It was one of the clearest days of the year, and we could plainly see the pass into Tibet, whose floor, I was told, is 18,000 feet above the sea. The tremendous mountain masses radiating out from Kinchinjunga, 28,000 feet in height, as a center, with more than ten peaks of over 22,000 feet altitude to right and left, furnish the greatest mountain panorama in the world.įrom an elevation called Tiger Hill, close by, we beheld the rising of the sun over towering peaks, with Mount Everest, the highest eminence in the world, peeping at us 124 miles away, through the rose light of the perfect, still, and icy-cold dawn. The mighty ridge of the Himalayas was denuded of clouds for our inspection. We were blessed with perfect weather, such as is seldom accorded the traveler. We went to India not only to observe the changes that had occurred since my former visit, 23 years ago, at the conclusion of our Philippine War, but also to visit places of interest, see something of the military air and ground forms, visit some old friends and acquaintances, and then have a good tiger and big game hunt.ĭarjeeling was our first objective. And where once the National Geographic Society celebrated such hunting accounts, it now-through its Big Cats Initiative-partners with wildlife conservation programs such as Panthera and the Global Tiger Initiative to save the species and its habitat.īy Brigadier General William Mitchell, Assistant Chief, U.S. Nearly a hundred years later, their numbers have declined from more than 100,000 wild tigers in Asia to fewer than 3,200. Another completely stopped work on a public road for many weeks, while it frequently happens that mail-carrying is suspended on account of tiger activities." "There is a record of one beast which so terrorized a community that 13 villages were evacuated and 250 square miles thrown out of cultivation. "Tigers have been known to cause whole districts to be evacuated," he writes. Mitchell reports that tigers posed a major threat in central India, killing 352 people in the villages surrounding the Surguja district in 1923 alone. Air Force, published this account of a three-day tiger hunt in eastern India with the maharaja of Surguja, a legendary tiger hunter. In November 1924, Brigadier General William Mitchell, who is regarded by many historians as the father of the U.S. Editor's Note: In recognition of International Tiger Day, we present the following article from our archives as a way of illustrating how attitudes toward tigers have changed in the past century.