Transcribe Hornaday, W. T. Letter to Ward, Henry A. (1877-09-01)

news to Hiram! I have always advocated small rifles and accurate shooting rather than such thundering big guns. For instance, Col Beddome shot a tiger up here, also on foot, distance 20 yds, with a No 12. double rifle and hardened balls; but it took ten shots to kill his tiger, and the skin was a sight to see. (I was exactly 30 yds from my tiger). I’m having a hard fight for it with the weather but I’m going to send you the finest tiger skin you ever saw. It’s rained ever since the skin was hung out to dry, and I have had to watch over it as if it were a sick child, but alum & salt will win the day. It is safe now, but I have to keep it hanging inside my hut. I will take it to bed with me but what I save it. It does my hungry eyes good to look at it, for I have tried so long and hard for tiger skins without success. Of course I have saved all the skeleton. Yes, and last week I got a fresh Tiger skeleton, too. Col Beddome (mentioned above) shot his tiger 5 miles beyond Theobald’s on the very day that I had gone down to T’s. So of course I stopped to see what I could get. Col B. is a big swell, and of course wouldn’t let me have the skin; altho’ I tried hard to buy it of him; but I got the entire skeleton, all but the head, and Theobald has one he is going to let me have. The body is badly shot up, scapulae totally smashed. The length of the tiger was 8 ft 4 ½ inches. I will just substitute this entire body, & scapulae – so that it will after all be a perfect skeleton, and a very fine one too. These two tigers encourage me not a little. I had not dared hope for such good luck as to ever meet one myself, and you must pardon me for having dilated on the subject and blown my horn and swung my hat for your edification. Mr Theobald is ready to join me for the elephant hunt, and would have been here yesterday, but the heavy rains have prevented his coming. The way it rains now is something awful. But it will stop & clear up by-and-by.