seeing a charging tiger check and crumple up at the arresting
blow of a heavy bullet.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25