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 104 Ling-Nam.

struck by the frequency with which they speak of the presence of tigers. For a long time I was disposed to treat their tiger stories with ridicule, and still think that. many of them are greatly exaggerated; but from the mass of testimony I have received from persons directly connected with the scenes described, I have come to believe that tigers are a great scourge to the hill vountry in Canton. Within a few years, in the vicinity of the market town of Lak-chook, more: than a score of people are said to have been killed by them. The most frequent victims are wood-gatherers, who go off alone to the hills for firewood. ‘Iwo years ago, one was encountered near a village in this region, and sur- rounded by thirty men, who attacked him with various weapons. He was shot in the mouth and his teeth broken, but this did not prevent his killing two men and seriously wounding two others before he was finally despatched.

The year before the following scene occurred in a village adjacent. In the evening, a woman and her daughter-in-law were at work in their house, when sud- denly a tiger appeared, caught up the mother-in-law, who was nearest the door, and made off up the hill. The ‘daughter-in-law raised the alarm, but the neighbours, frightened for themselves, only shut their doors more <losely, lest he should attack them. Early next morning, six men, relatives of the woman who had been carried off, went in search. Owing to a slight rain that had fallen the previous day the tiger was easily traced. He had gone up the hill, and thrown the body over a steep precipice into a deep ravine. There it was half eaten.