A Tiger Attacks a Hunting Party

An avid sportsman, Mundy describes his first tiger hunt on March 1,1828. Following reports of tiger-sightings, a party of eager British hunters set out into a swampy jungle with local guides, servants, and thirty elephants. Things started out slowly,but just as Mundy was starting to "yawn in despair," the party spotted three tigers. Soon they killed two, and as they were giving up on the third,they heard "Captain P.'s elephant ... utter a shrill scream." It had a tiger "hanging by its teeth to the upper part of its tail!"

Captain P. had a problem,though,which Mundy depicts in this print: he could shoot the tiger and get it off his elephant's rump,but he might instead blow off his servant's leg,which had slipped only inches away from the tiger's mouth. Eventually,the tiger was killed and the elephant died ten days later. Mundy remarked sympathetically that the elephant's "more mortal wounds were inflicted [not by the tiger,but] by some of the sportsmen who were over-zealous to rid him of his troublesome hanger-on."