a tiger from which the inhabitants have recently suffered, and that
a grand hunt, elephant-back, has been organized through the combined
contributions of the English and native elephant-owners. He presses me
to come, and as an affair of this sort is by no means common--for it
is no easy matter to get together and support a dozen elephants and
the army of retainers considered necessary in a great hunt--I thought
perhaps you would be glad to accompany me."

Of course I was; and Bhima Gandharva, though he would not take any
active part in the hunt, insisted upon going along in order to see
that no harm came to me.

On the next day, therefore, we all took train and fared south-eastward
toward Calcutta, as far as to Bhagalpur, where we left the railway,
sending our baggage on to Calcutta, and took private conveyance to
a certain spot among the Rajmahal Mountains, where the camp had been
fixed by retainers on the day before. It was near a village of
the Sontals, which we passed before reaching it, and which was a
singular-enough spectacle with its round roofed huts and a platform at
its entrance, upon which, and under which, were ghastly heaps of the
skulls of animals slain by the villagers. These Sontals reminded me
of the Gónds whom I had seen, though they seemed to be far manlier
representatives of the autochthonal races of India than the former.
They are said to number about a million, and inhabit a belt of country
some four hundred miles long by one hundred broad, including the
Rajmahal Mountains, and extending from near the Bay of Bengal to the
edge of Behar. So little have they been known that when in the year
1855 word was brought to Calcutta that the Sontals had risen and were
murdering the Europeans, many of the English are said to have asked
not only _Who_ are the Sontals? but _What_ are the Sontals?