Arizona silver belt., 1893-11-11
A DESOLATE SCENE.
AN INDIAN VILLAGE DEPoPuLATED BY
 A MAN EATING TIGER.

ing of Bold and Bioodthirsty Ruler of
 the Jungles.
 As the party of a sahib one Indian even. ing came down the hillside by the widen ing path to the jungle village, no sound whatever arose from its few and humble habitations. Nobody came out to make salutation or to offer supplies. No cat. tie were perceived wandering about, no children, no birds, except indeed many vultures upon the tree in the square and upon the temple roof, The pots in the grain dealers shop were empty and over turned; piece of cloth just begun was left with broken threads upon the loom way the chatties at potter's were tum- bled and broken, and sheet of copper lay at the blacksmith's forge half bent to mako some vessel, but pfecipitately aban- doned Wherever one gaZed there were signs of nasty flight on the part of the inhabitants, who did not seem to have left anybody to represent them
 Yes, there was one silent and melat- choly representative, and the sudden ap- pearance of her would have startled the party very much more than it did but for discovery made by the sahib's ghorawallah-the groem-close by the silent and empty temple. There was muddy patch there in the square, from which the last of the rainwater had but recently dried up, and in the black slime so left were deeply imprinted the 'puds of an evidently immense tiger. It was of course evident now to the English man and those with him that the striped terror which left those footmarks had given the villagers notice to quit and Was somewhere or other near at hand iii practical possession of the fee simple of the village.
 Desolate beyond expression was the little unpeopled place" of the hamlet, and the look of the helpless red god staring from his portico upon the huts that he could not protect, and the ex- citement of the horrible vultures perched on the cotton trees, aware, no doubt, of the deadly secret of the place, for round the corner, by tho dyer's shop, where two or three newly stained turban cloths still hung upon walls 10 dry, they came upon that secret. Across the threshold of a mud hut, evidently dragged off from the broken charpoy oa the earthen floor. lay the body of woman, torn on the delicate brown neck and along the shoulders and breast with long red claw marks. A dead infant, also mangled. by n savage bite, lay half concealed under the corpse. the appearance of the bodies showing that they had only been lately killed, No one could doubt what had killed them The sign manual upon their bodies was surely that of the royal beast who often in this way disputes the right of his human rival in India and roaTs to scorn the illusion tilt man is master of created things
 The sahib.s party was badly equipped for tiger shooting and passed not with out anxiety and the closing up of the three or four servants and cooiies through the outskirts of the eyictel village At any moment her ladyship the tigress or bis lordship the tiger, who had taken possession of the place, might emerge from a grain store or COW pen. or even from some milk bush or jowari patch, to ask the travellers what business they had upon the royal property. The EngIish' man hastily put bullets into both barrels of his shotgun and walked his horse as quickly as bis men could follow out of the i'll fated gaum.
 At its outskirts they were astonished to hear voice high above thelf heads which came, us they afterward toufd from young Hindoo low caste man sit ting concealed in the branches of a large mango tree from which could be seen both entrances of the village. He had made rude platform in q fork of the tree and watched on 1t with the long barrcl of a matchlock protruding and by his side an earthen jar of water. They ! invited him to come down and to tell them the meaning of the extraordinary spectacle they had witnessed He de- acendcd and informed them that for months past his village had been infested and persecuted bya tigress which, after killing cattle and goats, had slain and partly eaten three or four children out. side the hamlet and had taken during the past eight or nine days to entering the village at night and carrying of somebody or other sleeping, as the Hin ! doos do, outside their huts under the yerandas. The woman slain that morn ing with her baby was the wife of the poor matchlock man, and he had perched himself in the tree hoping to avenge her death when the sahib's party passed
 It was too serious a case not to be re- ported in the proper quarters, and an expedition of practiced tiger shooters was equipped among the officers at the nearest station. The beast was tracked and was killed after receiving II bull lets, and then it turned out that she had half grown cub which had lost 3 limb, and thus the maternal affection of the ferocious parent had driven it to these desperate ways, Indeed the spec tacle of that village was full of philo- sophical suggestiyeness. The dead hu- man mother had been slain by reason of the very same instinct which had made her seek in vain to preserve her child from the attack of the tigress, driven to its wits ends to find food for it's own helpless offspring. The tigress was in her way as tender parent as the low, ing mother whom she murdered, and then besides there was the whole vil- lage depopulated to make one wonder what sort of a world it would have been if, as might well have happened, tigers had envolved as masters of the globe in, stead of men. Edwin Arnoldin London Telegraph.
 A curious case was tried at Cranbrook the other day, when four young men were fined i2 shillings each for laughing