Sport and life in the further Himalaya

THE LIBRARY

OF

THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA

PRESENTED BY

PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND
MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID

Sport and Life in the
Further Himalaya

GUI, Slier Khan, shikari.

Sport and Life in the
Further Himalaya

BY

MAJOR R. L. KENNION

WITH PHOTOGRAPHS BY THE AUTHOR

William Blackwood and Sons

Edinburgh and London

1910

TO

M304118

PREFACE.

DURING the noonday heats when nature is asleep,
often even when " beasts" are in sight but un-
approachable, the hunter of mountain big-game
has time on his hands to kill somehow or other.
The following sketches, originally pencil-scribbled
in a note -book, are the result of some of such
hours during a period of eight years' service in
the regions they describe, in the course of which
practically all my leisure moments were devoted
to shooting in one form or another.

At the risk of my narratives appearing "bald
and unconvincing," I have refrained from any
attempt to embellish them by the addition of a
word of fiction.

Most of these sketches have previously appeared
in periodicals, and my acknowledgments are due

viii Preface

to the proprietors of the following publications, by
whose courtesy I am permitted to reproduce them
in their present form : Magazines — Bailey's, Black-
wood's, Longman's, Macmillan's, Pall Mall ; news-
papers— Asian, Field, Pioneer.

CONTENTS.

A DAT IN CHITRAL ..... 1

THE STORIES OP TWO IBEX . . . .23

THE BIG MARKHOR . . . . .39

A DAY AFTER URIAL . . . . .53

THE WILD GOATS AND SHEEP OP DARDISTAN . . 71

CACCABIS CHAKOR . . . . .91

A VANISHING SPORT . . . . .108

A MORNING WITH THE MEHTAR's FALCONS . . 126

THE ORPIMENT MINES OP CHITRAL . . .144

ON THE "ROOF OF THE WORLD" . . . 156

LEH . . . . . .173

A DAY AFTER BURHEL . . . . .197

THE FATHER OF ALL SHEEP . . . .211

AFTER ANTELOPE IN TIBET .... 225

THE LAPCHAK ...... 241

ABOUT YAK ...... 262

DEER-STALKING IN KASHMIR . . . .274

A CANVAS CANOE ..... 288

IN THEORY AT ALL EVENTS .... 309

ABOUT BEARS . . . , . .319

ILLUSTKATIONS.

PAGE

GUL SHER KHAN, SHIKARI . . Frontispiece

THE MEHTAR AND RETINUE .... 4

A SEA OF MIST AND CLOUDS . . . .26

THE WHITE CONE OF DOBANNI . . . .30

THE BIG MARKHOR . . . . .38

GUL SHER SPYING ..... 40

VIEW FROM THE KARGAH GLEN . . . .44

THE BIG MARKHOR . . . . .52

A DEAD URIAL ...... 68

TYPES OF DARDISTAN MARKHOR . . . .76

TYPES OF DARDISTAN MARKHOR AND A FREAK . . 78

IBEX COUNTRY ...... 80

EVERY MINUTE WITH THE GLASS IS WORTH WHILE . 88
A SHIKARI ...... 88

DROSH, SHOWING SOME GOOD CHAKOR GROUND . . 98

THE LOWER GUN . . . . .100

THE REMOTEST RECESSES OF THE RUGGED HINDU RUSH . 108
A PETTY KING OF THE HINDU KUSH . . .110

SHIKARI AND IBEX . . . . .122

THE MEHTAR'S FORT, CHITRAL . . . .126

THE MEHTAR AND HIS FALCONERS . . .128

MIR-SHIKAR AND SHUNKHAR FALCON . . .130

HAWKING DUCK ON THE CHITRAL RIVER . .140

THE BRIDGE AT CHITRAL . . . .140

TIRICH MIR ...... 144

THE ORPIMENT MINES AND MINERS ] 50

xii Illustrations

THE "PASS OF A THOUSAND IBEX " . . .156

OUR STEEDS ON THE PAMIRS . . . .162

A GOOD DAY'S WORK . . . . .168

PITCHING A "YURT" ..... 172
THE END OF HIS SUFFERINGS . . . .172

LEH ....... 174

A WELCOME FROM LAMAS . . . .176

CHORTEN, LADAK . . . . .178

MONASTERY, LADAK . . . . .192

LAMA DANCERS . . . . . .194

MURAL PRAYER-CYLINDERS . . . .194

A BURHEL HEAD . . . . .196

DEAD BURHEL ...... 210

AN AMMON HEAD . . . . .224

LUNCH HALF-WAY ..... 232

A TIBETAN ANTELOPE . . . . .232

HEAD OF TIBETAN ANTELOPE . . . .240

CHANGPA (NOMAD) ENCAMPMENT . . . 242

LADAKI DANCE ...... 242

THE "MAN WHO HAS TO PRESENT THE LOCHAK" . 252

WARES FROM LHASSA ..... 256

MEMBERS OF THE LAPCHAK .... 256

TIBETAN CURIOS. ..... 258

A DEAD YAK ...... 272

WARDENS OF THE TIBETAN MARSHES, GARTOK . . 272

THE TEN-POINTER ..... 278

THE HEAD WATERS OF THE YARKHUN RIVER . . 288

YARKHUN RIVER . . . . .290

SHANDUR LAKE ...... 292

THE ALYS ...... 296

THE RIVER STREET OF SRINAGAR . . . 296

EVENING ON THE PANGONG LAKE . . . 302

THE TOPS OF THE MOUNTAINS . . . .310

THROUGH BELTS OF JUNIPER AND PINE . . .312

AMONG THE CRAGS . . . . .314

A RED BEAR 328

SPOKT AND LIFE IN THE
FURTHER HIMALAYA.

A DAY IN CHITRAL.

IN the month of June the Chitral river is a black
flood, swollen by numerous glacier torrents, tear-
ing at a tremendous pace along the intricate way
it has, in the course of ages, worn for itself among
the giant ranges of the Hindu Kush. The muffled
thunder of huge boulders being rolled along its
rocky bed by the tempestuous flood can be heard
for miles. On either hand vast masses of moun-
tains rise up till their snowy peaks appear, at
an infinite height, to meet the sky. The lower
slopes, called in Eastern idiom the " skirts of the
mountains," have comparatively gentle outlines,
but as they rise they become steeper and more
rugged till, vegetation left far below, the line of
eternal snow is reached — a desolate region of ice-

A

2 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

fields and glaciers, stupendous precipices, and glit-
tering peaks.

Cascading down the habitable lower slopes are
numerous rivulets fed from the snow above. Let
us look at the scene from high up the opposite
side of the valley. First there appear, below the
snow, tiny threads of silver winding through arid
slopes of talus. Some 5000 feet above the river
strips of light green appear, little fields cut in
terraces in which the young barley is just begin-
ning to show itself. A few huts are seen lower
down and some gaunt poplars, a cold and dreary
upland country. Farther down, the strip of green
darkens in colour and gradually broadens. Chest-
nut, apricot, and other fruit-bearing trees appear,
at first scattered, but becoming more numerous,
till, at the river's edge, the cultivated fan spreads
out to a couple of miles or more in breadth, a
variegated mass of golden corn, orchards, and vine-
yards, with the little villages half hidden in
foliage. Often two or more of these fans join,
forming bands of verdure some miles in length.
Chitral itself is composed of several of such
fans merged into one, and most Chitrali villages
are of the same type. In the south of Chitral,
where the rainfall is greater, the hillsides, at
elevations favourable to the growth of conifers,
are clothed in pine forests, and the scenery is

A Day in Chitral 3

consequently less wild and more alpine in
character.

Let us now make a closer inspection of one of
these Chitrali villages. It is entered by a bridle-
path, across which a little brooklet zigzags from
side to side in independent fashion, serving to
conduct the water of the neighbouring streams to
the lower cultivated terraces. Magnificent horse-
chestnut trees cast a shadow delightful to the
traveller after the heat and glare of the bare hill-
side, and the air is filled with the murmur of
running water and the scent brought out of
foliage by a burning sun. On either side the
path are walled enclosures, and a stranger, by
standing up in his stirrups, can see over into
one of the Chitrali gardens famed all over the
Western Himalaya. It is in reality more an
orchard than a garden, but one with exquisitely
kept turf. At one end is the flat-roofed house
where lives the owner, and farther off the
buildings which give shelter, if he be of the
upper class, to his serfs. Presently he will
arrive at an open space where, sitting on raised
seats round a gigantic chestnut, the greybeards
of the village sit and discuss the latest doings
in Chitral. Farther on the polo -ground is en-
tered, a long, narrow, rectangular enclosure with
walled sides, at present deserted but for a party

4 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

of lusty urchins who are playing the national
game on foot.

My camp had the evening before been pitched
in one of the gardens surrounding the castle
belonging to the lord of the manor. Taking leave
of it with regret, I ride out through a narrow door
into the paved courtyard, and a few yards farther
find myself on the polo -ground. The Mehtar
and his retinue are already approaching from
the farther end, preceded by the pipers of the
village. The Mehtar himself, a not unpleasing-
looking young man, is dressed simply as usual in
the Chitrali choga and rolled cap, for him made of
the exquisite silky homespun that is reserved for
the royal house. He is mounted on a handsome
Arab that had been presented to him by an
English "Lord Sahib." His equipment is of the
latest Badakshan fashion. The saddle is covered
with red velvet worked with gold embroidery,
and the arch, crupper, and breastplate glitter with
plates of silver. Slung by a loop to his wrist is
the usual silver- mounted Yarkandi whip. His
dress is finished off by long crinkled boots, the
foot part of which is formed of a separate pair
of high-heeled and square-toed slippers, which can
easily be discarded on entering a house. His
attendants and courtiers are more gaily attired
in Bokhara silks and velvets, with gold-embroi-

The Mehtar and retinue.

A Day in Chitral 5

dered turbans and high Afghan boots. They are
excellently mounted on the breedy-looking animals
that are imported from Badakshan, and are known
by this name, though actually bred in the Khatgan
district of Afghan Turkestan. At a short distance
behind are the men-at-arms forming the Mehtar's
bodyguard, an irregular lot of footmen armed
with Snider rifles, and dressed each one according
to his own fancy. The mir-sliikar, or head fal-
coner, is also here with a peregrine on his fist, and
another attendant with a leash of greyhounds, —
the " Tazi " hounds that used to form part of the
tribute to the Suzerain State of Kashmir. Most
gorgeous of all, perhaps, is the court tailor, who
has evidently been given carte blanche in the
framing of his own dress regulations, and had
accordingly run riot in gold lace and brass
fittings.

After the usual salutations and inquiries we
started off on the short march to the next camp,
preceded by the pipes, which echoed and re-
echoed through the valley in the cold morning
air. As to the road itself, it was as bad as
Chitrali roads usually are. About a foot broad,
up hills so steep that a firm grasp of the mane
is not only an assistance but a necessity, and
down hills at such an angle that there appears
nothing in front but an empty void ; often one

6 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

foot hanging over a sheer drop of hundreds of
feet; along crazy wooden galleries hanging on
to walls of rock, through the chinks in which the
river can be seen boiling below. It is a Chitrali's
" swagger " never to dismount where a pony can
get a foothold at all ; and some of the places
where a Chitrali pony can go would turn the
quadruped that some years ago used to perform
under the name of "the Blondin donkey" ill with
fear. Eiding along one of these roads is therefore
not an amusement for people with nerves. The
road is not all like this, however ; often it winds
on the level through fields and villages, orchards
and vineyards. It is variety that pleases, and
here one can often experience three of the seasons
in a single day. Where high up the road creeps
along the mountain-side at a dizzy elevation above
the river, whose roar is borne faintly upwards
on the* breeze, it is early spring, with snow lying
in patches here and there, and the young barley
just beginning to show its head ; 2000 feet lower,
one is in the land of blossoms, and the air is
full of the scent of flowers and the hum of bees
busy among wild roses such as are seen nowhere
else ; while down close to the roaring river crops
are being cut, and the apricot-trees are breaking
with their golden load. Chitral, indeed, is in
summer the realisation of the poet's ideal —

A Day in Chitral 7

A joyous land,

Where waters gushed and fruit-trees grew,
And flowers put forth a fairer hue.

It was along such a road that our cavalcade wound
through the country-side. In the van were the
drums and pipes, the Mehtar;s bodyguard follow-
ing ; all playing in turn and keeping up a song
with chorus, one after another taking up the air.
This lasted from start to finish.

"The players go before, the minstrels follow
after." In the midst, unfortunately, were no
"damsels playing on timbrels." A few years
ago there might have been, but the retirement
of the ladies of Chitral from public view took
place almost simultaneously with the appearance
of an Indian force of occupation in the country.
The introduction of the purdah system into
Chitral was in fact the first sign of the disap-
pearance of local colour and customs, which is
bound to take place.

The time and tune kept by our minstrels were
excellent, and though the air was Oriental the
effect some little distance behind was not un-
pleasing. When the nature of the ground per-
mitted, one or two of them would step aside and
execute a pas on the side of the road. One
magnificent young chap with a jolly sunburnt
face, black eyes, red lips, and a wide laughing

8 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

mouth displaying a magnificent set of teeth,
dressed in dirty white robes with a brilliant
chintz jacket, particularly attracted my attention.
Absolutely unconscious of himself, and perfectly
happy, he revelled in the extravagant postures of
the dance, and shouted from pure joy of living.

The passion these people have for music and
dancing is extraordinary, and this not as a
spectacle, but as a pastime. They have also a
great love of flowers : young and old bind
blossoms in their rolled caps, their favourites
being roses or the delightfully scented eleagnus
that is so common in Chitral. Can any one doubt
that in their veins flows Macedonian blood ? * It
frequently happened on the march that a shout
would make us look up to see a bare - legged
goat -herd come flying down the hill with an
offering of marvellously scented roses, white, red,
and yellow.

We were nearing our camp for the day when
a horseman appeared coming towards us accom-
panied by a single attendant. Presently, coming
closer, he dismounted, and running forward sa-
laamed low to the Mehtar. Rather mock humility,
I fear ; it was Shazada Lais, the leading pir of
the Maulai sect of Mohammedans of these parts.

1 Local tradition is to the effect that Alexander the Great passed
through this country.

A Day in Chitral 9

He numbered half Chitral among his disciples,
and lived in a style not inferior to the chief
himself, — the "turbulent priest" that so often
figures in history. Originally a political refugee
from over the border, he had been given land
in one of the northern valleys in Chitral, and
from the first wielded tremendous influence among
all classes of Chitralis that belonged to the
"Ismaili" persuasion — and not altogether unnatu-
rally, seeing that their hopes of salvation rested
to no small extent on his good offices with the
Creator. And so he had come to be a thorn in
the sides of his benefactors. A clever man, but
no ascetic. He was, no doubt, in agreement with
the " friar of orders grey," who gave out as his
firm belief that living a good life, and living
well, were much the same thing.

And now rounding a corner, we saw a crowd of
people massed on a gentle eminence, over which
the road ran, some seven or eight hundred yards
farther on. A curious undulating motion appeared
to animate them, and there was the faint sound
of a chorus. Approaching nearer, we saw the
swaying mass in the middle of the crowd to be
a number of men linked tightly together, arm in
arm, performing a grotesque dance, every fifth
step of which they almost sank down to the
ground, keeping time the while with their voices.

io Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

This song and dance is reserved for receptions of
the Chi trali chief. The rest of the crowd, lined up
on either side of the dancers, discharged their
matchlocks in the air, holding their pieces at
the "port." Further on we found the road
thronged with sightseers, the country-side being
evidently en Jdte. Near the entrance of the
village a company of old dames blocked the
road, each one carrying a bowl of milk and
sugar. As we approached, the leading lady ad-
vanced, stirring vigorously with a big wooden
spoon, apparently wishing to feed her royal
master; but she was repulsed, not unkindly,
and retired. The crowd now closed round, our
bridles were seized, and we were taken to the
polo-ground. Here, opposite the dais, a tall pole
had been erected, to the top of which was attached
a small silver gourd filled with sand. To the
thunder of the drums horseman after horseman
darted past at full speed— now a noble in rustling
silk and glittering silver accoutrements, now a
retainer in modest homespun, each discharging his
piece at the mark. As the matchlocks frequently
hung or missed fire, and were, after passing the
pole, indiscriminately whirled round the rider's
head, a prudent man will, when the pastime is
indulged in, get behind the nearest tree or even
behind a stout friend. Four or five had passed

A Day in Chitral 1 1

without hitting the mark, when a cousin of the
Mehtar's, who had distinguished himself during
the siege of Chitral by his skill in picking off men
in the fort from the high ground on the opposite
bank of the river, came past with a double-bar-
relled breech-loader. A puff of dust from the
gourd answered his shot, the crowd shouted, the
pole was pulled up, and we were conducted to our
respective camps. Mine was in the grounds of the
castle, on a stretch of turf shaded by fine plane-
trees. A Chitrali garden is no garden as under-
stood in England ; there are no flower-beds, and,
except in the month of fruit-blossoms, no masses
of colour, — merely soft green turf, running water,
and deep cool shade. A few wild hyacinths grow-
ing by the side of the water suffice to give a touch
of subdued colour in accordance with the restful
spirit of the scene ; for, whatever may be the
necessity for colour under dull skies, there are few
that have experienced the brightness and glare of
the Orient that would feel disposed to criticise the
Eastern preference for less obtrusive beauties.

Except during the extreme heat of the day, the
garden resounds with the song of birds : one can
recognise the note of the thrush and the deep
mellow pipe of the golden oriole, and sometimes
catch a glimpse of him as like a streak of flame he
darts among the branches.

1 2 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

The day passed, no matter whether in the dolce
far niente due to the presiding deity of the place,
or the everlasting office-work which makes the
Anglo-Indian official a standing wonder to the
Oriental mind. One incident, however, character-
istic of the people must be related.

An old man came into the garden, and, after the
usual salaams, explained that he was a native of
Mastuj, a district not under the Mehtar's rule.
He had not very wisely married a young wife,
who a few days ago had eloped with a noble who
was a subject of the Mehtar. I explained my
sympathy with his misfortunes, but did not see in
what way I could assist, as it was his own special
privilege to hunt the guilty couple down and slay
them. Oh, he explained, I could help him very
materially, — his wife and her paramour were now
concealed within this very castle walls : as for
killing them, he desired no such thing; all he
wanted was that the erring wife should be handed
over to him, when all would be forgiven and the
lady received back into his own home. But by
doing so, it was explained, he would forfeit the
right of taking revenge on the ruiner of his home,
as the universal rule among the tribesmen of the
North- West Frontier is that they must kill both
parties or neither. Revenge, however, it appeared,
was far from his thoughts ; all he wanted was his

A Day in Chitral 1 3

own wife. The owner of the castle was accord-
ingly summoned. On being apprised of the reason
he had been "remembered," "Certainly," he said,
" the young Adamzada (noble) and his lady have
now been under my roof these three days ; if the
old man wishes their death, it is his right ;
but to surrender the girl— such dishonour could
not be supported : the young couple, too,
are willing to die together, but they will not
be parted."

From the expressions of the bystanders, it
was plain that the errant lovers had their entire
sympathies. A man so mean-spirited as to forgo
revenge and ask for the restitution of his wife was
beyond the pale altogether. At this moment the
old man, now shedding bitter tears, was joined by
some more patriarchs from his own district, who
added to the clamour, and begged for the restor-
ation of the girl ; otherwise, they said, all their
young wives would be carried off by Chitrali
Adamzadas, and things would be as they were in
the days of the old Mehtars, when the serf had
no rights.

This was a conundrum. To regard the lady as
a chattel, to be handed back to her husband irre-
spective of her own wishes, was repugnant to
English ideas ; on the other hand, Chitrali nobles
could not be allowed to carry off the wives of

14 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

their Mastuj neighbours with impunity. It was
indeed awkward, this lack of blood - thirstiness
on the part of the husband. There was no
"local custom" to meet such a case. A happy
thought here occurred, to hand the case over to
the Kazi1 to decide, and no sooner thought of
than done. In the evening he returned to pro-
nounce judgment. This was, after the requisite
number of quotations from the Koran had been
rolled off, that both the lady and her paramour
having been guilty of the crime of adultery,
should be stoned to death — a truly Gilbertian
sentence, that made even the Chitralis shout
with laughter, though the Kazi's countenance
remained unmoved.

To cut a long story short, I finally decreed
that the husband should have his wish and his
wife. I afterwards heard that the forgiven wife
went off quite happily with her lawful spouse,
not indeed repentant, but shrieking with laughter
at the thought of her spree ; while her Lothario
in an agony of woe stabbed himself about the
breast — not so deeply, however, as to do any
more material harm to his already lacerated
heart.

The dub-dub of the kettle-drums and the skirl
of the pipes began to sound on the polo-ground

1 Kazi= Islamic judge.

A Day in Chitral 15

about four o'clock, summoning every one to the
national game. In Chitral and the adjacent
countries every village has its polo-ground, in
spite of the fact that there is frequently but
barely sufficient cultivated land to support the
inhabitants. Every one that possesses a pony
plays, and those that have not risen to this
height of affluence have a separate game on foot.
The game as played in the Himalaya has been
so often described that I will not do so here.
Suffice it to say, that though the glimpses of
the players a stranger to the game may catch
amid the clouds of dust, give but a confused
impression of a melee of wild horsemen with hair
and garments streaming in the wind, shouting,
galloping madly, recklessly, here and there, ac-
companied by the clash of sticks and the click
of the hit ball, and the constant crescendo and
diminuendo of the band, the game is really
played with a very high degree of skill. The
force and accuracy with which these hillmen hit
on both sides of the pony with their short heavy
sticks is certainly not exceeded anywhere.

The ponies are strong, wiry little beasts, with
wonderful stamina — those from Khatgan, whose
reputation extends over the greater part of Cen-
tral Asia, being the best.

The game lasts till one or the other side has

1 6 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

obtained nine goals, during which time no periods
of rest are called and ponies may not be changed.
It is not surprising, therefore, that in this country
the quality most prized in a pony is staying power.

Once at the annual " Highland games " at Gilgit
a pony race-course was laid out five miles in
length, but this was objected to by many of the
competitors on the ground that it was too short
to bring a good pony to the front, and so it
had to be lengthened !

Activity also is a quality that commends it-
self in this country. Lying near the track up
the Yarkhun River valley is an irregular-shaped
detached rock, a little higher than a dining-room
table and just large enough for a pony to stand
on with difficulty. When I first passed this way,
I was surprised to see several of the Chitralis
riding with me go off the road and jump their
ponies on to the rock, one after the other. Most
of them managed to get on, but few of them to
remain there. I then learnt that the stone was
" Ali Khan o bohrt rupini"— "Ali Khan's jump-
ing stone." It was a well-known test of a good
pony to jump on the rock and stay there.

The polo over, a hollow square was formed in
front of the dais, and dancing began. Before the
professionals have their turn, the losers at polo
have to dance for the amusement of the crowd.

A Day in Chitral 1 7

They generally affect the greatest reluctance to
do so, and though there are few Chitralis that
are not really proficients, a forced performance
of this sort causes them unlimited shame, and
they kick up their heels and wave their arms
in an exaggerated failure to imitate the more
or less graceful dance of the country. Chitralis
of even the highest rank are not excused, and
officials holding appointments corresponding to
those of our Prime Minister and Commander-in-
Chief may on occasions be seen capering about
for the edification of the crowd. Sometimes in-
stead of dancing they have to pay forfeit. I
once saw the Mehtar's foster-brother, a fine
handsome youth in big Afghan boots and a
flowing robe of Bokhara silk, decline to dance.
He was accordingly made to stand on a high
stone, his cap was doffed for him, and the crier,
addressing himself to the crowd of women that
lined the walls, proclaimed in a loud voice, " Oh
ladies, here you see the Mehtar's own foster-brother,
a beautiful youth that we hear is more at home
in the boudoir than he is on the polo-ground."
The regular dancing followed, and by the time
all was over, the sun was sunk behind the
purple mountains, a faint rosy light only linger-
ing on the highest snow-peaks; by-and-by this
also faded and grew cold, the call to even-

B

1 8 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

ing prayer resounded, flocks straggled in, and
with darkness a silence fell over the whole
village.

To-night, however, there was to be an assembly
in the big house, and the post-prandial cigarette
had barely been lighted when the sound of the
kettle-drums again arose within the walls and
the grey-bearded aksakal came to conduct me
to the assembly.

Passing from the garden into the castle by a
narrow postern, I was conducted through a maze
of narrow passages and small chambers. Most
of these were empty, but in some men-at-arms
were stretched out in sleep, while one had occu-
pants in the shape of half a dozen hawks on their
perches, blinking their eyes at the sudden light,
their attendants, never far from their beloved
charges, chatting in an adjoining chamber.

We found the central courtyard lighted by
bonfires and torches made of strips of flaming
pitch-pine. The Mehtar and his company were
already seated on carpets forming one side of a
square, the other three sides of which were filled
in by a miscellaneous Chitrali crowd ; in the centre
of all a large fire. After being seated, and in-
quiring with the greatest empressement after each
other's health, although we had parted barely two
hours ago, the performance began. The first item

A Day in Chitral 19

was a masque, Pathan traders en route to India
robbed by Kafirs.

The traders are passing with their animals along
the deserted road ; evening falls, and loads are taken
off. Being pious followers of Islam, prayer-carpets
are spread, and having " fixed their attention,"
after which they should have become oblivious to
all mundane matters, they become absorbed in
their devotions. Their absorption, however, does
not prevent their looking round every now and
then to guard against the approach of their her-
editary enemies, the Kafirs — a want of trust in
Providence that is received with shouts of laughter
by the Chitrali audience, who "care for none of
these things."

When they are asleep, barefoot Kafirs come on
dancing and loot the caravan. Pursuit follows ;
the Kafirs are surrounded by Afghan troops and
killed, and the soldiers walk off with the spoil —
no doubt a frequent ending to such episodes in
real life.

Dancing then began. One after another the
trained dancing -boys stepped into the square,
performed their tolerably graceful gyrations in
the flickering light of the torches, and retired into
the darkness.

The scene was a picturesque one. In front the
rows of dark wild faces lighted up by the wavering

2O Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

light, which could barely penetrate the gloom of
the surrounding walls. The light was just suf-
ficient to reveal a projecting balcony screened by
trellis-work, behind which, no doubt, the ladies
of the castle had a good view of the goings-on.
The sky formed a canopy above us, into the star-
spangled square of which the smoke from the fires
curled steadily upwards in the still air.

The performers on these occasions are invariably
of the male sex, the best being the dancing-boys
that form part of the household of every Chitrali
of position. Unlike Pathans, in whose eyes
dancing is, to say the least, undignified, Chitralis
all dance, and like Western nations think no
shame of it. The " principal boy " this evening was
the servant of the Mektarjau, who was our host
and the proprietor of the castle. He was a slight
handsome boy, with his hair dressed in curls after
the Persian fashion. The Mehtarjau, who was
sitting next to me, and was himself considered in
Chitral a poet and musician of no mean order,
was evidently very proud of him, and when his
turn was finished was at pains to explain that
he was nervous at so many spectators, and had
not been dancing up to his true form. I was
happily able to remember a verse from Hafiz
appropriate to the occasion, and he sat back with
a satisfied smile.

A Day in Chitral 2 1

The dancers having all retired, music began.
The band consisted of some six or eight string
instruments made from yellow gourds rather like
the zither in shape, and two tambourines without
the jingle. The singers were three in number,
all tenors. Swaying their bodies to and fro, and
keeping time with a gentle clapping of the hands,
they soon got into the swing of the Chitrali gazal,
and with half-closed eyes became lost to all but
their own melody. The general effect is not bad
if listened to in the way all Eastern music should
be, or rather not listened to, — for the art of en-
joying the music of the Orient is to assume an
absolutely passive attitude, and allow the sounds
to be borne into one's ears without the mental
effort of listening.

After one rather pleasing air the Mehtarjau
inclined himself towards me.

"My own composition," he whispered.

I congratulated him. This scion of nobility
was himself an excellent performer on the sitar,
and delighted the audience later on by himself
taking the instrument in hand and producing
some very good effects out of it.

" Call not his sitar a gourd," says a Persian
poet, " but a golden bowl, filled to the brim with
the wine of song ! "

Eefreshments were brought, and the evening

22 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

wore on. For my part, remembering that I had
to march on the morrow, and that a Chitrali
bazam lasts till morning, I left the company early,
and was lulled to sleep in my tent in the garden
by the faint sound of music, continued, no doubt,
till the flush of dawn.

THE STOKIES OF TWO IBEX.

I WAS after ibex for the first time in my life.
For two days we had been looking for a herd
which, as tracks showed us, frequented the crags
at the head of the glen where my tent was
pitched, but so far without success. This even-
ing, however, the faint tinkle of a falling stone
drew my shikari's telescope in the right direction.

"Follow," he said, "the next ridge to the one
we are on, right up to the top, where the patches
of snow begin : you will see a big rock like a
fort : they are on that."

The directions were unmistakable, and I was
soon reaching for the big telescope to see them
better.

What a thrill the sight of any new game animal
gives one ! Not indeed like one's first of all ;
for whether he be a Scotch stag or the modest
but not less sporting black buck of India, that
is a sensation that comes once only in a lifetime.
Of course the ibex looked enormous. They were

24 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

lying down on the top of a big rock that rose
up from a confused mass of crags, which reminded
one, as the shikari said, of the crenelated walls
of some mediaeval fort. As the ibex moved their
heads, their horns looked like curved scimitars
against the sky, turning this way and that. Their
fort was quite impregnable as far as we were
concerned, for let alone the fact that the wind
was wrong, our approach, whichever side we made
it, would be visible to the keen eyes of watchful
sentries.

So I had to be content to sit and watch my
first herd, till the shadows began to steal along
the hillsides and throw gigantic shapes on the
opposite side of the valley.

That was the day I first heard the call of the
snow -cock,1 the very embodiment of the spirit

1 The Himalayan snow -cock, Tetmogallus Himalayensis, is a
magnificent bird somewhat bigger than a guinea-fowl. I have
often thought the experiment of introducing him into Scotland
ought to be tried. Their plumage is speckled grey, but when their
square tail is cocked up, as they frequently carry it, a mass of pure
white downy feathers is displayed which is very conspicuous from
a distance. They live just below the snow-line, and their food con-
sists principally of mosses or the insects found therein. They are
generally seen by the big-game hunter whilst in pursuit of ibex
and markhor ; but a day after them with a rook rifle affords not
bad fun and very hard exercise. In the Yasin district, where they
abound, the natives drive them from hill to hill while the snow is
on the ground, and by a skilful arrangement of beaters, can tire
them out and then knock them on the head. They are excellent
eating, but should be hung as long as possible.

The Stories of Two Ibex 25

of the mountains. It is a fine day ; listen to
them laughing and chortling high up above your
head like a party of schoolgirls. Presently a
" tiip, tiip, tiip " ; a great rush of wings and they
come sailing over your head. There they go,
"tiip, tiip, tiip, tyrrhio — tyrrhio — tyrrhio," in a
splendid curve straight across the gulf to the
opposite side of the valley. Another day you
sit huddled up peering into a wet fog of cloud
that is almost rain. The vapours weave them-
selves fantastically round the near rocks, but the
surrounding mountains are blotted out, or are
only seen as disappearing pictures in the caverns
of the mist. Your stalker's heart attunes itself
to the scene, for there is nothing to be done to-
day. You are depressed by an eerie feeling of
remoteness engendered by the silence and the
solitude. Somewhere from out of the mist, you
know not where, comes a long-drawn mournful
whistle. The snow -cock is calling to the jinns
of mist and mountain that are surely abroad
to-day.

Towards evening the ibex one by one got up,
took a look down and began to descend, first
slowly and then more quickly, till by the time
they reached the deep green grass, they had lost
all their stateliness and apparently all their cau-
tion. The procession became a scramble, and

26 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

down they rushed, the little ones larking about
and tumbling over one another like a pack of
school children let loose. But it was too dark
for a stalk, and we left them scattered about the
alpine pastures below us. My first shot at ibex
looked almost a certainty for to-morrow, and my
dinner off a roast leg of urial shot a few days
before, and the "tappio" pudding beloved of
Eastern chefs, might have been an alderman's feast
for all I knew or cared. After dinner a pipe, and
I went outside to look at the weather before
turning in. It was a glorious night. The crescent
moon was just setting behind a queer -shaped
mountain the other side of the Astor river, and
the dark mass took to my ibex-heated imagination
the resemblance of a gigantic buck lying down,
with the moon his golden horn.

But alas for youth's imaginings ! Next morn-
ing, when I should have been getting up with
the first glimmer of light in the east, the patter-
patter of rain on the tent made me spring from
my bed and poke my head out between the flaps.
Black as Jorrock's cupboard was the morning, and
pouring dismally. Five o'clock and daylight
showed no change, but a sea of mist and clouds
enveloping my camp, and so my hope of ibex
fled for that day. How the time dragged !
Eleven o'clock saw my gun and rifles polished

The Stories of Two Ibex 27

and speckless, one o'clock my correspondence all
finished. By three o'clock I had smoked more
tobacco than was good for any one who wanted
heart and lungs in climbing order. The day was
long, but it passed, and evening closed in still
wet. Stalking in mist and rain with the wind
blowing in all directions at once was a hopeless
impossibility, and it was no use going out either
that day or the next. Wet weather when in
camp among the mountains is abominable. Wet
tents, wet clothes, wet carpets, wet dogs, food
smoked instead of cooked, are some of the ills
one has to laugh at, and the acme of comfort one's
imagination can depict is a dry room with a fire
in it, and an arm-chair before that fire.

On the third day rain had stopped, and patches
of blue sky — oh, how welcome ! — had appeared,
though the great clouds still rolled in the valley
below us, and at times enveloped us in a dense
wet mist. Our ibex had in the meantime shifted
their quarters, and were discovered among some
black jagged -looking rocks at the opposite side
of the glen we were in. Early next morning we
were on our way across the valley, knee-deep in
sopping grass and flowers and mountain vegeta-
tion. The rain had been snow only a few hundred
feet above us, but the white line was quickly
creeping up the slopes under the intermittent

28 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

gleams of sunshine. The weather still threatened,
however, and before we had gone across the valley
we had been soaked through by a heavy burst
of rain. We pushed on through it all, and by
the time we reached the rocks they were again
glistening in the sun. We found an almost per-
pendicular ridge which had to be surmounted to
get a view into the ravine where the ibex had
been seen. I found my nailed boots would not
bite on the wet rocks, so off they came, and the
climb was begun in my stockings. With a shoul-
der to stand on there, and a hand-pull here, we
got along somehow or other ; but it was desper-
ately bad going, and nearly at the end a smooth
wall of rock almost stopped us ; but thanks to
my shikaris, after half an hour's struggle the top
was reached, and I found myself, rather to my
surprise, lying, rifle in hand, gazing across a
hundred and fifty yards of air at three big ibex
lying on a dry ledge of rock opposite me. From
the point of view which connects hill shooting
with precipices, it was quite the typical ibex
ground, and though I have shot much in the
Himalaya since my first essay after ibex, I cannot
recollect a more awesome but pictorially appro-
priate scene. Great naked black cliffs rose up
out of the mist on all sides. Our heads projected
over a sheer drop, the bottom of which could not

The Stories of Two Ibex 29

be seen. Opposite us where the ibex lay, a wall
of rock abutting up to a dizzy height overhung
the chasm. The noise of loud rushing waters
filled our ears, and from every crevice and gully
streams flung themselves into space, but swept
away by currents of air, became wreaths of smoke
before they could touch rock again. My imagin-
ation as to the sort of ground ibex ought to be
shot on was thoroughly satisfied, and all that
remained was to do it. I wanted to take my
shot there and then as they were, lying down ;
but my shikari — not at that time Gul Sher —
insisted on my waiting till they rose and gave
me a broadside shot. We should perhaps have
whistled them to their feet, but did not. So,
wet and shivering with cold and excitement, I
waited, and just when I least expected it the
ibex rose simultaneously to their feet, moved
along their gallery, and were gone. A puff of
air had no doubt told them of our presence. It
seemed like a moment of time, but I had fired
two aimed shots and both misses ! We never
saw those ibex again, and next day I had to
return to Gilgit. Thus ended my first stalk.

Let me ask my readers to accompany me now
on another stalk. It was some six years after
the episode of which an account has been given.
I had in the meantime been almost continually

30 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

employed on duty in the best shooting-grounds
in the Further Himalaya, and had shot many ibex,
and good heads among them too, but not the
enormous one with fifty-inch horns that figured
in my day-dreams.

Our summer camp had been pitched near the
head of the lovely Harpai glen, about the place
where the junipers begin to grow scarce and
the valley spreads into open stretches, in the
soft bottoms of which grass, mosses, and flowers
grew deep. A charming camp it was. One could
look across fifty miles of pine-clothed valleys
and ridges to where the great white cone of
Dobani rose beyond the Gilgit spur, and by
climbing up to the pass at the head of the
valley one could see half a dozen or more peaks
of over 24,000 feet cleaving the sky, and among
them the giant crest of Nanga Parbat.

Ibex and markhor were, of course, our main
interest, and though the cares of a district pre-
vented my being always on the wander, it was rare
that we had not news of the existence somewhere
in the neighbourhood, of a mighty old buck of one
or other of the wild goats. Indeed, the story of
that summer camp is, in the main, the history of
attempts to compass the death of two remarkably
fine beasts — one a markhor and the other an ibex.
It is with the latter that this story deals.

The white cone oj Dobanm.

The Stories of Two Ibex 3 1

We were playing golf one evening on the links
round our camp, certainly the highest though
not the worst course in the world, when Gul
Sher, who had been roaming about with tele-
scope and binoculars, turned up and took my
clubs.

Gul Sher was a character, and should have been
born a Scotchman, although, loth as I am to confess
evil of him, he did not appreciate golf. The end
in view seemed to him so disproportionate with
the pains taken in attaining it. All the same he
used frequently to carry my clubs, and did not
hesitate to criticise freely, but he would not drop
the language of the rifle. When we topped a ball
we were told we had " gone high," and when we
dug into the ground we were told to take a " finer
sight " ; but the absence of a second barrel, after
some such a contretemps, always seemed to him an
unredeemable blot on the game.

As we were going round, he gradually allowed it
to become apparent that he had seen a real mon-
ster ibex among the high crags known as Kine-
chuch, that overhung the valley six or seven miles
below our camp. He was an ibex of great age, his
winter coat not yet shed, and with horns not less
than six spans in length. Gul Sher had seen him
one day, but he had been gone the next ; his re-
treat, however, was one to which he would be

32 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

certain to return, being isolated, remote, and
precipitous.

Next morning, taking my shooting tent and kit
for a few days, I went down the valley, through
forests of juniper and cedar, and then, turning up
to the right, crossed a high bare pass leading to
the Gasho valley, from which the Kinechuch ridge
could be attacked. It looked formidable. A high
black razor-edge of slate, bare of all vegetation for
a couple of thousand feet above our heads, in
length three miles or more. From the side we
were to attack it — which was the reverse of that
the ibex were on — the ridge looked very steep and
rather awesome, but on essaying it next morning
we found it easier than it appeared, and a couple
of hours' scramble over sharp jutting-out angles of
slate, forming easy but treacherous footing, and
loose jangling debris of the same, brought us to
the top. Here quite a different kind of ground
awaited us. The drop down the opposite side
was almost sheer, being parallel with the dip in
the slate, and gave no foothold of any kind. The
precipice fell straight down for five to eight hun-
dred feet or so, and then the naked rock was
buried under a less steep slope of old avalanche
snow. Below this came alpine pastures falling
away down into pine forests two or three thou-
sand feet below us. Sharp ridges ran down at

The Stories of Two Ibex 33

frequent intervals into the pastures, forming a
series of corries — altogether an ideal haunt for
ibex. It was in one of these that the big fellow
had been seen. So we walked along the razor-
edge, or rather just behind it, examining every
ravine in turn. Ibex we found in plenty, but not
the one we were after. From the edge of the
ridge, where it fell away abruptly, we retraced our
steps and went back to the other end, and were
rewarded by seeing — nothing. So back we went
to camp. There was not anything surprising in
this : big ibex are not picked up every day, and,
as Gul Sher remarked, " If not to-day, then to-
morrow or the next day ; but find him we shall."
But he was there neither on the morrow nor the
day after. The Kinechuch ridge was then aban-
doned, and in the next few days all the likely
ground on that water-parting was examined ; but
with no result, and the pursuit of the big ibex was
dropped for the time. A fortnight or more later
Gul Sher found him again in the same spot, and
again I laid myself out for his destruction. The
evening before he had been there, but when I
went up the ridge he was gone — vanished as
mysteriously as before. However, I determined
to look yet another day before again dropping his
pursuit ; and this time, if the big one was not to
be seen, we agreed I was to shoot one or other of

c

34 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

the smaller ibex on the other side. So up we
went. Proceeding our usual round, first to the
east, we came on a herd of ibex among which was
a fair head — a good one anywhere else, — which I
judged to be about forty-two inches, or perhaps a
shade more. My faith in the big one was growing
faint. " I'll shoot that one," I remarked ; " a bird
in the hand, anyhow."

"Good, Sahib," said Gul Sher ; "if you will
wait here with the second shikari, I will go to
the end of the ridge and have one more look,
and if you don't see me wave my coat, go round
and shoot him."

The old man disappeared, and I lay and ate
my cold mutton, and watched the herd lying
peacefully below us chewing the cud and little
recking of danger. We waited a couple of hours
and no signs of Gul Sher, when just as we were
preparing to move, a black dot moved out into
a patch of snow at the extreme end of our ridge.
Gul Sher, no doubt, and a look through the glasses
discovered him furiously waving his coat. Over
the loose slates we clattered, sending small aval-
anches down the hill, working slowly round the
dizzy corners and running over the slopes of shale
till, in an hour's time we arrived, somewhat blown,
to where Gul Sher was sitting. His face and nod

The Stories of Two Ibex 35

were enough, and words superfluous. The ridge
here turned at a right angle, forming on the
inside a snow-filled gully and on the outside a
steep cliff, a thousand feet or so in height, of
broken rocks. It was on the latter the ibex
were lying.

Gul Sher had the telescope propped up on the
ridge crest, and I crawled up and applied my eye.
There were two ibex in the field of view, and one
of them was the monster, with horns forming
an almost complete circle, though reaching right
back behind his shoulders, — a truly magnificent
head, measuring fifty inches at least. They were
lying facing us, and a lot of does and kids were
scattered all about and around. The herd was
about five hundred yards away, and so we worked
without further ado along the ridge towards them.
The wind was in our faces, but dark clouds had
appeared on the horizon, and no time was to be
lost, as it might change any moment. After
going a few hundred yards, a small Y-shaped
depression in the crest gave what seemed a good
firing point ; so we crept to this and looked over.
The big ibex was within a hundred yards of us,
still lying facing us, but with head and a por-
tion only of his chest visible. I might have
taken the shot then, but I intensely desired to

36 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

risk nothing ; the herd was absolutely unalarmed ;
and finally, Gul Sher was against it. So we crept
farther still along the ridge, to a point from where
I should get a view of his red back lying not forty
yards below me. With extraordinary care I crept
to the edge. Nothing to be seen. I pushed my-
self a little farther over. At this moment there
came a low growl of thunder, and — fearful thought !
— I felt a breath of cold air on the back of my
neck. Almost simultaneously a tremendous clatter
of stones and a cloud of dust arose from below me.
An exclamation of intense disgust came from Gul
Sher. The hillside seemed alive with ibex, dashing
at headlong speed along the cliff-side away from
me. I swung my legs over the edge, to get a
sitting shot at the big one when he should appear,
but they seemed all small.

"There is no use looking that way," said Gul
Sher; "the big one has gone down the ridge."

The shikari was standing up, looking away down
the ridge through his glasses. I found the direc-
tion, and saw two ibex going hard five hundred
yards away, and they were lost to view.

We followed them down the ridge, — a difficult
descent that nothing but the thought of that big
ibex would have induced me to make ; but he
had evidently not stopped, and had gone on into

The Stories of Two Ibex 37

the forests below. We got back to camp when
it was pitch-dark, as sick and disgusted as we
could well be.

That ibex did not return to his haunt the next
day; nor, hunt high, hunt low, as we did for
many days afterwards, did he ever once appear
to me again, except in my dreams.

It is as well to be philosophic over one's shikar
as in other things, and in a little Persian proverb
I sometimes call to mind is embodied a deal of
philosophy. It runs —

Agar shabha hamah shab i kadr budi
Shab i kadr be kadr budi :

" If every night was the ' night of miracles,' the
* night of miracles ' would cease to be miraculous,"
and might be freely rendered, " If you could shoot
an enormous ibex every day of your life, enormous
ibex would no longer be worth the shooting." But
as regards this particular beast, the proverb has
not had its wonted efficacy, for I shall always
regret his loss.

That same season I lost, by no fault of my
own, a markhor which would have been the second
finest I have ever shot. I got his " brother " out
of the same herd, a distinctly smaller beast, which
measured fifty-two inches. A deal used to be said

38 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

to Gul Sher about the loss of this markhor, and I
well remember his reply: "You talk about that
markhor, Sahib, but mark my words, you may find
a dozen markhor like the one we lost, but you
will never in your life see the like of the ibex
of Kinechuch " ; and I believe him.

The big markhor.

39

THE BIG MARKHOR.

The things we know are neither rich nor rare,
But wonder how the devil they got there.

SUCH were the words which kept recurring to me
as Gul Sher and I sat watching the herd from
our cranny, high up in the Shingye Glen. The
long telescope had been propped up on rocks and
pointed towards some grassy ledges in the middle
of a sheer face of rock on the opposite side of
the valley three thousand yards or more away.
Even with the forty -power glass the markhor
appeared absurdly minute as they moved about
the rocks and nibbled the dry autumn grass.

Pope's lines about the fly in amber seemed
peculiarly appropriate. " How the devil," indeed !
For as far as we could see there was absolutely
no path leading across the great scarp of black
rock to their lofty grazing ground. But where
nothing else can go, the markhor, biggest and
most majestic of all the wild goats, wanders with
ease, to find among dizzy precipices his refuge

4O Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

from wolf and snow -leopard. My stalker and I
had been watching this particular herd off and
on for many days, and with the greatest care,
for in it was a monster like which few have been
shot and fewer still could remain in the Grilgit
Kohistan — or any other part of the Himalayas.
He was with a herd of fourteen others, all hoary
old males. But whenever we had seen them,
they were always high up on this same rock face
and absolutely unapproachable from any direction.
A seat like Sinbad on the back of the simurg, or
even a modern flying machine, might have served
our purpose, but nothing else. Inaccessible and
distant though they were, as they moved about
we could distinctly see their great spiral horns
against the patches of snow which lay here and
there. Soon after taking up our post of observa-
tion in the early morning, we had found out that
the big one was not that day with the herd, and
on running through the muster, fourteen were
counted instead of the full fifteen. Still, at any
moment he might appear from some hidden ravine
or cranny, so we settled ourselves down to a day
of watching.

Old Gul Sher was no bad companion with
whom to while away a long day's spying. He
was not a great talker ; who is that has spent his
life, or the greater part of it, alone with Nature ?

Gul Sher spying*

The Big Markhor 41

But what he did not know about the beasts, birds,
and plants of this wild country was not worth
knowing, and with judicious questioning he would
propound it all. Then what tales he could relate
of the savage deeds these valleys and mountains
had witnessed before the advent of the English,
not so many years ago ! Of the many remote
and inaccessible glens we visited together, there
were few which had not been the scene of some
dark tragedy. Far below us, for instance, a black
dot marked a cave at the foot of the huge scarp
opposite, whither a former Ra of Gilgit had fled
for refuge, accompanied by a handful of devoted
retainers. So great was his name for valour that
his enemies durst not attempt to take him there,
but determined to starve him out. A semicircle
of low walls built of rock debris still remain and
were visible from our perch, showing how his cruel
foes watched him by day and night. After a
week of starvation the chieftain surrendered with
his followers, on the assurance of their lives being
spared, — a promise as readily given as it was
promptly broken ; for all were conducted to Gil-
git, and like the King of the Amalekites, hewn in
pieces.

In this most difficult of all stalking, in which
the quarry is nothing meaner than the king of
all the race of wild goats, Gul Sher was a perfect

42 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

marvel. Of his fifty years, forty spent high up
on the mountains had furrowed his face and
grizzled his beard ; but on the most dangerous
ground his step was as sure as ever, his nerve
as steady; and many was the time I found he
could give me the weight of my rifle and a bad
beating up a stiff hill. He began life as a goat-
herd, when he would be away for days together
without seeing a human face, and thus he learnt
to wander about the awesome solitudes where
the eagle builds its nest and the wild goat is
monarch of all he surveys, as fearless of step
as they. Later on he was a hunter on his own
account, the most celebrated in all the Gilgit
Kohistan. His weapon was the matchlock of the
country, accurate up to perhaps fifty yards, and
with this he stalked and shot many hundreds of
these, the wildest game animals in the world.
That needed more craft than is necessary in these
days of Mannlichers and suchlike arms of pre-
cison. "Ah, Sahib," he used to remark, "if I
had only had your rifle in those days ! " to which
I would reply that I was uncommonly thankful
he had not !

Well, we waited and watched till evening, but
the big markhor did not appear that day, nor
indeed did we see him for some weeks after,
though we searched high and low, and spent

The Big Markhor 43

many cold days sitting out examining from
different points every square yard of the neigh-
bouring valleys. I think I may safely say that
never in my life was I so keen to get any beast
as I was to shoot that markhor ; and keen as I
was, Gul Sher was even more so, for it had eluded
us so often that he had begun to think that his
reputation depended on getting me a shot — his
face, as he said, was "blackened" till he did so.
At last came a heavy fall of snow, and when
the air cleared, the patriarch was again with
the herd. We were watching the party one
evening as they appeared in single file out of
a ravine and wandered down into a deep snow-
filled ravine leading into the Shingye nullah.
Last of all came a markhor with very long straight
horns, which I picked out as the big one. Gul
Sher said, "No, that is a new-comer, and by his
size he must be the big one's own brother, but
our old friend will not be far off." Sure enough,
a hundred yards behind all emerged a markhor
the like of which has rarely been seen, with a
gigantic pair of horns both long and massive,
looking like the gnarled branches of a tree.
" That's the one," said Gul Sher, " and I should
know him well." It was getting dark as the
herd moved slowly down out of sight — all except
the straight-horned one. He stopped behind,

44 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

standing immovable, his face down the valley
towards us. Whether or no he had some
mysterious suspicion of danger, who can say?

We returned to camp pretty pleased, as barring
snow -leopards, which infested this glen, and
accidents, I should get a shot at the big one next
morning.

We were out before dawn. In order to get
above the herd in the ravine where we had left
them, we had to walk up the main Kargah glen
for a mile and a half and then climb up to the
left, crossing over a spur into the Shingye nullah,
some 800 feet above my camp, to which there
was an almost sheer drop down. We zigzagged
up and down, Gul Sher leading and finding
paths along dizzy ledges where paths there
appeared to be none, I following, haud passibus
cequis, my second shikari with rifle and lunch
coming last. Gul Sher knew every inch of the
ground we were on — it used to be his own
hunting-ground in the old days — else, covered
with snow as was every spot where snow could
lie, the stalk would have been an impossibility.

There was that morning one particularly un-
attractive place to negotiate. The ledge, which
was our only means of reaching our point, ran
round a corner, to pass which the entire weight
had to be thrown on one foot placed on a small

The Big Markhor 45

corner of stone having a slight slope outwards.
The sheer wall of rock afforded no hand-hold, and
of course we had no rope, for in markhor stalk-
ing, though the advisability of being roped not
seldom occurs, such aids would be too much of
an encumbrance to be habitually carried. There
was no great difficulty about the step if the foot
did not slip, but on the ledge lay an inch or two
of snow, which the shikari going first with un-
hesitating nerve and assurance had not improved ;
so about that "if" there was a note of uncertainty.
It may be that it is the recollection of such
moments as these, when the heart has to be
hardened and the nerves taken in hand, that
makes a collection of mountain trophies one's
dearest possession.

We arrived at the edge of the ravine into which
the herd had gone the night before as the sun
topped the mountains to the south, and slowly
raised ourselves to peer over. The herd was not
there. After some consultation it was decided
to go on to the next ridge, which they had prob-
ably crossed, when whizz ! thud ! — a falling stone
plunged into the snow in front of us. We looked
up. Nothing was visible to the naked eye, but a
few seconds' examination with the glasses showed
us the herd moving leisurely up a grey stone shoot
far above us. Now a few steps, now a bound to

46 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

reach a high ledge, a halt to look round, and on
again. They were quite safe, and knew it. To
pursue them would be useless, and to get above
them at that time of year impossible ; nothing
remained but to return to camp or wait where we
were till the evening, when, if they had not got our
wind, they might come down again. We elected
the latter course, and, having retired a few hundred
yards to avoid an upward current of air taking the
markhor news of our ambush, spent the short
winter's day as comfortably as we could. Many
times did we measure in anticipation that markhor's
horns, but as G-ul Sher said, " It was not in his
fate to meet death that day." Evening came, but
not the markhor, and we returned to camp cold,
hungry, and disappointed.

It was not till ten days after this, during which
I had twice seen the big markhor, but without its
being possible to attempt a stalk, that the herd
again one evening wandered into the identical
ravine where we had stalked them before. Next
morning was one of those glorious days one gets
in the Himalaya in the depth of winter. Not a
breath of wind, the sky cloudless and of the
deepest blue, against which the black jagged peaks
of the mountains, encrusted in lines and ridges
with snow and seemingly bound in silver, stood
out in the clear air with extraordinary sharpness

The Big Markhor 47

and brilliancy. Below the crests immaculate
snow-fields faintly reflected in their shadows the
intense blue of the sky above. The silence was
only broken by the deep gurgling of the torrent
near our camp under thick ice, and by the cries of
a flock of ravens which were wheeling round and
round at an immense height above our heads.

I was finishing the square meal with which a
wise man never omits, whatever the hour, to
strengthen the inner man before commencing a
day on the mountains, when Gul Sher, who had
been up before dark, walked into camp. He had
been up the opposite side of the valley with the
glasses to assure himself that our herd had not
moved during the night, and brought the welcome
news that the fifteen were together in the ravine
they had entered the previous evening, and that
the big one was with them.

After warming the stalker with a bowl of hot
tea, the binding on of my Kashmiri grass shoes
(an unequalled form of footgear for snow) was
quickly completed, and we started off at a good
pace. When we were nearing the top of the scarp
overhanging our camp we heard above us the
curious loud snort given by an alarmed markhor.
A doe was staring at us from a rock a hundred
yards above, and somewhat in front of where we
had precipitately sat ourselves down. It was a

48 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

very anxious moment. If the frightened beast
made off round the other side of the spur towards
which we were going, it was odds she would give
the alarm to our herd, and then good-bye to our
chance of the big markhor that day ; so we simply
sat motionless as stones and waited. It seemed
as if she would never satisfy her curiosity, for
she stood without a move for a good ten minutes.
At last she turned and began bounding off — and
in a safe direction ! And now, as it had been
already late before this contretemps took place,
and we did not wish to find the markhor had
wandered up into their fastnesses, Gul Sher
quickened the pace, and without a word or a halt
we traversed the precipices that guarded the flank
of the ravine that was our objectif. Arrived at
the spot, Gul Sher took off his cap and crawled
stealthily to the edge of the ridge and looked over,
while I stood for a moment, face to the breeze, to
regain my breath. Then crawling after Gul Sher,
I reached his side and looked over. In front of
us was a ravine some five hundred yards across,
deep in snow, and terminating above us to our
right in a black wall of rock. But it was bare of
any living thing. Tracks, however, we could see
with our glasses, and they showed that the herd
had moved on over the opposite ridge. After
assuring ourselves that there was no watchful

The Big Markhor 49

sentry posted on the look-out, we plunged into the
deep snow and began a slow progress across the
valley. It was tolerably easy going to the bottom,
but the wind seemed to have drifted all the snow
on to the south side, and the ascent became a
struggle. The distance was short however, we
had the markhor in front of us, and we floundered
on. The leading man frequently sank up to his
arm-pits in some hollow, and before we had gone
half-way up the hill a halt was called, and this
was repeated at every fifty yards or so, for there
is no use trying to hold a rifle steady when it's
" bellows to mend." A final struggle brought us
within five yards of the top, and while I sat down
to recover my wind and clear my Mannlicher from
snow, Gul Sher crawled on and looked over. A
nod from him showed me it was all right, and that
at last I was within shot of the big markhor. On
the next minute hung the result of many days'
toil. After seeing to the rifle, I had meant to
give myself another fifteen seconds in which to
steady down after our climb, when Gul Sher
whispered, " Quick, Sahib, I think they've got our
wind."

I was down in the snow beside the shikari. He
was trembling as if he had the ague. The mar-
khor were on the move. Three or four were
standing looking our way and the rest moving

50 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

slowly to the opposite side of the ravine. Some
were already half-way up the opposite side, three
hundred yards away, and making the best of their
way with great bounds in the deep snow. Fifty
yards ahead of the first flight, and showing the
way, was our friend with the straight horns, who
was not to be caught napping, and had probably
been the one to start the panic. The big one was
not in sight, and an exultant thought shot through
me that he must be just below us, though out of
sight. Half a minute's intense expectation, and
he suddenly appeared — not indeed below us, but
from behind a small under-feature about two hun-
dred and fifty yards away. He stood out coal-
black against the snow, but was already far for
a shot, and was going straight away from us.
" Shall I risk it or not?" I thought, and put the
question in words to Gul Sher. " Please yourself,
Sahib," he said, " but if you shoot and miss him
now, you II never see him again."

He was a long way off by this time, and, terribly
disappointing though it was, I determined not to
shoot, but to try and get a better chance some
other day, though mechanically I followed him
with my rifle as he moved off. Suddenly he
stopped, turned broadside on, and looked round.
The sight of the rifle was covering him, and it was
in the inspiration of a moment that I raised

The Big Markhor 5 1

it to above his back and my finger pressed the
trigger.

The report echoed and re-echoed among the
crags. I saw the markhor bound on, throwing the
snow about him. But to get in a second shot was
the thing, and I hastily shoved another cart-
ridge into the breech. When I looked up again he
was gone.

" Where is he ? " I asked.

" I don't know, Sahib," said Gul Sher hesitat-
ingly. "He seemed to disappear by the knot of
junipers." The glasses through which we had been
looking had got snow on them and were useless.
" It was too far," he added, " but maybe he is
wounded and will come out soon."

The herd were now far black specks on the
snow ; he surely could not be among them. We
waited and waited, expecting to see him appear in
the distance from behind some ridge or tree, but
not a sign ! But stay ; did I see something move
underneath that juniper, or is it the withered
branch of a tree sticking out from the snow?
" Go, Gul Sher, to that rock above us, and see if
you can make anything out."

Gul Sher got up and went up the hill for fifty
yards and sat down, carefully wiped his glasses
and applied them to his eyes. Scarcely had he
done so when he was on his feet again, his

5 2 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

face radiant and his glasses waved about his
head.

" Margya, Sahib, margya!" (He's dead, Sahib,
he's dead ! ) he shouted, and plunged down the
snow slope, taking enormous leaps. It was a bad
and dangerous journey to that juniper-tree under
which the markhor lay dead, but I got over the
ground in a dream. The markhor was shot through
the heart, and had fallen stone-dead near the tree
under which I had seen him plunge in his death
run. A lucky shot indeed ! Gul Sher passed his
hands over the gigantic horns. Seven spans, which
the tape at home afterwards showed us to be fifty-
five inches.

" Ah, Sahib," the old man said as we sat down to
talk it over, " my face has been black this month
past, but now it is red ! "

53

A DAY AFTER URIAL.

r behoves all sportsmen whose fate ordains that
ey shall live for a time in Baluchistan, on the
unjab frontier, in Chitral, Gilgit, and the Western
imalaya generally, to thank Providence who has
^iven them the urial — for there is no more sport-
ing animal under the sun. Their heads, when
seen hung up in a hall, do not attract the same
attention as those of their cousins of Tibet and
the Pamirs, but they are in their own way very
handsome. The horns are light in colour and
beautifully corrugated, and when entire form two
almost complete circles ; but, as is the case with
most wild sheep, the tips are often minus the last
few inches, which have been worn or broken off.

Anything less " sheep-like " than the appear-
ance and behaviour of the urial cannot well be
imagined. Their heads certainly bear some re-
semblance to a sheep, in the same way as the
head of a race -horse is similar to that of a
donkey, but here similarity is at an end. The

54 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

body, covered with short, stiff, reddish -coloured
hair, is essentially deer-like ; while to understand
the agility of the beast one must have seen a
frightened herd dashing at full gallop over
ground where the human animal can scarcely
venture at all.

The writer's best acquaintance with the circular
horned sheep is in the valley of the Indus, from
a couple of stages beyond Leh, near the Tibetan
border, at a height of 10,000 feet and more, to
below Chilas, where the mighty river has fallen
to 3000 feet or so above the sea. Here their
country marches with that of their kinsmen the
great Ovis ammon, and one severe winter when
the latter were driven lower down the Indus than
usual, the two breeds are known to have crossed,
though the offspring of the union have, I am
afraid, all been wiped out. It is between Leh
and Chilas that the Indus, after rising north of
the main Himalayan axis, bursts through this
stupendous barrier. The huge rift it has worn
for itself appears to one high up on either side
of the valley as a great purple gulf opening
before him, through the haze of which the snow-
topped mountain crests of the opposite side can
be seen anything from ten to forty miles away.
Far below the big river washes smooth black
rocks carved and hollowed into fantastic shapes

A Day after Urial 55

by the ceaseless action of nature's great sculptor ;
bays of sand and shingle, and accumulations of
boulders of gigantic size. Above these come
sandy rock-strewn terraces, high cliffs of yellow
hardened mud, screes of loose rock fragments,
and straight slopes of sand — all the dSbris, in
fact, accumulated through ages from the weather-
ing of the great mountains above. Where the
slopes are gentle enough for earth to lie, the
ground is covered with a scanty growth of
strongly aromatic wormwood, known by different
names in different localities, the pungent smell
of which will always be bound up in the writer's
memory with the scenes of many years' sport in
the Himalaya. This is the ground beloved of
urial during the winter ; in parts as easy to
stride over as a heathery moor at home, but else-
where as difficult and treacherous as ground can
well be.

The spot to which I would ask my readers
to accompany me is some forty -five miles from
Gil git, on the narrow road which has been
scraped and blasted and built along the left bank
of the Indus as far as the border fort of Chilas,
where it was my duty for a space to watch the
doings of the lower Indus tribesmen. I was on
my way thither, accompanied by Gul Sher, and
had decided to spend a couple of days after the

56 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

urial which frequent the high cliffs below the
junction of the Astor river with father Indus.
A light wire bridge has here been thrown across
the tributary stream, nearing which we dismounted
to lead our ponies across. A more wild and for-
bidding scene it is impossible to imagine. Black
perpendicular rocks ascend to an enormous height,
through a narrow cleft in which, and seeming to
issue from the bowels of the earth, the Astor
river appears wild and foaming. The bridge is
hung across at the river's narrowest part, and it
is here the rapids assume their most terrific aspect.
No one crossing the frail-looking structure can
help but pause a moment to look down and
wonder, and be fascinated by the tumult of
yellow water below him. At any rate we did,
and in doing so I could not help speculating
on the result of the breaking of the wire strand
on which we leant. How many seconds of life
would remain to any one falling in amongst the
spouting, boiling waves whose spray wet our
faces ?

After crossing the bridge we followed the road
for a short way, and then, leaving our ponies to
be taken on to the little fortified post at Lechir,
we struck off to the left to look for the wild
sheep. After a quarter of an hour's climb we sat
down behind a rock and set to work with the

A Day after Urial 57

glasses. Mine were a pair of powerful prism
binoculars, and Gul Sher's the old-fashioned tele-
scopic binoculars ; so, ceteris paribus, I with the
better instrument should have picked up anything
there was to be seen first. Other things, however,
were not equal, and it was Gul Sher's grunt and
not mine which told the other that something
had been seen which deserved examination
through the telescope. They were lying, three
of them, and all rams, on one of a series of
steep ridges of hard clay about three - quarters
of a mile from us. Two of them certainly, with
black beards and ruffs, were old rams with good
heads. But between us lay a very deep and
precipitous ravine, which could not be crossed
except by dropping down to the road below us
or climbing high up ; and as it was then three
o'clock on a short February day, the stalk had
to be put off till the morrow. So the afternoon
was spent in watching them.

Of course the talk was of urial. Gul Sher
recounted the tale about the herd which swam
the Indus near this very spot. To translate the
old chap's quaint idioms and descriptions into
bald English, or even worse, the Biblical phrase-
ology which writers of the East sometimes put
into the mouths of their dark heroes, I will not
attempt. The story, however, ran that in his

58 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

young days Gul Sher was stalking a herd of
urial on a flattish piece of ground opposite where
we were now sitting. From some way above
he had seen the herd disappear down a steep
cliff as if going to water, and had gone down
after them ; but on arriving at the spot where he
expected to get a shot, he saw to his astonishment
the last of them emerging from the water on
the opposite bank. I suggested that what he
saw was in reality a different herd. "That may
be, Sahib," said the old man, nodding his head
and taking a great pinch of snuff, " but if it was,
then there must have been on each bank of the
Indus at that moment a herd of exactly the
same number, with an identical proportion of
rams, and each with one ram that was lame in
the same hind leg ! "

The belief is common enough in the Gilgit
district that in winter urial do swim the Indus,
but Gul Sher is the only native of these parts
I have met or heard of who could be called in
any sense an " eye-witness." The idea is that
in early spring they cross from the good winter
feeding-ground on the right bank to go to their
summer pasturages high above Astor. If the
story is true, they must be extraordinarily good
swimmers, for even in winter the distance to be
crossed would be not less than a couple of hundred

A Day after Urial 59

yards, probably more, and the current is always
swift.

These beasts are second to none in activity
and wariness, and though the ground they are
found in is less romantic than that of some of
the other game animals of the Himalaya, the
day an old ram urial is fairly stalked and shot is
one any sportsman can remember with pleasure.

About the time the shadows began to creep
along the hillside, a cloud of dust some way
above the urial attracted our attention to another
herd coming down. Like most mountain game
going down to water, their progress was by
short rushes at headlong speed ; then a sudden
halt, and they would become stones. The big
rams got up and joined the herd, and they all
disappeared into the ravine together. Then we
too got up and went on to the edge, on the
chance of their having moved down our way ;
but nothing was in sight, and as it was too late
to begin climbing, we scrambled down to the
road and so on to camp. My tent was pitched
outside the little loopholed fort occupied by some
local levies. They were from Ghor, a small Dard
community, living in a collection of mud forts
perched high above the precipitous rocks which
descend sheer into the Indus opposite Lechir.
A wonderful country theirs for grapes, and one

60 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

the natural beauties of which present an extra-
ordinary contrast to the ugliness and dirt of the
inhabitants.

The Lechir fort itself presented an aspect of
dreariness it would be hard to match anywhere.
The only green things visible were a few young
poplars planted by the side of the stream issuing
from a narrow rift opposite the fort, and these
only seemed to make the desolation of bare
mountains, rocks, and sand appear the more
desolate. The place, however, was tolerable at
this time of year. It is in the summer months,
when a hot wind tears up and down, raising
the dust in clouds, that the Indus valley really
becomes Jahannam. Then, in addition to scorch-
ing dust -laden winds, the unwilling traveller
(for no one would be found there at this season
who could possibly avoid it) is tormented by
a peculiarly obnoxious pest known as the " Chilas
fly." This insect has a detestable way of un-
ostentatiously settling on an exposed part, and
driving in so small a poisoned sting that the
prick is not felt ; but when gone he leaves an
intensely irritating blister to remember him by.
His operations last till sundown, when his place
is taken by the midge bearing the name of
" sand-fly," which after his own manner makes
sleep impossible. The impression that one has

A Day after Urial 61

strayed into the infernal regions is heightened
by the sulphurous fumes arising from boiling
springs. Enough, however, of these torments,
which were not our portion on this occasion.

We started next morning while the stars were
blinking, on what turned out to be a long day.
After crossing the Lechir stream, we began
climbing for a spot above where we had seen
the rams disappear, timing ourselves to arrive
after the sun had struck the hillside and
started the usual upward current of air. After
scrambling over a broad mass of rock fragments
stretching up in a straight line far above us,
we got on to the hard clay slope known as the
Lechir slip. It was not steep enough to be
difficult, but the danger of falling stones from
above made the breadth of the shoot a glacis
to be got over as quickly as possible. This
slip is the bugbear of the engineer in charge
of the Chilas road. All sorts of different align-
ments have been tried, down by the water and
high up ; but wherever the road is made, and
whatever precautions are taken to maintain it
with walls and suchlike, a week is sufficient to
see it swept clean away without a trace remaining.
Past the slip, we got among a succession of steep
ravines — treacherous walking and requiring great
care. The ridges were none too good, but the

62 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

sides of the nullahs being too steep to stand on,
had either to be crossed at a run or by the slow
and sure way of cutting steps ; but one of these
giving way would have meant a bad fall.
Boulders half embedded in the stiff sandy clay
offered footsteps which it was safer to avoid.

It was on similar ground, and close by here,
that a good sportsman met his death about a
year subsequently to the date of my story. He
had shot an urial, and was hurrying towards
the fallen beast, when he put his foot on a
boulder sticking out of the cliff; it gave way,
and he fell a hundred feet or so, fracturing his
skull.

Gul Sher was simply marvellous on this sort
of ground, as he was also on rocks, taking the
bad bits at a run with absolute assurance. His
footgear — strips of hide wrapped round the foot
and up his leg (a chaussure I have never learnt
to wear) — gave him, of course, a little advantage
over the nails in my Kashmiri sandals. We
had to retrace our steps once to find a better
road, so it was some time before we spied our
urial. They were on a ridge some 500 yards
away, in front of and below us, the two rams
lying down and the rest of the herd standing
round about them. But in half a minute they
too lay down. To our disgust, however, just

A Day after Urial 63

when the stalk appeared only a matter of a few
minutes, we got hung up on bad ground. After
some vain attempts to find a road, and against
Gul Sher's wishes, — he was for waiting till the
urial moved, — I sent the gun -carrier down to
try and move them towards us. These tactics,
though commonly practised in deer-stalking,
are rarely successful with the wild goats and
sheep of the Himalaya, and if some really great
beast had been in front of us I should probably
not have tried them. Moving one's beast is
indeed very rarely attempted in the Himalaya.
One gets so few shots, and the toil is so much
greater than in deer-stalking in Scotland, the
issues in fact so much more momentous, that
one is loath to take the risk of driving a good
animal in the wrong direction. The writer has
shot some hundreds of beasts in and beyond the
Himalayas, but in only one instance that he
remembers was an attempt to bring them to
him, instead of his going to them, successful,
and that was a stag in Kashmir.

It seemed a long time before we saw the youth
we had sent run along the road far below us
and then disappear. Our hope was that the
herd would, on getting his wind, come straight
up the ravine our side the ridge they were on,
and so doing would give me a shot. We had

64 Sport and Life in the Fiirther Himalaya

not to wait long. The taint on the wind appar-
ently reached the urial all together, for the
whole herd suddenly sprang to their feet and
disappeared into the ravine on our side. A few
seconds' intense expectation and we hoped to hear
the rattle of stones showing they were coming
our way. But not a sound. After half a minute
we got up and looked about. Then we saw what
had happened : a cloud of dust a hundred yards
below showed our herd were crossing that way,
and had not taken the line we had expected.
They were not visible, but on running back to
the next ridge we saw them one by one topping
a little spur about 150 yards from us. I sat
down, elbows on knees, and hoped the big ones
had not already gone. No, here they came.
Last of all the light-coloured ram with black ruff,
which I had marked as a shade bigger than the
other. They lolloped up the slope, my bullet
sped, and they were gone. Hit or miss ? Gul
Sher ran down to the spot, and 1 saw him examin-
ing the tracks and then sit down and pull out
his glasses. He had evidently spotted the herd.
Anxiously I awaited his signal. It came soon
enough, and I knew I had missed, and that there
was no one to blame but myself.

On our way back, we sat down at intervals
with the idea of seeing where the herd had gone ;

A Day after Urial 65

and it was not long before we discovered them,
moving slowly now, but going steadily up the hill
two thousand feet and more above us. The fore-
most of them had nearly reached a shoulder of
the mountain, behind which ran a big deep
valley, which entered the Indus a mile or so
above Lechir ; the same ravine, in fact — though a
great deal higher up — which had blocked our
way the previous evening.

Over the shoulder and into this valley they
wandered by ones and twos. Without saying
anything, we had both settled that the urial
were to be followed. Finally, only two ladies of
the herd were left on the ridge to cover the
retirement, and these, after scraping themselves
comfortable beds with their forefeet, lay down.

Is there anything more aggravating than the
inevitable female left on the look-out? and what
abuse the poor unconscious beast is made the
subject of! How many times, after hours of
weary waiting, have we seen her rise to her feet
and have congratulated ourselves that at last
she will follow the herd out of sight and leave
our road open ; and how many times has she
disappointed us, and we have watched her with
exasperating deliberation improve her bed, first
with one forefoot and then with the other, and
subside on to the ground again ! I have had as

E

66 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

stalkers Pathans and Kashmiris, Chitralis and
Gilgitis, Ladakis and Kirghis, and queer-garbed
devotees of Diana of as many more mountain
tribes, but the language of all after some hours
of this sort of thing (beginning with the prelim-
inary expectoration on the ground) has a very
similar ring about it. For there is no approach-
ing the herd when that vigilant sentry is on
guard.

It was not till three o'clock in the afternoon,
after more than six hours' watching, that the last
animal disappeared into the" nullah and we were
able to go on. Just time, however, if the herd
had not gone far, to get a shot before it would
be too dark to find our way back. The climbing
became easier as we got higher, and in an hour's
time we found ourselves crawling up the last few
feet to look over the ridge.

A wide valley opened before us. The upper
part, clothed with pines and junipers, was deep in
snow, which lay in patches as far down as we were
lying. Below us the valley was bare of vegeta-
tion. Two parallel ridges running down the
centre evidently at one time formed the lateral
moraine of a glacier and made a sort of secondary
ravine into which we could not see. Into this I
saw some animals disappear, but not soon enough
to make out whether they were our herd or an-

A Day after Urial 67

other. There was no time to waste, so we
hurried after them, running and glissading down
a shale slope which lay conveniently close. After
climbing up the first of the two ridges we slowly
raised our heads — and as slowly lowered them
again and looked at each other. A big ram
was lying within five yards of us. I felt almost
inclined to poke him in the ribs and see him
jump ; and for a hundred yards or so the ground
was literally covered with urial, lying in every
attitude of ovine repose ! The wind was luckily
in our faces, and we had not been seen; but an
attempt to push the muzzle of the rifle over
would, to a certainty, have attracted the at-
tention of at least one of those scores of sharp
eyes, and have resulted in disastrous failure.
So we crept with infinite care over the loose
stones with which the slope was covered, see-
ing in every one of them a potential source of
ignominy and defeat, to where a big rock was
perched on the ridge some eighty yards from
the nearest ram. From behind this we surveyed
the herd. A supreme moment, the glory of which
was more than tinged with anxiety. Our herd
had evidently been joined by another ; there were
three or four rams quite as good as the one we
had originally seen, and it was difficult to say
which was the absolute best. I therefore selected

68 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

the nearest and easiest — our pale-coloured friend
of the morning. He was lying facing down-hill,
and I had his back only to aim at, — a shot not
to be taken if it can be avoided. I had learnt
by bitter experience, however, that an attempt
to bring urial to their feet with a whistle only
results in a stampede, without a half -second's
pause in which to aim.

The rifle was cautiously poked over, the trigger
pressed, and with the report the ram sprang to his
feet but immediately collapsed.

The herd was off in a cloud of dust with a tre-
mendous clatter of stones. They disappeared be-
hind the next ridge, and almost at once reappeared
going up the opposite side of the valley. Said the
shikari, looking through his glasses, " Mark the
ram last but one of the herd." The distance was
still not great, and the ram started to the shot
evidently hit, and slowed down ; the next shot
went high, but before I could get in another he
stopped altogether, his legs crumpled up under-
neath him, and he rolled down the hill.

Evening was coming on and there was no time
to be lost, so we quickly cached the two rams'
bodies and started for camp, taking the direct road
down the valley instead of climbing back the way
we had come. We soon repented this course, as
the ravine presently became a gorge, forming,

A dead urial.

A Day after Urial 69

when the stream was in spate, a succession of
cataracts. The sides, nearly perpendicular, were
of stiff clay and conglomerate, and in these we had
to cut many hundreds of steps in the growing
dusk. More than once I made up my mind to
sleep out under some rock and retrace our steps in
the morning ; but at every turn and wind in the
gorge we hoped the next would bring us into
easier ground, so we slowly worked our way down.
When at last we emerged on to the stone slopes
above the Chilas road — and glad to get there — the
stars were shining, and it was ten o'clock before
we reached camp, tired but happy.

The rams' heads were brought in next day with
the meat. The horns measured 30 and 29 inches,
both good heads. In one horn of the bigger of the
two a leaden bullet was found deeply embedded —
the property, no doubt, of some Ghor shikari. It
was situated so low down in the horn that I should
think it must have stunned the beast for a time,
and the shikari must have felt his luck was indeed
out when he saw him up and away again. Let us
hope he remembered, as I try to do on such occa-
sions, the saying of the philosopher of Shiraz —

When fate allots him not his daily bread,
That day the Tigris fishers toil in vain ;
The fish whose end is not ordained (by fate),
Will not meet death on land.

70 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

Though I have had better days after urial as
regards mere size and numbers, this day is perhaps
the one out of many I have spent in quest of this
sporting sheep that I look back on with most
satisfaction.

Rare is it that fortune gives one a chance of
repairing an error so quickly.

THE WILD GOATS AND SHEEP OF
DARDISTAK

THE markhor, finest of all the wild goats, attains
his greatest size and spread of horns in the wild
country of Dardistan, the extreme north-west
corner of the Indian Empire and the loftiest
mountain country of the world.

The Himalaya in this part may be divided into
zones, with, of course, no very hard-and-fast
dividing-line between each. Imagine a traveller
starting at the level of the Indus, say at 4000
feet, and following one of its tributary valleys
upwards. As far as about the 8000 feet contour
he will be in a labyrinth of gorges or deep valleys
with treeless precipitous sides. He will see gigan-
tic slopes of talus culminating in rocks and preci-
pices above, and, except for an occasional glimpse
of a soaring snow peak, he will know nothing of
the glorious alpine country far above him. In
summer the air is hot and stifling, and these
gorges present a forbidding and inferno - like

72 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

aspect. The rivers are tumultuous floods of
coloured glacier water, and men, beasts, and
birds fly from the heat and insect pests to the
upper valleys. In winter all this is changed ;
the air is cold, the turgid waters have cleared,
and streams of crystal cascade down the moun-
tains or have been converted into ribbons of
ice, while frost and snow have made a magical
transformation in the look of the whole country.
This is the winter ground of the markhor, for,
having little or no warm under-wool like ibex,
they do not remain far above the snow-line.

Passing through this zone, the traveller will
enter the forest region extending to about the
10,000 feet level, a beautiful alpine country, but
intersected by stupendous precipices and chasms.
Above this comes the region of Pamir-like valleys,
deep during the hot months in grass and innumer-
able kinds of wild flowers. The sides of these
valleys rise abruptly into rocky " pikes" and
ridges or ascend into the regions of perpetual
snow, while on all sides glaciers protrude their
snouts like dragons.1

The big markhor separate from the females and
young during the summer, and to escape the
attacks of flies seem to select one of two alter-

1 The appearance of glaciers is often such as to render intelligible
the ancient Eastern superstition that they were dragons guarding
the treasure of the mountains.

The Wild Goats and Sheep of Dardistan 73

natives. Either they remain comparatively low
down in the forest region, where they are most
difficult to find and stalk, or they ascend to the
bare rocks above the limits of vegetation, whence
they only come down in the mornings and even-
ings to feed. Their habitat is then the same as
that of the ibex. I have seen a herd of markhor
graze their way through a lot of ibex at this
season without either taking the least notice of
the other. That day I shot a good specimen of
both the wild goats.

It seems probable that of the two alternatives,
the high ground is most in favour with the
biggest markhor. This is what local shikaris
say; but their opinion may have been influenced
by the fact that they can find markhor on the
mountain - tops, while they are baffled in the
forests. At any rate there is no doubt that
more than a few gigantic old patriarchs spend
their summer in forest- covered nullahs like Damot
in the Gilgit district or Kesu in Chitral, where
in addition to other difficulties the hunter gets
hung up on very bad ground.

In Chitral an annual migration of markhor
takes place, which shikaris call the rinj. After
spending their winter very low down, where it
is possible in a single day to see a monkey, a
bear, and a markhor, the latter beasts, which
have been inhabiting the southern end of the

74 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

range dividing Chitral and Kafiristan, gradually
work their way northwards, eventually crossing
over to the high knot of mountains beyond Majam.
The summer pelage of markhor is of a yellow-
ish white, making them almost as conspicuous in
the distance as a flock of sheep. In the winter
the coats of the old bucks are of a dark iron-
grey, looking in the snow almost black, — a curious
reversal of the usual seasonal protective colouring
exhibited by other beasts and birds that live much
in the snow. As is well known, this peculiarity
is shared with them by the European chamois.
The strong winter colouring is no doubt con-
nected with the rut and the high living they
have enjoyed during the summer. Talking of
this function, it is marvellous with what regu-
larity the sexes of this wild goat begin to inter-
mingle on a fixed date in December. During
the first part of the month you may search in
vain for full-grown males, though females and
young may be seen in plenty. In the Gilgit
district, it is on the 22nd of December, almost
to the day, that the males emerge from the rocks
and crannies in which they have been hidden and
join the herds. The explanation given by the
local people is quaint and picturesque. The
farmers of Dardistan have no almanacs, so in
order to mark the day on which to begin sowing

The Wild Goats and Sheep of Dardistan 75

their various crops, they erect stone pillars on
some prominent sky-line near their village behind
which the sun sets. Thus, when the sun sinks
exactly behind a certain pillar, they know they
should begin to sow barley, and so on with their
other crops. The markhor, they say, similarly
watch for the sun to set behind some well-known
crag ; and when this takes place, they know their
solitary existence for that year is at an end.

In Chitral, the rutting season, which, it may be
mentioned, is the easiest time for stalking, is some
ten days earlier. To be in a good markhor glen
during the fighting time is a thing to be remem-
bered. One evening I call to mind in the glen
of Krui Kandu (" pink almond blossom"), when
from all quarters of the precipitous pine-covered
hills came the short hoarse cries of invisible
combatants. Now and again two rivals would
emerge fighting into the open. Hearing up
simultaneously, they would come down together,
their heads meeting with a crash like two trees
being knocked together. Each would manoeuvre
for the upper ground, and up they would go again,
and then crash once more would go those horns,
as tough apparently as those made by the
Israelitish king to "push" the Assyrians with,
the furious combatants being all the time quite
regardless of the fact that they were fighting on

76 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

the edge of a precipice. Once after a fray like
this I picked up half a horn broken off, fresh and
bleeding, — and the horns of all markhor at this
season are generally much scarred and damaged ;
but it seems that they subsequently recover a
good deal from the rough treatment they have
been subjected to, for at other seasons I have shot
old beasts that must surely have been the heroes of
many hundreds of fights, but with flawless horns.
The rut lasts some twenty days, and the young
are born in May, — usually one, sometimes two.
The kids are so carefully hidden away by their
mothers that they are not often seen. Eagles
are said to work havoc among the young of all
Himalayan game animals, and my Gilgit shikari
used to tell me of a curious ruse based on this
fact which is employed to catch the young of
markhor. This was for the shikari to get unseen
above a female with young. He would then fling
a crooked stick over their heads. The kid, he
said, taught by instinct, at once dashed for refuge
into the nearest cranny as it would at the sight
of an eagle, and the shikari would run down and
proceed to effect his capture. A young recently
caught markhor was once brought to me, and I
put her for the night in a room in the Singal
post. On going to see it in the morning, my
spaniel ran into the room, and the kid jumped

The Wild Goats and Sheep of Dardistan 77

at one bound through a small square glazed win-
dow five feet from the ground and was drowned
in the river outside, — a fine bid for freedom that
deserved better luck !

The word "markhor" in Persian means " snake-
eater " ; but no shikari that I ever met imagined
that they eat snakes, or indeed ever heard of such
a thing, and if any one should know, those should
who have had the gralloching of hundreds of
them. In Persia no such animal exists, and the
name must have been given originally in Afghanis-
tan, or by some of the Persian-speaking invaders of
India. To me it seems probable the word was
originally mar-khar, which would mean snake-
donkey — i.e., a donkey with snake-like horns. In
Gilgit and Chitral they are not called markhor
at all, the natives having different words for the
sexes, and again for each sex at the different
stages of its life. Though they do not eat snakes,
there is a belief in Dardistan that a markhor's
skin hung up in a house will prevent snakes from
entering. This beast's skin is indeed to the
shikari a thing of some value, as after being well
smoked and matured it is what he makes his
taotis from. These are strips of the raw hide
wound round the foot and up the leg, and secured
by thongs, — an excellent foot-gear for the moun-
taineer, especially on rock.

78 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

Markhor are rather browsers than grazers, the
holly oak, which grows in most glens in Gilgit
and Chitral, being with them a very favourite
shrub. To get at the upper branches of these
trees females and kids often climb quite a height
from the ground, — and apparently even big mar-
khor too ; for once through my spying-glass I saw
the branches of a tree violently agitated, and
looking closer, lo and behold ! a grey-bearded
markhor among the branches, that in this un-
dignified position was trying to break them down
with his massive horns. Attracted to the spot by
vultures, I once came across the dead body of a
female hanging suspended by a hind leg from a
forked bough some eight feet from the ground.
She had evidently ventured too far, and her foot
slipping, she had thus miserably perished.

There is no more majestic-looking animal on
the hillside than a hoary old markhor with his
white beard — not a tuft like ibex, but a mane
covering the neck and lower jaw — almost sweep-
ing the ground. Pictures that I have seen never
make him shaggy enough. He looks and is the
king of wild goats. His head is the finest trophy
to be obtained in the Himalaya, the horns
varying much in size and shape; so that, added
to the fascination of perhaps the highest-class
stalking in the world, there is almost a curio-

The Wild Goats and Sheep of Dardistan 79

hunter's excitement in securing new trophies, and
I verily believe that as much could be written
about the vagaries of markhors' horns as has been
written on antler lore in Europe. The tendency
has been to divide markhor up into all sorts of
sub-varieties, based on the different types of
horns — Pir Panjal, Astor, Gilgit, Suleiman, and
so on. For the sportsman such names are con-
venient by which to mark the various shapes.
For instance, when I recently read in * The Field '
that my friend Captain Barstow had secured the
shot record of heads by bagging a " Pir Panjal "
markhor carrying horns of 60J inches in a Gilgit
nullah, I knew exactly what type of head this
magnificent specimen must be, though the de-
scription as it stands is of course absurd. The
fact is, that in Dardistan are found almost all
kinds of heads, varying from the extreme lyrate
to the straight type, and it follows that all dis-
tinctions based on the supposition that each
locality has its own fixed type must vanish.
The conclusion that there is only one variety
of markhor is further borne out by occasional
curly-horned markhor having been seen in Kurram
and Baluchistan, districts commonly supposed to
produce the straight-horned variety only. In the
latter district the markhor is believed to have
crossed with the Persian ibex (jEgragus), and

8o Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

it certainly seems as if the latter animal had much
more affinity with the markhor than with his
namesake the ibex of the Himalaya. Like all
the breeds of wild goats and sheep, a markhor's
age can be told by the rings on the horn, the
growth of which constitutes a rather remarkable
phenomenon. It is of course secreted from the
base, and the spiral bony core on which it grows
being fixed, the horn must slide over it as each
segment is added from below, rather like a cork
being withdrawn from a corkscrew, so that the
tip that at one time is pointing outwards, at
another period points inwards.

The ibex is always found very high up, but
usually in less precipitous ground than the mar-
khor. He is also a somewhat less difficult beast
to shoot. A puff of wind in a wrong direction
is fatal to the success of a stalk for either, but
the distance from which a human being will be
detected is perhaps not so great in the case of
ibex as with his shaggy relative.

When other beasts are driven to lower eleva-
tions by winter cold and snow, ibex remain at
the same height as in summer, or nearly so.
This peculiarity has caused a glamour of the
supernatural to surround ibex in all the hill
countries of the Himalaya. The Ladaki song
says —

The Wild Goats and Sheep of Dardistan 81

In my father's place of hunting the ibex,

Hundreds and thousands of mighty beasts are gathered —

Who can enjoy this spectacle but the lhas and Mus ?

The lhas are those mysterious deities that live
above the clouds and descend only occasionally
to the mountain-tops, while the klus are water-
spirits inhabiting the clouds themselves.

In the winter, ibex are protected by the soft
wool which lies under their stiff hair. A beautiful
silky homespun is woven from this under- wool, a
whole choga or cloak being made from the pashm
found on two to four beasts. But the sportsman
who wears a garment of this material will have
purchased warmth at the cost of companionship,
for his friends will give him a wide berth when
he is wearing it !

The rutting season of ibex is a few days later
than that of markhor, but ibex shooting at this
time should only be undertaken by those who
have a very keen appetite for hardships. When
the spring arrives, ibex come down to get the
first of the new grass, and this is the easiest
stalking -time, though they are in terrible con-
dition. The stomach of beasts shot at this season
are quite black from their winter diet of juniper.
One winter, during the markhor rutting season,
I saw a buck ibex for several days running with
a herd of the other variety of goat. He used to

82 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

pay addresses to the ladies, but when these
became too conspicuous, in spite of the fact that
ibex are rather heavier beasts than markhor, the
old buck of the herd used to drive him off without
difficulty. It was evident, too, that his attentions
were not acceptable to the females : perhaps they
disliked the shape of his horns, for these must
mainly be of use in precisely this manner, as dis-
tinguishing marks for the preservation of species.
There is a story that some females of a herd of
tame goats crossed with ibex in the Yasin district,
but as Capra sibirica is not believed to have
anything to do with the ancestry of the domestic
breed, the story would require a good deal of
confirmation before it could be accepted. It is
curious that the horns of all domestic goats in
the Himalaya are either scimitar-shaped like ibex
or twisted like markhor, but in the former case
they have a front keel like the wild goat of Persia
and Sind, and in the latter the twist is in the
opposite direction to that of the markhor.

It has been said that the early spring is the
best time for ibex stalking, but this is also the
avalanche season, and great care has to be taken.
In some glens, for a few days in the year, the
thunder of near and distant avalanches is almost
incessant. Ibex at this season fully appreciate
the risk, and they assemble for safety on the

The Wild Goats and Sheep of Dardistan 83

ridges ; but the sight of an ibex horn stick-
ing out of an avalanche of snow is not very
uncommon.

After the green grass has spread up the
mountain- side, as it quickly does, ibex are more
difficult to find ; but the summer climate of ibex-
land, the tonic of the air, and general surround-
ings, make ibex stalking at this season the
pleasantest sport of any in the Himalaya. At
this time the under -wool comes out in patches,
making them look like children's toys with the
stuffing coming out. The colour of ibex varies
a good deal, the usual changes being from red in
the summer to brown in the winter. The males
have often a donkey stripe and light saddle-mark,
and in winter especially their hindquarters and
legs have a good deal of white. Their eyes are
goats' eyes — not blue as some taxidermists seem
to think. In the summer during the day they
lie chewing the cud on rocky crags and aguilles,
whence they only come down in the evenings,
often too late for a shot, so the stalker has to be
up betimes.

Luckily for the ibex and markhor stalker there
is some reliance to be placed on the wind, "the
fickle element" in these parts. Before the sun
is up the wind blows downwards, and an early
stalk may sometimes be made from below, but as

84 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

soon as the sun strikes the hillside, if the sky is
clear one may count on the wind setting upwards :
the game has then, of course, to be approached
from above. This general rule has exceptions
of course ; for instance, a big mass of snow or
glacier often causes a local downward current.
In Tibet and the Pamirs the wind is proverbially
treacherous, and on stormy days everywhere in
the Himalaya successful stalks are the exception,
though good approaches have been made under
cover of a passing cloud. A storm in the summer
sends ibex straight down to lower altitudes, as
their coats are then thin.

Though a very powerful animal, an ibex col-
lapses sooner to a bullet than most other mountain
game. When wounded, he will sometimes employ
his horns for purposes of defence, but it is needless
to say that the old travellers' tale of the use ibex
make of their horns as a sort of buffer to alight on
when throwing themselves down precipices is a
myth. The story has, however, some foundation,
for I have seen an ibex that was going too fast
down a hard snow slope put the brake on by dig-
ging a horn sideways into the snow.

A remarkable but not very uncommon attitude
in ibex that I have never seen mentioned is sitting
up on their haunches like a dog, which gives them
a very comical appearance. I must admit I have

The Wild Goats and Sheep of Dardistan 85

only seen it adopted by the young, and presumably
the frivolous of a herd.

The horns of this wild goat are set on at all
sorts of angles, those forming an open V when
seen from the front being the handsomest. The
biggest Dardistan horns often curve in an out-
ward spiral like the gigantic heads lately brought
from the Thian Shan range. Some, on the other
hand, have tips that converge, and I have my-
self shot one with horns of 43 inches, the tips
of which were only 3J inches apart. The tips
of the horns of a very big ^Egragus that I shot
in Persia actually crossed, and the ' Encyclopedia
of Sport' mentions one of the breed under notice
with the same ugly peculiarity. As to colour,
both in the north of Gilgit and Chitral one comes
across what seems almost like a distinct variety
of ibex with very massive pale -coloured horns.
Shikaris say that these are visitors from Badak-
shan and Wakhan, but I do not myself think
there are any grounds for believing that the
northern and southern slopes of the same range
are inhabited by different varieties of ibex. At
the same time, the difference between these pale
massive horns and the more usual dark thin ones
is very curious. The very thin horns one some-
times comes across are, according to shikaris,
found on ibex born two at a time. As with

86 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

hawks, so with ibex, — there are what people of
these parts call "arghuns" — i.e., white ones — but
these are really nothing more than old ibex whose
coats have grown grey with years.

Though urial (or oorial) is the accepted appel-
lation of Ovis vigni among sportsmen, it is only
in a small part of the Punjab that this is his local
name. In Ladak he is the Sha, in Astor the
Oorin, in Chitral the WarJcalu, in Baluchistan the
Gadh, in Persia the Ghuch, and there are a-t least
as many more names for him in the vernaculars of
other parts, for the range of country he inhabits
is very wide. In Ladak he has been known to
cross with the Ovis ammon ; north of Chitral he is
found in the drainage area of the Oxus, and it
may consequently be surmised that his habitat
extends nearly up to that of Polo's sheep ; in
Baluchistan and Eastern Persia he is found on
practically every mountain -range. Some heads
I recently shot near the south - east corner of
the Caspian belong to the same race of wild
sheep ; and it will probably be acknowledged
later on that Gmelin's sheep, found in Western
Persia and Asia Minor, and the European mouflon
are but local varieties of the one great race.
It has been said that the Ovis Gmelini must
be classed apart from the urial, from the fact
that the horns of the former curve inwards,

The Wild Goats and Sheep of Dardistan 87

tending to meet behind the neck; but the dis-
tinction cannot really hold good, for I have
myself shot urial with this inward twist in
the Gilgit district. The fact is, that all the
local varieties of this big breed have their own
characteristics, — horns long and short, with bold
frontal angles and of round section, thick and
thin, deeply corrugated and smooth. The pelage
also varies, most markedly so in the ruffs car-
ried by old rams, which in Dardistan are black,
while at the other extreme, those of the Kopet
Dagh rams are snowy white.

The ground urial live on in Dardistan is gen-
erally less rocky and more open than that the
wild goats are found on. They love the sandy
plains or straths covered with zhun, an aro-
matic wormwood which, from a distance, might
be taken for heather. Steep clay cliffs and
precipitous ravines form their retreat in the
daytime, and a remarkably effective one, as in
such ground, when lying still, they are almost
invisible — turned, in fact, into stones. They
are, consequently, very difficult to pick up ; but
this is true of all mountain game, except when
on the snow or on very open ground. When
in pursuit of all these beasts, the expanse of
ground that can be spied is usually very great,
so that the most careful and minute examination

88 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

is necessary — irritatingly so sometimes — to avoid
passing beasts over. No " sweeping the horizon "
after the manner of a sea captain ! As a
shikari truly remarked to the writer, " Every
minute you spend with the glass to your eye
is * worth while.'"

Urial have not the pashm or under-wool that
is so remarkable among beasts that live in very
cold altitudes, and they are in consequence never
found much above snow-level ; or perhaps, to be
more accurate, the latter should be classed as
cause and the former as effect. Heavy snowfall
drives them low down, and I have been shown
a spot on the Gilgit plain to which a few years
previously a big herd had descended in this way.
There they were surrounded by men and dogs,
and the whole herd mobbed to death. Judging,
however, from the numbers found in these parts,
this must have been a very unusual windfall for
the hungry Gilgitis. Now game laws, in the
framing and passing of which the writer is glad
to think he was closely connected, make such a
massacre impossible. The large number of urial
in this district is also explained by the fact that
these beasts leave the shikaris' hounds standing,
and absolutely refuse to be brought to bay in
precipices, like ibex and markhor.

Like burhel, urial are very restless beasts,

Every minute with the glass is worth while.

A shikari.

The Wild Goats and Sheep of Dardistan 89

constantly shifting their ground, so that it is
not an uncommon thing for the sportsman, when
in the middle of a carefully conceived stalk, to
come face to face with his herd where he least
expected it, usually with disastrous results. On
the other hand, the instinct of putting out a
sentry is less marked with the sheep than with
the goats. One good feature about urial shooting
is that the ground is rarely so big and dangerous
that a local man is a necessity as a guide among
the precipices, for after all there is a great charm
in running one's stalk.

The gestation period in the sheep is longer
than that of the goats, the rutting season of
urial in the Dard country being in November
and the young being born in May. Generally
urial mutton is excellent in spite of their strongly
scented food, especially if the beasts are young.
Their skins are valueless even to the Dard, who
can turn most things to some account, and so
one commonly finds them used as prayer -mats.
The secretion from the eye - pit is believed by
shikaris to be an excellent salve for the human
eye, while that from the groin forms, to say
the least, an odd sort of perfume ! Like all
the sheep, urial can carry a lot of lead, and
a badly placed bullet will as a rule cause the
sportsman much expenditure of energy. It is

90 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

fortunate, however, that this sporting beast is
not without some weaknesses. He is often caught
during his midday siesta, and if a stalk is foozled,
he will occasionally give one a second chance —
a thing that the wild goats never do.

CACCABIS CHAKOR.

THE Himalayan red-legged partridge is a much
misunderstood bird. Too often is it the case
that his pursuit, instead of being a delightful
sport, exhilarating to body and soul, results only
in physical dishevelment, and a state of mind
which can only be compared to the blackness
which sometimes falls on a golfer when struggling
with adverse fate. It is often worse, for whereas
the most unfortunate golfer's ball does not always
lie in a bunker or in "a hole with a lump be-
hind," the sportsman who goes about chakor shoot-
ing in any but the right way is always fighting
against overwhelming odds. Let us, however,
perching ourselves on some pinnacle of the mighty
Hindu Kush, watch — up to a certain point at
least — the adventures of one unversed in the
wiles of the bird. The scene is in one of the
wide sterile valleys in the Gilgit district, where
scree and boulder-covered slopes, cut up by numer-
ous deep ravines, rear themselves up into great
snow-capped mountains. Here and there ribs of

92 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

rock crop out of the tumbled mass of loose stones.
The bottom of the valley is terraced for cultiva-
tion, and to one side stands a village, half con-
cealed in an orchard of bare mulberry and apricot
trees. The prevailing colour below the snow is
kharJci, for the blue river has cut for itself a
deep gorge in the alluvium, and runs out of sight
at the bottom of perpendicular cliffs. During the
night the chakor have come down into the bare
fields, and long before light their shrill, gamey
call is echoing over the valley. Our sportsman,
who, let us assume, is a glutton at hard work,
is on the spot at dawn, with his man behind him
carrying his cartridges. The fields are bare as
the palm of his hand, and as he tops the stone
wall bounding the village cultivation he sees a
large covey of chakor scuttling along underneath
a terrace wall not a hundred yards ahead of him.
As they drop down into the next field out of sight,
he walks quickly forward, hoping to approach the
birds unseen and flush them ; but as he does so,
they one by one flutter up on to the next terrace,
and race across at an incredible pace towards the
hill. Doubling back, our sportsman breaks into
a trot to cut them off, having to surmount the
six-foot walls of several terraces en route. He
partially succeeds, and the birds get up, — not
quite where he expected (they never do that !),

Caccabis Chakor 93

but some distance to one side of where he ap-
proached the sunk fence, giving him a long shot.
One bird, however, drops, and another, wounded,
brings up the tail of the covey as they wheel
round and pitch among the rocks, about where
the fields end and the hill slopes begin. At the
double report another cunning old cock gets up
from under his feet, and goes away without being
shot at.

The report has had the effect of disturbing
two more lots of birds, and he marks them down
also among the rocks away to the left, and from
the clamour that arises from the hillside the stones
must be full of them. Our sportsman, however,
follows the first covey, and soon arrives among
the debris of broken rocks where he had marked
them. There they are, fifty yards ahead now,
fat grey little chaps, jumping from rock to rock
up the hillside. " They can't go fast on this
ground, and if that fifty yards can be reduced
by twenty, I ought to put them up and get a
brace." Never was a more grievous error made.
After ten minutes' frantic climbing, tumbling, and
slipping over the loose rocks, he finds himself
half-cooked, with the chakor, fresh as ever, re-
taining their lead. He now bethinks himself of
strategy, or, we will rather say, tactics, for his
strategy is wrong from the start. A small dry

94 Sport ana Life in the Further Himalaya

ravine offering concealment, he climbs up this at
a more moderate pace. Emerging where, to his
own futile imagination, he must be well ahead
of the chakor, he advances cautiously, expecting
at every step to flush them. Suddenly a shrill
chorus bursts out from above him. Turning
sharply round, he sees the last of the covey
flutter up a rock face far above him, and well
out of shot. The rest are on the top of the
rock, little moving shapes against the sky. He
can almost see their open mouths as they shout
forth their scorn. Then, for the first time, an
exclamation leaves his lips !

Our sportsman now turns his attention to one
of the other coveys, and the next thing that
happens as he makes his way slowly along the
steep hillside — gun in one hand and helping him-
self along the floor with the other, one eye on
the ground and the other on the look-out — is
that they have got up below him, and, before he
can put his gun to his shoulder, have swung
round out of shot. He watches them take a
long flight and go down below a shoulder of rock.
Arrived at its foot, he is in time to see the
chakor disappearing over the crest, and the now
heated sportsman scrambles after them. At the
top the chakor are not visible, but a deep ravine
opens before him from which come more chakor

Caccabis Chakor 95

voices, loud and clear. So he proceeds along the
edge of the ravine, keeping a sharp look-out, his
attendant heaving stones down the sides. Sud-
denly, whirr, whirr, a big covey rise up from
under his feet and dive down into the gorge
behind him. Trying to swing round, he nearly
loses his balance on the sharp slippery rocks, but
manages to loose off one barrel at the birds —
an obvious, hopeless miss. And after this manner
the day wears on. As the sun gets hot on the
hillside, the birds move higher up and get more
scattered, but not by any means less wary or
difficult to approach. The efforts our sportsman
makes are nothing less than heroic, but when for
the nth time he finds himself beaten by the birds
in a race uphill, a savage longing for a four-
bore duck-gun comes over him with which to
let drive into the brown at eighty yards. Legs
and lungs, he finds, have their limitations, and
he also discovers, much to his disgust, that with
heart going 200 to the minute his skill with the
gun has departed ; and when at length a stalk
is successful, his efforts are rewarded by misses.
His temper has in the meantime sadly deterior-
ated, hence his expressive language about the
birds, in which, as the Persians say, "he omits
nothing of a dishonouring character." Over his
return, however, we will draw a kindly veil.

96 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

Now let us turn to the other side of the shield
and see if there are not some points in the char-
acter of Caccabis chakor to redeem him from
being labelled turpissimus. The same qualities
that make the chakor anathema to people who
would walk him up, render him a really high-
class bird for driving ; for though his very tough
pair of legs enable him to run uphill at a pace
which defies the human biped, he has a rooted
objection to running downhill, in which respect
he resembles the mountain hare. Talking of this
quadruped, I was one day walking with my gun,
accompanied by a very diminutive specimen of
the Himalayan boy with my cartridges, when we
happened to put up a hare, which ran a couple of
hundred yards uphill and then sat up looking
at us. I was starting to walk after him when I
was stopped by my youthful companion, who
wanted to make a detour and come down on the
top side of him. Seeing hesitation in my eye, he
looked at me with wonder. " Don't you know,"
he said, "that a hare has a very long pair of legs
behind and a very short pair in front, and that
if you come on him from below he'll run away,
whereas if you come on him from the top he
won't know which way to run and you will shoot
him ? " It is somewhat the same with our chakor ;
but in his case, though he will not run, he has no

Caccabis Chakor 97

objection to flying downhill, or even on the level
along the contours of the hills, and after he has
got under way, the pace he acquires is an eye-
opener, especially when he is on the downward
slope.

In Chitral, which is a great country for falconry,
the art of driving chakor has been reduced to a
science. Chakor remain high up in the mountains
during the summer, where the markhor or ibex
stalker sometimes puts them up in great packs,
or meets them coming round the corners like a
whirlwind, uttering their peculiar cry, " Whichoo-
whichoo-whichoo !" which is quite different from
their call or cackle. But in winter, when the
upper country is deep under snow, they are
driven into the lower valleys, and are attracted
to the neighbourhood of the villages by the seed
in the ground. There are few places in Chitral
where there are not the well-known cut-and-dried
drives, which are managed now in precisely the
same way they have been for hundreds of years
past, and in which every man and boy knows his
own place. Of course in this country none of it
is done on the level as it is at home, for though
some slopes are steeper than others, such a thing
as a level space much bigger than a tennis-court
scarcely exists. So chakor-driving usually means
sweeping the birds along the side of a valley in

G

98 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

the downward direction, or, if the valley is suffi-
ciently narrow, both sides are taken at once.

The usual formation for the beaters is that of a
horse-shoe when two sides of a valley are taken,
or a half horse-shoe for one side. The flankers
proceed straight up the hillside in single file
before the drive begins, and after climbing up a
certain height so as to be well above the birds,
turn at right angles and station themselves at
intervals right up to the guns. Their duties are
to act as stops and prevent the birds running up,
and these they carry out by keeping up a contin-
ual cannonade of stones down the hillside (often
pleasant for the beaters !), not to speak of yells ;
in fact, they do anything that occurs to them both
to keep the birds in the drive and to prevent
them pitching among the screes or on bluffs of
the hillside. After his first or second flight, a
chakor sits very tight when he gets among rocks
and boulders, and is often passed over. Often
too, when put up a second time, they fly back over
the beaters' heads, and when they once start in
the wrong direction nothing on earth the beaters
can say or do will stop them. As for the guns,
needless to say there are no butts, and they have
to take their chance in the open, or behind bushes
or boulders as fate may decree ; and if a level
square yard or even less offers on which one can

Drosh, sho%ving some good chakor ground.

Caccabis Chakor 99

stand and be able to twist round without upset-
ting, one is in luck's way. Naturally, the line is
placed where the valley narrows ; frequently also
in front of a rib of rock or bluff, or on a ridge of
boulders, all of which are places chakor fly to, and
from which it is difficult to dislodge them. In
number the guns should be as a rule from three
to seven or eight ; but in this remote country,
except at Drosh, where there is a Goorkha regi-
ment stationed, it is as a rule difficult to get even
two guns. Often in Chitral itself, where the
people, as has been mentioned, are great falconers,
in the place of other guns a few of the local
" nobility " make up a party and throw off their
hawks at the driven birds, for in Chitral falcons
are trained not to be gun-shy.

Let me, however, try to describe a typical drive.
Breakfast has been eaten by candle-light, and by
7 A.M. the guns are climbing into their places.
The early rising which chakor-shooting demands
is not its most delightful part, but it is a necessity,
for after eleven, unless the birds are kept very low
down by deep snow, they are scattered all over
the hillsides and nothing can be done with them.
The scene is a fan of cultivated terraces facing the
Chitral river at the embouchure of a glen. Above
the cultivation are steep hillsides covered with
coarse grass and wormwood and littered with

TOO Sport and Life in the Fiirther Himalaya

rock-pieces, and this is the ground to be driven.
At the farther end of this ground a high ridge
of black rock forms a shoulder running down into
the river, where a deep pool of green water circles
round and round. The two guns take their stand,
one a hundred yards or so above the other, on a
ridge in front of the bluff, for the chakor, it is
known, will make straight for this. The sportsman
whose fortune we will follow has drawn the upper
stand, and behind a convenient bush, together with
his cartridge -carrier and a retrieving spaniel, is
preparing a flat place for his feet, when the lead-
ing men belonging to the line of stops appear on
the sky-line above him. Word is passed by them
to begin, and the wind soon brings faintly the
chakor-beaters' cry, " Ho ! ho ! ho ! ho ! " repeated
quickly in a monotone. A hundred paces or so
in front are some steep rocks on which the upper
gun fixes his eyes, for the birds will either come
over these or swing round below. The lower gun
has some shooting first, for he gets the chakor
which are put up from the terraces. But soon
the other gets to work. First a covey very high
up tempts him to waste a couple of cartridges
on birds out of shot. Then a straggler from the
same covey, at a slightly lower elevation, is
touched, and wheels round and flies straight
across the river to the slopes, half a mile dis-

The lower gun*

Caccabis Chakor 101

tant on the opposite bank. Then a bird comes
stealing like a shadow round the rocks on a
level with his head. He misjudges the pace.
The chakor is past like a flash, is missed with
the right barrel, but knocked over behind the
line with the left. Each bird that is put up
is signalled by the beaters by loud cries of
" Hai-e-e-e ! " which are taken up by the stops
and mingle with the roar of dislodged stones.
And when this cry comes down wind even the
spaniel, already shivering with excitement, can
scarce restrain a whimper, for he knows its mean-
ing as well as anybody. As the birds cross below
the stops, the latter wave their garments round
their heads as well as shout, as no one but hillmen
can, in order to keep the birds down ; and run-
ning this gauntlet of fearful sights and sounds,
what wonder that the driven birds waste no time
on the road towards supposed safety among the
cliffs ! And now for a minute he can scarcely
load and fire fast enough. Some birds shoot
across the sky at all heights ; some straight at
his head with motionless wings outstretched, only
balancing from side to side. Some glide close
to the ground along the hillside below him, but
all are travelling at the pace which makes a driven
chakor perhaps the hardest bird to kill that flies.
And in saying this I am not merely doing so

IO2 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

for the sake of effect. The chakor is, in the
first place, a really wild bird. He is practically
the same bird as the French partridge, but bigger,
averaging perhaps 2 oz. heavier. (I have weighed
one of 25 oz.) According to all theory, therefore,
he should fly faster. His efforts are, moreover,
generally accelerated by gravity, and on the down-
ward slope his pace is enormously increased, the
variation on the level and downhill being ex-
tremely puzzling. And a last point in his favour,
and against the man that holds the gun, is that
he is most difficult to see against the hillsides,
for it is rarely among mountains which seem to
meet the cloud that one views him against the
sky, except when straight overhead. Chitralis are
particularly sharp at seeing birds coming ; but
when the cry of " Hai-e-e-e ! " makes both the gun
and his cartridge-carrier look till their eyes almost
drop out, even the latter sometimes misses seeing
a bird till behind them, and his gasp of "Below
you, sir ! " comes too late.

The birds now come with longer intervals be-
tween, and the beaters are drawing near. A
covey that has pitched in the rocks just in front
are put up one by one, and afford some easier
shooting. The stops descend, and the drive is
at an end. The Chitralis, picturesque - looking
ruffians in loose robes tied in at the waist, and

Caccabis Chakor 103

long half -tanned boots of red leather, are scat-
tered about picking up birds. One man is sent
down to fish up a chakor which towered and fell
plump into the green pool 400 feet below us,
while the spaniel is taken to find a runner which
pitched below the bluff. The bag ? Well, if the
drive is a good one and the shooting moderate, five
to ten brace is a good pick-up for one gun. But
I have known seventy cartridges fired at a single
stand by an average shot at other game for seven
birds, and, horresco referens, I have also heard a
voice exclaim — "No, I didn't kill any, but, thank
goodness, I hurt a few ! " The best bag of driven
chakor I have ever participated in was fifty-six
and a half brace in the day; but this was the
result of about half a dozen drives, which is rarely
possible, as I have already said. Apart from the
intrinsic difficulty, one of the great charms of
shooting driven chakor is the variety of shots
one gets; for instance, birds below one, which
one gets in no other sort of shooting except per-
haps at rock-pigeons from a cliff. A great num-
ber of the shots are long ones, and if one were
to select a gun for the special purpose, it would
be made to shoot one and a quarter of No. 5 shot.
Smaller shot than this often means a number of
runners, which among rocks and boulders are
frequently lost altogether, for on this sort of

IO4 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

ground they leave very little scent. And one
wants good cartridges too. One strong lot of
cartridges I used in a gun that was not so tight
in the action as when it left its maker, used to
leave some fouling in the breech. "There are
cartridges if you like," said my Chitrali servant
when cleaning the gun one day in genuine ad-
miration. "They not only shoot out of the
muzzle, but out of the breech too ! "

The sporting Chitralis, though they prefer their
hawks, appreciate good shooting. A remark once
made to the writer after a high bird had been
crumpled up was, " Ah, Sahib, what sport ! what
shooting ! Before the English came, the height
of skill was to bring a dove down plump from
the top of a high tree ! " In justice to the
Chitralis, however, it must be said that when
they do use a gun it is the native match- or
flint-lock with a small round bullet, so it is
evident that the feat of bringing a dove down
from the top of a high tree did not at all deserve
the contempt with which the flattering Oriental
spoke of it.

One of the best drives near Chitral, and a very
characteristic one, is that near a village called
Ayun. It was a famous drive for hawking in
the days of the old kings, and as the manner
of it is peculiar, some description may be given.

Caccabis Chakor 105

The river (which is here unfordable and has no
bridge) flows below a cirque of black cliffs some
300 or 400 feet high. Down the centre of the
cliffs, and across the beach to the water's edge,
runs a sort of mole formed of enormous boulders
and fragments of rock-. During the drive the
cliffs are crowned by men, but the ground which
is actually driven lies on the opposite side of
the river, the terraced fields of another large
village. The chakor, driven off these, fly across
the river to the cliffs, but are kept on the
move by men employed in rolling stones over
the edge ; and so the birds fly backwards and
forwards over the gun on the mole till they
gradually find their way out of the trap. Let
us imagine the guns have taken their places. A
puff of smoke from the top of the cliff and the
report of a matchlock is the sign for the beaters
to begin. The long horse - shoe line of black
dots on the opposite bank gradually works in,
and as the line approaches a roar of stones
begins from the cliffs above, and this continues
the whole time. " Hai-e-e-e ! " come the warnings
from beyond the river, from above, behind, and
every direction. The gun on the mole keeps
spinning round, first taking a shot this way and
then that, as fast as he can. From the cliffs
the rocks come crashing down with enormous

io6 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

bounds into the river, throwing up columns of
spray and leaving clouds of dust in their track.
To keep the birds moving, matchlocks are con-
tinually fired off by the men crowning the cliffs
above, and also by the beaters on the other side ;
and what with these and the guns on the mole,
and the shouting, the thunder of rocks, and every
sound echoed backwards and forwards from rock
to rock, one might imagine a terrific engagement
taking place. The excitement and noise go on
increasing till in ten minutes a climax is reached
and it subsides again.

The same drive can be done several times in a
season. There was one drive conveniently near
Chitral which my Chitrali orderly used continually
to propose till I had to protest. "Why, we only
did that one last week for the third time."
"What matter?" he replied. "The birds will
certainly be there. These chakor" he added,
" have no shame."

Though driving would nearly always be a better
way of killing chakor than by walking them up,
it must not be supposed that the latter plan is
never successful. For instance, in Kashmir, where
the mountain-sides are covered with low scrub, in
which birds lie, a line of guns can have capital
fun. Many is the sportsman at home who looks
back with longing and regret on delightful days

Caccabis Chakor 107

spent in tramping the steep green hills of Kunmu
or Chashma Shahi, where the exquisite beauty of
the scenery, the lake shimmering below, the purple
mountains around, and all the glamour and tender
colouring found nowhere but in the "happy
valley," would make him declare himself careless
whether the chakor were lying well or not. Still,
my friend, when a bird, put up by the line far
above you, shot straight down over the guns,
and Bang ! bang ! bang ! came down the line, and
he was still going unscathed at eighty miles an
hour when he arrived above your head, and you
did remember to hold an almost incredible dis-
tance in front, and your inspiration was rewarded
by seeing him crumple up into a ball of feathers
and fall stone-dead 150 yards below you, — when
all this did happen, I say, then for the moment
the beauties of the country of Lalla Rookh retired
into the background of sublimial consciousness, and
Caccabis chakor became the finest bird " that ever
did fly."

io8

A VANISHING SPORT.

IT is only in a few of the remotest recesses of
the rugged Hindu Kush that the old sport of
driving with hounds still lingers, and this mostly
in glens where the foot of few white men have
trod. In other places the arrival of the English-
man has been followed by game-laws, the necessary
concomitant of modern rifles. These all condemn
driving, and rightly, for the man with the weapons
of to-day stands in no need of four-footed assist-
ants to make things easier for him. It is other-
wise with the indigenous sportsman armed with
his old matchlock of prehistoric design. With
the crude weapons carried by Chitrali or Washi-
gam shikaris, not all the hunter's craft at their
disposal, nor the ownership of the best breeds
of hounds, would enable them to exterminate
game.

The theory of the sport is based upon the fact
that markhor and ibex, when escaping from their
natural foes, leopards and wolves, fly to precipices

A Vanishing Sport 109

where no other animal, be he cat or dog, can
venture, and when followed by the hunter's hounds
they pursue exactly the same tactics. Arrived
at their supposed refuge, they are so intent on
staring at the baying hounds that they pay little
attention to their deadlier two-footed foes, who
can approach close enough to use their antiquated
pieces with effect. It is said that whole herds
are sometimes wiped out in this way ; but this
must be very rare, or one would not find all
grounds new to the European sportsman as full
of game as they usually are.

The sport is conducted in two ways. There is
the royal drive, as managed for the benefit of the
petty kings of the Hindu Kush, in which a large
number of beaters with dogs drive the game up
to posted guns, much as chamois are driven in
Austria. And there is the humbler but more
sporting way followed by the professional hunter,
with his leash of hounds, frequently entailing
toil which few but born mountaineers could
endure. One's pity, however, is reserved for the
princes and mighty ones of the earth in this
matter, for here, as in other places, they are
rarely allowed the pleasure of doing their own
hunting. Poor kings who miss the real enjoy-
ment of sport, though themselves ignorant of
their loss, one cannot but feel sorry for them !

1 10 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

Let me first try to describe a royal drive as
arranged for the Mehtar of Chitral, the premier
chieftain of the Hindu Kush.

Early one winter morning I found myself
following a Chitrali guide up a gorge where
sheer sides of rock in places almost met above
us. Every few hundred yards the torrent im-
pinged against one rock wall or the other,
necessitating a crossing by means of a pine pole
flung across the foaming water. The night's
frost had glazed such of these as were touched
by the spray with a film of ice, which had to be
dusted with sand before even my light-footed guide
could trust himself on them. But for these — and
occasional anxious moments at points where a
crossing of the stream had been deemed unneces-
sary in local opinion, and we had to creep gingerly
round difficult rock corners where the water below
roared a most uninviting summons — the tract was
monotonous enough, as one could see but a short
way in front owing to the turns of the gorge.

The " king," whose shooting-box lay some way
up the valley, had gone up the previous evening
by a zigzag path over the mountain, along which
(on a Chitrali pony) it was possible to ride.

The valley, which, like most others in this part
of the Himalaya, was a gorge for a few miles above
its embouchure into the main Chitral glen, pres-

A Vanishing Sport 1 1 1

ently opened out, and the shooting-box came in
sight, a little wooden structure built on a plateau
overhanging the stream and surrounded by pines
and junipers. A crowd of retainers was lounging
about outside, a picturesque crew of good-looking
ruffians carrying all kinds of arms, from match-
lock to Mannlicher, and like all Chitrali crowds,
full of jokes and laughter. The shikaris and
beaters had all been out since long before daylight.
It was now about nine o'clock, and so far no news
had come. The Mehtar came out to meet me, a
pale young man rather below middle height with
a quiet dignified manner, the difficulties of whose
position it is unnecessary to dilate on here.
Having not yet breakfasted he asked me to join
him, an invitation I found no difficulty in accept-
ing, as the keen morning air had long since made
my early breakfast a mere remembrance. It
fortunately proved to be not the Oriental repast
of ceremony, but a comparatively light meal, con-
sisting of but four enormous dishes or rather trays
of pillaus and suchlike, from which the " king "
and I ate direct without the unnecessary formality
of separate plates. He ate delicately with his
fingers, as the Easterns say "with discretion,"
while I had the use of the only spoon and fork.
As to the prospects of sport, I learnt that a herd
markhor had been seen on the previous evening

1 1 2 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

with one big buck, and the shikaris, with some
two hundred beaters and the royal pack, had
gone out to surround them on three sides for the
purpose of driving them towards the hunting-
ground. Breakfast over, our hands were sprinkled
with rose-scented water from a big brass aftaba,
and we set off on foot. We soon began to climb
up a path newly cut in the steep hillside, and in
half an hour found ourselves on a little platform
with a low wall in front, some four hundred feet
above the stream. Looking across, the opposite
slopes deep in snow were visible to a height of
two or three thousand feet above us ; they were
not excessively steep, and were scantily covered
with junipers and holly oaks. Immediately
opposite us, at a range of perhaps ninety yards,
was a precipitous face of rock going down almost
sheer into the water. This was the point to which
the markhor were to be driven, and where it was
hoped they would stand long enough to be shot.
We had now to keep as still and silent as
possible, and sat ourselves down behind the wall
at points from which we could get a commanding
view. An attendant flung over the Mehtar a
magnificent fur robe which had come from
Bokhara, and others wrapped themselves in
sheepskin pelisses and cloaks, for the wind was
bitterly cold. Only a few of the Meh tar's

A Vanishing Sport 113

intimates had accompanied us to the butt; but
in glancing at the array of modern rifles with
which they were armed, and at the rocks opposite
where the beasts were to be shot down, I half
regretted coming to what seemed likely to end
in a butchery, for the combination of ancient
strategy with modern arms seemed a trifle unfair
to our quarry.

The Mehtar was beguiling the time by telling
me of some wonderful battues at this spot, in the
time of his ill-fated predecessor, when faint, con-
fused sounds of shouting came from high up the
opposite mountain, mingled with the yelping of
dogs. Presently some black dots appeared
moving far away in the snow ; then a man
perched up on a rock behind us said, "Big
markhor coming this way," and we saw a beast
come bounding down alone, pausing after each
spring to see where the danger lay, and heading
straight for the rock face opposite. The men
in the butt all seized their rifles and crouched
close to the wall. I declined the Mehtar's press-
ing invitation to take the shot, so he got ready.
The markhor was now within two hundred yards
of us, and I was watching him through the
glasses. A kingly fellow he looked, with his head
thrown back, his great black spiral horns standing
grandly out, and his long beard sweeping the

H4 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

snow. Suddenly, seeming to scent danger in
front, he turned half left and up the glen. A
few gigantic bounds brought him, with an ava-
lanche of snow and stones, to the bottom of the
valley, across which he dashed and was lost to
view. Two or three shots had been fired as
soon as it was seen he was not going into the
rock face, but he was not touched ; and I was
glad to think he might live to add a few more
inches to his magnificent spread of horns, enjoy
a few more seasons of courtship, and then die
in a more befitting manner.

Of course the grumbles in the butt were
loud and not less sincere, and every one blamed
every one else for having moved or showed them-
selves at the critical moment. The big markhor
of the herd had escaped, and it now became
apparent also, from the shouts and yelps getting
fainter and fainter, that the rest of the herd had
somehow managed to break through the line.

But stay, here comes something down the
opposite slope. It is a doe markhor, going as
if a pack of demons were after her. On she
comes, and reaches her supposed refuge on the
rock face. The cause of her haste is soon evident,
for a long Badakshan hound is close on her tracks,
not a couple of hundred yards behind, and giving
tongue in short excited yelps. As the hound

A Vanishing Sport 115

reaches one side of the precipice and begins to
creep cautiously along a snowy ledge, the doe,
wandering on and invisible to him, has reached
the farther side, and turns round again towards
the centre of the rock. I signal to the Mehtar
not to shoot, for it is evident that hunter and
hunted are going to meet nose to nose on a
ledge about an inch wide, and the solution of
the problem will be interesting. Only a corner
of rock now separates them, and both reach it
simultaneously. A chorus of Ya allah burst
from the spectators in our gallery as the doe,
without one moment's hesitation, sprang straight
out into mid-air and went down. A gallant bid
for life it was, and suitably rewarded, for, lean-
ing over, we saw her recover her footing in deep
snow two hundred feet down, dash on to the
stream, across, and away to safety on the line
her lord and master had taken before. The
hound could do nothing but extricate himself
from the precipice, which done, he sat down
and barked foolishly.

There was nothing more, and we returned, the
Mehtar full of apologies at the poor sport he
had shown, though, as I told him, the leap for
life that doe had shown us was a sight I would
have gone far to see.

The beaters came in in groups, some not

1 1 6 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

arriving for hours afterwards. The tale they
told was that the body of the herd were first
making straight for our rock; but something had
turned them and they had gone right through the
line of beaters. Tracks of two snow-leopards had
been seen, and they were supposed to be the cause
of the fiasco.

Now let us transfer ourselves to one of the
higher valleys, nearer the axis of this mighty belt
of mountain land, where the mysterious ibex in his
haunts of snow and ice forms the quarry of
humbler votaries. Here we are in the midst of
romance and legend.

There is, even to materialistic Westerns, some-
thing almost supernatural about the ibex. When,
during the fearful winters of high regions, his
summer companions, markhor and urial, bear
and marmot, either seek lower or warmer levels,
or hibernate in comfortable underground dwell-
ings, the ibex remains alone among the snows
and drifting mists. What enables them to defy
the terrific elements and escape the constant
avalanches that thunder down the mountain-
sides in the spring-time? How do they exist?
The ordinary mortal will explain it by saying
that they crowd together under rock shelters
and subsist on grass-roots and juniper - sprays
while the winter is at its height, and that

A Vanishing Sport 1 1 7

instinct teaches them to keep to ridges and
arrdtes during the avalanche season, and that
they are protected from the intense cold by a
thick undercoat of wonderful soft wool. But
every Chitrali knows well that ibex are under
the special protection of the mountain fairies,
the chief of whom lives among the icy pyra-
mids and high turrets of the great mountain
Tirich Mir. They know that when the earth-
quakes pass along these valleys, those specially
gifted can see hosts of fairies streaming across
the sky, riding on ibex and long-maned ponies.
Men and women are now living who have been
transported to the gleaming palaces of Tirich
Mir and seen their inhabitants and the ibex
that wander freely among them. Does not
history also relate how, when the country is
in urgent danger, fairies are seen by many,
with their ibex squadrons, riding to the Meh-
tar's assistance ? Does not every Kohistani
know that it was by their aid alone that the
army of the famous Sikh general, Bhup Singh,
was surrounded on the Gilgit road and every
man of them either killed or sold to the slave-
dealing Mirs of Shighnan and Koshan?

The slaying of an ibex is therefore no light
matter. No shikari would venture to start on
a hunting trip without having first propitiated

1 1 8 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

the protecting powers. Otherwise his foot would
slip on the edge of some dizzy precipice ; stones
would hurtle through the air, impelled by un-
seen hands ; he would fall through into some
deep ice-well in the groaning glacier; or maybe
he would wander bewildered, like the Ancient
Mariner, seeing fearful sights —

And through the drifts the snowy clifts

Did send a dismal sheen :
NOT shapes of men nor beasts we ken —

The ice was all between.

But whether lying under hills of green ice, or
kept in bondage by the fairy-folk of Tirich Mir,
certain it is that he would never again be seen
alive.

So the shikari omits none of the customary
ceremonies before leaving home. His good woman
first bakes him an enormous cake, which is
stuffed into the folds of his gown above the
girdle. He cleans his brass - bound matchlock
and slings it over his shoulder, and hangs
round him his bullet-pouch, powder-horn, knife,
and all the miscellaneous paraphernalia of the
chase. Then, after warning his wife not to
allow unpurified man or woman to cross
his threshold, he starts off with his leash of
hounds.

A Vanishing Sport 1 1 9

At the mouth of the selected valley he
flings four pieces of his loaf north, south, east,
and west, invoking the special fairy of the place.
" Oh guardian of this golden glen, this slave
has approached thy abode. Look on him with
kindness. I have come under thy silken sleeve
and the hem of thy skirts. Of thy flocks,
grant me but one beast. Let him be such as
has no wool, has no milk, and is unable to keep
up with the herd, that is thin, weak, lame, and
even blind. Give keenness to my eyes and power
to my limbs, so that I may slay one animal.
Safeguard me from all dangers."

For the hunter of the Hindu Kush, the year
is divided into numerous seasons, known under
different names. There is the rutting season,
when the sexes mingle in the early winter;
the dead of winter, when all the ibex grounds
are fathoms deep in snow ; the avalanche season,
when the roar of cataracts of snow is almost
continuous under the morning and midday sun ;
the season when the lower slopes with a south-
ern aspect form brown streaks in a white ocean
of mountains; the season when fresh green grass
begins to appear, and slowly spreads up the
mountain to the lowest limits of eternal snow ;
the summer, when all the mountain-sides where
earth can lie are carpeted with grass and flowers,

1 20 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

and game animals have their wildest range to
wander over; and lastly, the season when the
higher slopes take autumnal tints of red and
yellow, and the ibex are found comparatively
low down taking advantage of the last of the
summer grazing. This is the time when the
old bucks are "in pride of grease," and it is
consequently perhaps the favourite shooting-time
among shikaris, though, of course, their work
is easiest of all in the spring, when the ibex,
ravenous after their short winter commons, come
low down for the first blades of fresh green grass
and wormwood.

Ibex having been seen, there are two methods
of proceeding, according to the excellence of the
hunter's hounds. If they are of the best breed,
staunch and well-trained, he can slip them at the
bottom of the nullah and then, so to speak, go
and breakfast at leisure, certain that the early
morning's downward flowing air will have brought
news of the ibex to the hounds, and that by the
time he has finished he will find one or two
of the herd rounded up into some precipice, to
which he will be attracted by his hounds' bay-
ing. This is the ideal.

The real is more often something like this.
The hunter, after picking up his ibex, takes his
hounds well above them and sights them before

A Vanishing Sport 121

slipping. A long chase follows, the hounds hunt-
ing their game from precipice to precipice, the
shikari keeping them in sight or hearing as best
he may. A long day's hunt in deep snow and
frequently the most appallingly dangerous ground,
is the usual thing, the end of which may be a
shot or may not. Much of course depends on
the suitability of the valley for this kind of
hunting. The best nullahs which have been
pointed out to me, all have the same character-
istics : the greater part of the ground is com-
paratively easy, but somewhere in the middle
is a great scarp of naked rock, from which it
would be impossible for the hounds to move a
beast which had once taken refuge there.

Imagine the scene at such a moment : the ibex
standing on a ledge or niche in some sheer cliffs
of rock, turning this way and that ; the exhausted
hounds lying at the bottom with lolling tongues,
baying as they lie and taking snatches at the
snow. Enter the shikari from above at a dizzy
height, peering over the edge. The range is too
far for his rude weapon. He examines the ground
with the eye of a cragsman born and bred, to
whom giddiness and nerves are unknown. His
feet, wrapped round with strips of untanned hide,
will stand firm on rock which would appear as
impracticable for one in nailed boots as the danc-

122 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

ing of a hornpipe on the dome of St Paul's.
But the risks of rocks glazed by ice, stone shoots,
all the hundred and one perils that beset one
who would climb on rock, — all these he knows
and appreciates. Alone and encumbered with
his hunting-gear, he lets himself down and trusts
himself step by step with infinite care on ground
where none but the most adventurous Alpine
climbers, roped and in company, would venture.

The shot he takes lying down, with the muzzle
of his weapon resting on or against a stone.
Lucky he deems himself if the beast goes head
over heels, whizzing down to the anxious hounds,
for his agate-cored balls leave as much to be
desired in point of efficiency as his old musket
in point of accuracy. Perhaps the finish only
comes at the end of a wearisome chase after a
wounded beast, the termination of which may
be success or failure.

With the shikari as with the Sheikh Sadis'
dervish, "his inn is wherever darkness may find
him " ; but if the rigours of a night under the
stars are mitigated by the skin of a freshly killed
ibex for a covering and his bread helped down
with morsels of roasted liver, he is as happy as
a king.

In this sport very much depends on the
hounds, and a good pair are very highly prized.

Shikari and ibex.

A Vanishing Sport 123

Like the ponies of these highlands, the best
breeds come from Badakshan, and look like a
cross between a Borzoi and a collie. Before the
hunting season comes on, shikaris harden and
condition their hounds by pitching them into
some icy torrent several times a day, — a course
which the writer was once recommended to follow
with a favourite spaniel somewhat inclined to
embonpoint.

The successful shikari, on his way home, sings
the quaint hunting-song called the ghoru. As
he nears his village, men and boys run out to
relieve him of his kit and load of meat and
horns, — the latter destined to grace the nearest
saint's surine. The whole hamlet joins in the
chorus, those not helping with the loads sitting
down on the roofs of their houses and with
little fingers in their ears (like a huntsman !)
rendering the song at the highest pitch of their
voices : —

Oh valley open for me, he" ho ;
Blood-stained are my hands, he ho.

Deer-like are thine eyes, he* ho,
Seeing after death, he* ho.

Rise I in the night, he" ho,
Crouching I await thee, he* ho.

Thy feet they leave a trail, he ho ;
Thy horns they graze the sky, he* ho.

124 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

Food from the unseen, he ho ;
Thou art given by God, he" ho.

From ridge to ridge I spy thee, he" ho ;

I would krjow thee again and again, h4 ho.

I see thy various shapes, he ho ;

I track thee from ledge to ledge, he" ho.

In the midst of the herd I strike, he ho ;
Face to face I slay thee, he ho.

Thou the ibex of my kitchen, he ho ;
Thou the guest of this evening, he ho.

Thou the high and unattainable, h£ ho,
Now descend through my smoke-hole, he" ho.

The meat is actually taken into the shikari's
house through the hole in the roof which serves
for a chimney, and there received by the members
of his family, he himself entering in by the door.

The usual quarry in the Hindu Kush is, as has
been said, markhor and ibex, but when the snow
is deep and a herd of urial have been marked
down in a suitable place — that is to say, low
down on flattish ground — a whole village will
turn out and mob the poor beasts to death with
their dogs, and there is a recorded instance at
Gilgit when a big herd was so wiped out. As
a rule, urial, who trust for safety more to speed
and activity than getting into inaccessible places,
say good-bye to hounds and hunters. My old

A Vanishing Sport 125

shikari used to tell of a herd of these animals
that escaped him by swimming the Indus, — an
extraordinary feat. " But ibex too," he used
plaintively to add, "used to give my hounds a
lot of trouble."

Keally big battues, as a matter of fact, are
now, and always have been, extremely rare,
though old sportsmen of the Himalaya love talk-
ing about them. I once asked an old grey-beard,
after hearing one of these gory tales, how it was
that so many animals still remained. "Sahib,"
he said, " the more the seed the heavier the
crop, is it not? And the more blood spilt on
the ground this year, the larger the herds of
ibex next." And this is the common belief,
especially among the Kafirs.

126

A MOENING WITH THE MEHTAR'S
FALCONS.

MORNING had broken, but the climbing sun was
still hidden from the dwellers in the towers and
hamlets of Chitral by the great mountain masses
to the east when our party rode out of the
British Agency gates and down the steep path
leading to the bazar. There had been a hard
frost in the night, and the air was keen and
dry, making the snow-capped mountains stand
out hard and sparkling. Crossing the wooden
bridge over the stream which issues from the
Chitral gorge, we noticed that it was half covered
over with ice. As we clattered into the bazar,
through which our road lay, people were just
awaking to the day's work. A Bajauri trader
was watching his pony-drivers throw the morn-
ing feed of chaff before the line of muffled-up
animals which were to carry his goods north to
far Badakshan as soon as the snows on the passes
were sufficiently melted. A group of fur-clad

A Morning with the Mehtar s Falcons 127

men, whose fair complexions betokened their
origin to be north of the Hindu Kush, were
preparing their early cup of tea. Shop doors
were being opened, and clouds of dust voluming
forth showed that the morning clean-up was going
on. The bazar passed, the Meh tar's fort, with
its four towers, came in sight down among the
chinar-trees, where the river flowed.

As soon as we appeared, a crowd of men who
were waiting outside the fort began to show signs
of life, and shortly afterwards to move along the
road which joined with ours a quarter of a mile
farther on. As our roads converged, we recognised
the Mehtar at the head of the procession on a
good-looking Badakshan pony. A dozen Chitrali
nobles and retainers, who happened at the time
to be doing feudal service in the fort, formed the
mounted part of his retinue, the people on foot,
twenty or thirty in number, being servants and
followers of no particular standing.

The Mehtar, Shuja-ul-Mulk, was a young man
of five-and-twenty, though old beyond his years
from the stirring scenes he had witnessed. Al-
though his personality was not at first sight strik-
ing, his face indicated the possession of both
shrewdness and determination ; and, indeed, to
rule over Chitralis successfully, as he has done
since an unexpected turn in the wheel of fortune

128 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

brought him to the top while he was still a child,
he had need of both. His clothes on this occasion
were the same as those of his following — the
sombre-coloured though picturesque national dress,
a choga of homespun of the same stuff, and below,
baggy white pyjamas and long Bokhara boots.
His pony, however, was gay with the silver-plated
head-stall and trappings that come from Afghan
Turkestan. The usual salutations given and re-
turned, we cantered or walked, as the narrow path
permitted, along the side of the impetuous Chitral
river, past the quaint old bridge of black wooden
beams, to where the big tributary from the Lutkoh
valley mingles its blue waters with the coloured
stream of the main river. Our venue was at the
village of Singur, just beyond the junction; and
here, suddenly turning a corner, we found our-
selves in the middle of a group of some fifteen
or twenty men with hawks on their fists, the
Mehtar's falconers. Our syces were with them,
and took our ponies as we dismounted.

In Chitral, among the pleasures of a pleasure-
loving people, hawking comes first and polo
second, — neither of them a sport one would expect
to find flourishing in a country which is a labyrinth
of deep valleys, impassable torrents, and precipit-
ous mountains. The former was introduced from
Badakshan and the Khanates of Central Asia,-

The Mehtar and his falconers.

A Morning with the Mehtars Falcons 129

legacy from the earliest times when kings and
emperors, from Alexander the " two -horned "
downwards, found in it a relaxation from empire-
making and empire-breaking. In Chitral, however,
the sport took root, and found so congenial a soil
that the falconers of this country are now, in
some of its branches at least, unrivalled by any.
Who, for instance, in England would believe that
a wild-caught goshawk could be manned, trained,
and flown at game on the fourteenth day after
taking ? And yet this is by no means an uncommon
feat in Chitral. Here five days is considered
ample period in which to train a sparrow-hawk,
and four days a merlin.

The training of the bigger hawks is always
placed in the hands of professional falconers, but
there are probably few people of the upper classes
in Chitral who are not capable of training a
sparrow-hawk or one of the smaller falcons.
Indeed, it is the common gibe against the poorer
nobles that instead of trying to improve their
position they are content to loaf about their
orchards all day with sparrow-hawks on their
fists. The professional falconers, of whom there
are a large number, mostly belong to families
who came originally from Badakshan, the home
and birthplace of the royal sport.

The most celebrated of the Mehtar's falconers,

I

130 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

or Mir-Shikar, was present to-day, — an old man
with a beard dyed red, a bright eye, and a hooked
nose, not altogether in appearance unlike one of
his own favourites. He was in charge of the
Mehtar's most prized possession, a Shunkhar falcon,
one of the largest and rarest of the long-winged
hawks, — a magnificent bird, but of too little use as
a pot-hunter for her ownership to be a matter of
envy to people of lower degree, even if this had
been possible. These hawks, as a matter of fact,
never do pass into vulgar hands, for the Mehtar
has the prescriptive right to every one that is
taken in his country, as well as to all peregrines
and goshawks, excepting the tiercel of the latter ;
so all that are caught are either kept in the
mehtari mews or given away by him to neighbour-
ing princes. Next in order of importance to the
Shunkhar came the peregrines, of which there
were two, — wild -looking, dark -eyed birds, the
embodiment of the power of swift flight ; three
splendid goshawks, and several tiercels of this
species ; some Shahin falcons ; and a number of
sparrow-hawks. To be fully representative of the
hawks used in Chitral, there should have been
included a charkh or Saker falcon, and two kinds
of merlins ; but the last few seasons having been
bad ones, neither of these kinds had been taken,
nor were in any one's possession in Chitral.

Mir -Shikar and Shtinkhar falcon.

A Morning with the Mehtars Falcons 131

Of all the hawks in use in Chitral, the goshawk
is most esteemed. She is, par excellence, the
hawk for a mountainous country, where long nights
are not wanted. Next in order, in the Chitrali's
estimation, comes the Shahin. The bigger long-
winged falcons go too far ; and once out of view,
their recovery in this extremely difficult country
is always doubtful. They are lost to sight behind
some mountain spur, and when this happens, are
frequently lost altogether. The nature of the
country, indeed, renders the long and high flights
so admired in the long-winged hawks elsewhere
anything but desired in Chitral ; and so, as a
matter of necessity, they are treated and trained
very similarly to the short-winged hawks. Thus,
though the lure is thrown up to attract them, they
are taught to return to the fist like the latter.
Chitrali falconers, who can do anything with
hawks, could no doubt teach them easily enough
to soar above their heads on the look-out for game,
or "wait on," as it is called; but it is practically
never done. It is in the training of the wild-
caught goshawk, normally completed in fourteen
days and frequently in less, that the perfection of
the Chitrali's skill is shown. Marvellous as the
feat may seem, there is really nothing esoteric
about it. The result is achieved by constant care
and attention, the methods used, including " wak-

132 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

ing," or sitting up all night with the newly- caught
hawk, being much the same as those in vogue in
England.

After loosening our ponies' girths and telling
our syces where to take them, we looked at
each hawk in turn, the Mehtar pointing out
to us each one's special merits. The falconers,
as he did so, unhooded those that required it, and
smoothed down their neck feathers with an inde-
scribable air of pride and affection.

The first drive was to be across the river, and
the whole party, preceded by the Hakim of Drosh,
one of the Mehtar's leading Ministers, but none the
less a good falconer, walked along a narrow path
at the bottom of the high cliff of conglomerate
which overhung the water to a point where a
frail bridge had been thrown across. The footway
consisted of two slender poles, the ends of which
rested on struts which were projected from the bank,
the shore ends being weighted down with stones.
Across the poles were laid osiers, affording not
too secure a footing. One by one we crossed, the
lady of the party refusing all proffered assistance,
much to the surprise of the crowd, to whom all
the doings of the latest arrival in Chitral were
a constant source of astonishment. Not the least
remarkable of these in their eyes was her seat
on horseback, for it quite baffled their compre-

A Morning with the Mehtars Falcons 133

hension why she did not slip off on one side or
the other.

A scramble over the big grey boulders in the
river-bed brought us to a little track zigzagging
steeply upwards, following which, in a quarter of
an hour we reached a rocky eminence on a spur
of the mountain which ran down into the river.
A platform had been built up large enough to
accommodate a score of people, the front guarded
by a low wall. Below us, to our front and right,
were precipitous rocks ; behind us the bare
mountain rose up perpendicularly till lost to view ;
to our left was the narrow path over straight
slopes of shale by which we had ascended. The
blue river, flecked here and there with white,
flowed five hundred feet below us ; beyond this
the everlasting mountains, all but the lowest
slopes of which were deep in snow. On a similar
hawking platform to this, situated on a spur in
the Yarkhun valley, was once pointed out to me
the grave of a local chief, who, before his death,
made his family swear to bury him on the spot
where he had spent so many happy hours of life.

Half a mile up the river could be seen the
cultivated terraces of the village of Sin, and above
them long straight screes of rock fragments.
Between these screes and us was another rocky
spur and more screes.

134 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

Our quarry to-day was to be the chakor, a fine
big partridge, very similar to the "Frenchman"
at home. The peculiarity of this partridge is that
when alarmed he generally tries to escape by
running uphill, which a pair of very strong legs
enable him to do at a pace that defies the sportsman
with a gun. It is only by approaching chakor
from above, or on the level when their retreat uphill
is cut off, that they can be induced to rise. For
this reason they are pre-eminently birds to be
driven. Generations of practice have made Chit-
ralis adepts at bringing these birds in the required
direction, and almost every village has its well-
known beats, the management of which is under-
stood to a nicety. For the Mehtar's drives, every
able-bodied man in the village has to turn out,
and though he receives no payment, or even his
day's victuals, it would never occur to him to
regard the duty as a hardship. His ancestors
have done the same, and in no country in the
world are people more iron-bound by custom than
they are here.

The chakor had already left the cultivated fields,
as they usually do in the early morning, and were
beginning their climb upwards when they found
their progress barred by stops that had been
posted a few hundred feet up, and were now in
line slightly above us.

A Morning with the Mehtar' s Falcons 135

The surprised birds' anger at such treatment
was, as we arrived, being shouted out from rock
to rock and spur to spur, their shrill gamey call
echoing back from the cliffs on the opposite side
of the river. The beaters were out of sight, but
the signal to begin was passed on. The owners
took their hawks from the falconers, and all
stood ready.

Almost as the first distant shouting of the
beaters reached us, a yell of " Hai! hai!" from
the stops above us, and garments wildly waved in
the air, signalled a single chakor. A stiff wind was
blowing down the valley, and he passed out of
gunshot below us at a terrific pace. As he went
by, the Mehtar balanced and swung forward the
goshawk on his fist, and the bird, with two strokes
of her powerful wings, was launched in pursuit.
As she got under way the Chitralis raised a pro-
longed crescendo shout, and the excitement was so
infectious that we could barely refrain from cheer-
ing her on ourselves. We leant over the wall to
watch the result, and were in time to see the
flying chakor a brown ball two hundred yards
away, but a bigger brown mass was rapidly closing
on it, and the two came to earth together. The
falconer whose hawk it was plunged down the
hill to retrieve the quarry and take up the hawk.
The Mehtar immediately turned and took a fresh

136 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

hawk on his fist, but scarcely had he done so when
shouts of "Hani! hdni!" came from the stops,
and a covey flew down wind close below us.
The Mehtar again threw off a " gos," and another
of the party a Shahin falcon. A goshawk's tiercel
(a male bird) is never flown simultaneously with
the female, which is bigger and stronger, and has
an unpleasant way of mistaking him for her quarry !
And now the game was at its height, cries
of "Hai! hai!" or "Hani! hani!" followed
each other in quick succession, and the chakor
shot by us in single birds and coveys. One after
another the hawks were thrown off, and it was a
magnificent sight to see them wheel round in the
wind, get their balance, and dart off in pur-
suit. As each one was thrown off, the falconer
in charge dashed after her at full speed to take up
the hawk if a kill had been scored, or to call her
off if unsuccessful. The latter is done by cries of
" Doh ! doh ! " for goshawks and the short- winged
kind, and " Koh ! koh ! " for the long-winged hawks.
To attract the latter, the lure made of crow's
feathers is also thrown up into the air and whirled
about. Both sorts come back on to the falconer's
fist from long distances. If the flight is successful,
the quarry's head is cut off, and the hawk, after
being rewarded with the brain, is brought back
for a fresh flight, and in this way the same

A Morning with the Mehtars Falcons 137

hawk is frequently flown many times in a
morning.

In Chitral, falconers, besides being masters of
their own art, have need to be skilled cragsmen,
as their hawks frequently take them among
precipices and into the most dangerous ground.
There was none of this sort of cragman's work
to-day, but a little incident occurred which showed
us what these falconers are capable of. A young
goshawk had been thrown off at a chakor which
swung round to the right to make across the
river. The owner of the falcon was delighted
to see his young bird, a tiercel, bind to his
quarry in mid - air over the river, and carry
him to the opposite bank. It was necessary
to take the hawk up as quickly as possible,
as he had not been flown at game more than
once or twice before ; so the falconer, in order
to avoid going round by the bridge, got across
by worming himself along the hollow stem of a
long thin poplar which served to conduct a small
irrigation stream across the river. The poplar
trembled and bent under his weight, and looked
as if either it or the side struts supporting it
must go, but luckily both held firm. The falconer,
after warily approaching the hawk where he sat
" depluming" the chakor, took him up successfully,
and returned by the same precarious way, with

138 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

the hawk on his fist, — a feat of no small difficulty
and danger.

The beaters gradually drew nearer. Precipitous
places where they could not go were searched by
rocks being dislodged and rolled down. These
went bounding and crashing down the hillside
till, with a huge splash, they buried themselves
in the water, frequently shooting half-way across
the river. By this time the intervals between the
chakor became longer, and they came in single
birds, turned out with difficulty from rock crevices
and other hiding-places, and all the hawks, with
the exception of the Shunkhar, had been flown
several times. By far the prettiest flights to
watch were those of the peregrines and Shahins,
which stooped and struck their quarry to the
ground instead of seizing them in mid - air.
The Shunkhar is not flown in these sorts of
drives, but is reserved for heron and crow-
hawking.

The beaters came up to us, a wild picturesque
lot of men, full of talk, and anxious to hear about
the sport. The bag on this occasion was not very
good compared with the number of flights that
had been witnessed ; but this was owing to the
high wind, which brought the birds down at a
pace which frequently enabled them, with the
start thus gained, fairly to outfly the hawks.

A Morning with the Mehtars Falcons 1 39

The total was fifteen chakor and a mallard.
The latter misguided bird was flying down the
river, and fell an easy prey to one of the Mehtar's
goshawks.

Though a few duck are found about Chitral in
the winter, the regular duck-hawking season does
not begin till March, when wild-fowl are travelling
northward to the Central Asian lakes after
spending the winter on the jhils and tanks of
India, where the good living they have been
enjoying has put them in first-class condition.
The modus operandi, which, it must be con-
fessed, savours somewhat of poaching, is as
follows. After a settling of wild-duck has been
marked, usually in some sandy bay of the river
or a flooded rice-field, the hawking party stalk
them in line. In the middle are the falconers,
two or more in number, and at either end of
the line is a man with a copper kettle-drum,
generally bound with red velvet. On arriving
as close as possible to the duck without being
seen, the drummers commence a tremendous
dinning, and the hawks, thrown off at the
same instant, are in and among the duck while
they are rising off the water. In this way often
as many duck are bagged as there are hawks.
The rationale of the method is simple : if the
hawks are thrown off before the duck rise, the

140 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

latter refuse to leave the water, and the hawks
will not attack them there. If, on the other hand,
the duck get well into their flight, they will
generally outfly the hawks unless a start is
obtained from well above them ; so to avoid
the double difficulty this ingenious method has
been evolved. The Mehtar has built a small
house on the river a mile or so above Chitral,
and during the duck-hawking season his falconers
remain there most of the forenoon, awaiting the
arrival of a flight of duck. About this spot there
are a number of bays and back-waters in the river,
all of which are flanked by walls built up of
round boulders, to afford the falconers cover in
approaching.

The drive over, we descended and crossed the
river. Preparations had been made for a drive
on the other bank ; but owing to a report arriving
of a large spotted eagle that had been seen to
haunt the cliffs lower down in the direction the
driven birds would take, and which would have
made short work of any falcon coming his way,
the idea of a drive there was abandoned. These
spotted eagles (Spizoetus nipalensis) are very
common in Gilgit and Chitral, where they do an
immense amount of damage amongst not only
game birds, but the young of ibex, markhor,
and urial too. The late Mehtar, Nizam-ul-Mulk,

s

^^^^V'21^: '•*£"' Xs ^

Hawking duck on the Chilral river.

The bridge at Chitral.

A Morning with the Mehtar's Falcons 141

who was passionately fond of hawking, had one
of them caught and trained, report says with
success ; but their size and weight, not to
mention their voracious appetite, preclude their
being brought into general use. Nizam-ul-Mulk,
some of my readers may remember, was the
Mehtar whose murder, which took place when he
was out hawking, started the conflagration which
ended in the Chitral campaign. He was shot
in the back while watching the flight of one of
his falcons. The present Mehtar, remembering
his brother's fate, at the time I am writing of,
always had his back guarded by men he could
trust wherever he went.

On our road home we came to a flat sandy
plain over which the river spread out below us
into several glittering streams, and where the
Mehtar hoped to be able to exhibit the prowess
of his Shunkhar on a crow. Luck was with us,
for some black dots on the water's edge were
seen moving about. After the head falconer had
assured himself they were not choughs, which
decline to play the game, he took his Shunkhar
up the hill above us, and sent a man to put the
birds up in our direction. As soon as they were
on the wing the falcon was thrown off, and
made a terrific stoop on one of the crows ; but
when his enemy was seemingly within a foot of

142 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

him, the wily bird cleverly, and apparently with-
out the least exertion, shifted to one side, and
she missed. The rest of the crows flew off, and
the field was left clear for the contest. The
falcon rising again, as if on the rebound, made
another stoop, which was similarly evaded, and
another, and another. Each stoop called forth
a groan of excitement from the onlookers. For
a time this exceedingly pretty game went on,
and it just seemed a case of which of the two
could last the longest. A game it looked, for
the crow seemed to take matters so easily, and
evade his adversary with so little exertion, that
one almost forgot he was playing for his life.
Suddenly a puff of black feathers. Habet ! The
two birds descend slowly together, and all is
over.

The sun had long since flooded the valley,
reminding us, if our appetites had not, that the
day was getting on, and breakfast still before
us. So home was the word. We said good-
bye to the Mehtar where our roads parted, he
deprecating our thanks for the morning's sport,
and ten minutes later we were satisfying our
hunter's hunger. The morning had been one
which, for beauty of scenery and general pictur-
esqueness, not to mention the wonderful skill
exhibited by these hillmen in training the wild-

A Morning with the Mehtars Falcons 143

est of God's creatures to do their bidding, was
not one to be easily forgotten ; and half of us
at the breakfast-table were ready to lament
the invention of " villainous saltpetre/' that had
almost put an end in our own country to so
fascinating a sport.

144

THE OEPIMENT MINES OF CHITRAL.

IN the days of Aman-ul-Mulk the Great (but not
the good), the two chief sources of revenue in
Chitral were slaves and golden orpiment. The
prices realised for both these commodities were
approximately the same per cwt., but as the
slaves were much more easily obtainable than
the orpiment, the trade in the first-named article
was as brisk as the other was slack. Nowadays
the reverse is the case : Chitrali boys and girls are
no longer on the market, while the mineral is
exported in comparatively large quantities. The
mines are situated in a flank of the great giant
Tirich Mir, a mountain peopled, as every Chitrali
schoolboy knows, by legions of fairies. There are
other minerals in the mountain beside orpiment :
lead, copper, sulphur, and possibly others. Orpi-
ment, however, is the only one that is regularly
worked.

My camp happening to be near the Tirich
valley, at a village a few miles from where this

The Orpiment Mines of Ckitral 145

stream joins the Turikho river, I determined to
devote a day to visiting the mines, which had
never previously been seen by any European, or
even by any Chitrali other than those whose
occupation it was to delve for the yellow stone.
The latter information was given to clinch the
arguments that had previously been brought to
bear why I should not visit the mines, and great
was the surprise of my naive informant when he
found it had the opposite effect. Starting early
from camp, the village of lower Tirich was reached
after four hours in the saddle, at a walk bien
entendu, as Chitrali roads are not adapted for
more rapid progression — one foot of the horseman
occasionally hanging over a precipice. A tent
had been pitched in the deep shade of a garden,
— as unnecessary an insult to the magnificent
chestnut and mulberry trees whose branches
formed a canopy overhead as was the spreading
of a carpet to the smooth turf under foot. Here
breakfast, and after breakfast a pipe, with which,
stretched at full length under the giant chestnuts,
I lay " a thinkynge, a thinkynge."

My thoughts had travelled far when my Afridi
orderly, whom I had brought with me as much
for his philosophic remarks as for his general
utility, came and said that if I wanted to see
the orpiment mines that day it was time to be

K

146 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

moving. Loath as I was to leave the cool of the
garden, I said good-bye to my host and climbed
on to my disgusted pony, and we resumed our
road up the valley. After an hour's riding we
came to a foaming torrent issuing from a narrow
gorge to our right. My guide, who was the
aksakal of the mines, said the mines were " up
there," and that we must now go on foot. A
track was visible up the side of the mountains
to some rocks that seemed a great height above
us, and this we followed. The sun was hot, the
hill was steep, and I found it necessary to stop
once or twice to admire the view before reaching
the crags, which were not, as I had fondly hoped,
the end of our climb. A bit of orpiment was here
picked up that had been dropped on the way,
and afforded a welcome excuse for an " easy."
A bright, golden-yellow, lustrous piece of stone,
of what mineralogists lucidly call a " lamellar tex-
ture," flaky like mica and flexible like asbestos;
it is the auri pigmentum or paint of gold of the
ancients. It was supposed by them to contain the
precious metal, but it is needless to say that it
does not. Its use in commerce is to manufacture
the beautiful colour known as king's yellow. As
it is a compound of arsenic, I inquired from my
guide if it was poison. He replied by putting
half of the piece picked up into his mouth and

The Orpiment Mines of Chitral 147

eating it, and he offered the other half to me.
As I was not saturated with arsenic, as it is
probable he was, I declined the proffered morsel,
saying that I had already had breakfast, a piece
of wit which seemed to amuse him vastly.
Apropos of eating arsenic, my orderly related a
tale of a wedding-party in Tirah at which he and
every one present had been poisoned, their " enemy"
having mixed arsenic with the sherbet, and of
the cure effected by the local hakim by giving
them water in which copper had been boiled.
The tale pointed no moral except the unsuita-
bility of arsenic as a diet, but by the time it
was concluded we were ready to go on. After
a few minutes' clambering over the rocks, we
found the path ran along one side of the gorge
we had seen from below, the torrent booming
away out of sight far below us. Near the path
was a curious cone-shaped pillar of conglomerate
about sixty feet high with a big flat stone on
the top.

" Who built that ? " I asked.

" The fairies," was the reply, promptly given.

I thought as much, and here was the tree close
by on which passers-by put their offerings. My
guide and the miners with him each tore strips
from their garments, the loss of which was not,
I must say, very noticeable, and tied them on

148 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

the branches. The whole juniper-tree was thus
decorated, and presented quite a gay appearance.
My orderly, with the superior knowledge of one
who had travelled in railway-trains, was at first
inclined to make fun of the tale, but catching
sight on ahead of two similar pillars the summit
of each of which, high up against the sky, was
topped by a big flat stone, he became grave and
remarked that one such stone might have been
an accident, but three altogether was obviously
the work of the unseen army. So he too
solemnly tore a strip off his blue paggri and
attached it to a vacant twig. I contributed a
cigarette-end and we passed on. The guide was
relating as we went along how people that had
passed that stone at night had been seized by
strong arms from behind and borne away. I
capped his story by telling how an Englishman,1
climbing Nanga Purbat some years ago, had been
seized by the same folk and was still imprisoned
there. My guide gravely accepted the story, and
so we descended into the gorge in quite a ghostly
state of trepidation.

Crossing the torrent by a bridge of avalanche

1 This is the story related by the Chilas people about the disap-
pearance of the well-known climber Mummery, whilst ascending
one of the minor peaks of this mountain. There can be little doubt
that he, with his Goorkha companion, were swept away by an
avalanche.

The Orpiment Mines of Chitral 149

snow, we began an arduous ascent on the other
side. After another hour's climb we came to
a confused and distorted mass of shaly rock.
Shortly afterwards we heard the sound of picks,
and came upon thirty or forty men at work.
This was a new mine and they had only got
a few feet into the rock, and so far had not
struck orpiment. The old mines were higher
up, so on we went. After climbing three or
four hundred feet we came to a rude shelter,
built of juniper - branches and perched on a
most airy eminence. Here a fire was burning.
My thoughtful guide had provided tea, which
was now ready, — green tea simmering away on
the fire in a tin cofiee-pot. We all sat down
on stones, sugar was produced, and three little
rusty tin mugs. My host poured out a cup,
put in a lump of sugar, stirred it up with his
finger, and handed it to me. Having long
since learnt the folly of fastidiousness, and
very thirsty after our hot climb, I drank it
and two more cups on end and found it ex-
cellent. My host did likewise, after which a
few of the miners were presented with half a
cup each. The pot empty, mine host emptied
the green tea -leaves, looking like boiled cab-
bage, into his hand, swallowed three - quarters
himself, and divided the remaining quarter be-

150 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

tween two of his satellites. They accepted and
ate it without any symptoms of unusual pleasure,
and we proceeded on our way. A hundred yards
farther on we came to a rock face with a narrow
ledge running along it in a downward direction,
and then zigzagging to some little platforms
below us, on which a number of miners were
standing near some holes on the hillside. These
were the mines. We proceeded carefully down
the ledge, as a slip would have meant an un-
pleasantly rapid journey to near the bottom
of the gorge. The holes were about the size
a hyena might walk into without much incon-
venience. On my arrival five or six men
crawled out, their faces covered with yellow
dust and their eyes somewhat bloodshot, giving
them a peculiarly ghastly appearance. The orpi-
ment, I was told, induced a peculiar condition
of the hands of the miners, but was not other-
wise injurious to health. The former was obvious
enough, the hands of many of the men I saw
being shrunken to the bone and of a dark
slaty colour, and covered all over with knots
and excrescences, giving them the appearance
of the claws of some big bird. As regards
their health, there were some old men among
the miners who had been at the works since
boyhood, but most of them looked thin and hag-

The Orpiinent mines and miners.

The Orpiment Mines of Chitral 1 5 1

gard. They can only work during the summer,
when the ground is not under snow; in the
winter they remain in their villages below,
and this, no doubt, accounts for their not
suffering more than they do.

Having come so far, it was, of course, neces-
sary to see the interior of the mines, and I
told my guide to lead on. He disappeared
into one of the holes with extraordinary ease.
I followed more deliberately, distinctly surprised
at being able to get into it at all. After four
yards' crawling, we found ourselves in a small
chamber, about eighteen feet long, in which
one could stand upright. The air was fresher
than I expected. Several miners with torches
of pitch pine were standing, but there were
no signs of the mineral I had come so far
to see. On my asking where it was, "Farther
on" was the reply, rather to my surprise, as
the cave seemed to end there. On looking
closer, however, I saw what appeared to be
a well in one corner. There was also a narrow
ramp leading up to the roof along one side
of the cave. I was looking at this when I
heard a muffled rumbling. A light appeared
in the roof, followed by a man, who emerged
from a small aperture that had escaped my
observation. My guide, in the meantime, had

1 52 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

been letting himself down the well at the farther
end, and I prepared to follow him. Sitting down
on the floor, I let myself down feet foremost.
It was quite dark in the well, but it was ob-
vious the shaft did not go straight down. On
the whole, it must have been somewhat easier
than descending a factory chimney, as there
were here and there projecting ledges of rock
on which to put one's toes, but to any one not
a trained sweep or an orpiment miner it was
difficult enough. After descending twenty feet
or so, I felt my legs swinging in space, a
hand clutched my foot and guided it on to
a rock, and I let myself down on to terra
Jirma. It was another chamber, considerably
smaller than the upper one ; the air was very
close. Still no orpiment. A hole appeared to
lead away in a downward direction from the
farther end of the chamber, and on one side
a lot of debris had fallen down. The latter
was pointed out to me by my guide, who cheer-
fully remarked that it was the grave of eight
men. It appeared that a few months before,
whilst these unfortunates were working at the
farther end of the passage now closed by
the heap of earth and stones I was looking
at, a fall of rock had occurred and immured
them.

The Orpiment Mines of Chitral 153

My guide now disappeared into the hole at
the end of the chamber, and I had to follow.
There was no room to crawl, and the only
mode of progression was to lie down full length
and work oneself along with one's toes. As
the air was very foul and full of sulphurous
dust, I made up my mind not to visit any
more orpiment mines in future, and if it had
been possible to turn round and retire I think
I should have done so. After traversing some
forty feet, which seemed as many miles, in this
painful manner, we at length reached another
chamber in which it was possible to sit up.
Here at last was the orpiment, and it was
really almost worth the trouble of coming to
see. Except where the roof had been black-
ened by the smoke of our torches — the miners
do their work in the dark for the sake of the
purer air — the walls of the mine appeared a
scintillating, dazzling mosaic of gold and rubies.
The light from our torches was thrown back
from an infinite number of glittering points,
in which every shade of red and yellow, from
the deepest ruby to the most brilliant scarlet,
and from old gold to the palest sulphur, were
intermingled to form an indescribable blaze of
colour. After admiring this subterranean splen-
dour for a while, and breaking off a few specimens

154 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

of various hues, my soul began to long for the
upper air. My guide proposed further researches,
as we had not yet come to the end of the mine,
but I had seen enough, and the air was intoler-
ably close and dust -laden. So we commenced
the ascent from Avernus, which on this oc-
casion, I was pleased to find, was considerably
easier than the descent. We had reached the
first chamber, and I was making a dive into
the passage through which the white daylight
came streaming, when my guide stopped me
and insisted on our going out through the hole
in the roof. As this passage had the merit
of leading out above the difficult rock face I
had traversed in coming, and which, not being
after a long -horned markhor, I was not anx-
ious to cross again, I agreed, and after another
period of mole -like progression in the dark,
we emerged into the dazzling light and drank in
the sweet fresh air. Covered with red, yellow,
and black dust, we must have presented an
extraordinary appearance.

It was now getting late, and the aksakal,
no doubt thinking of the fairy -haunted gorge,
wanted to be off; so after lightening the hearts
of the wan miners, who were to spend their
next few months in these dreary caverns, with

The Orpiment Mines of Chitral 155

unexpected bakshish, we took the path home,
only stopping once to plunge head and arms
into the ice-cold torrent at the bottom of the
gorge. Thus refreshed and cleansed, we made
short work of the road to camp.

156

ON THE "EOOF OF THE WOELD."

"And when you leave this country and ride three days north-east
always among mountains, you get to such a height that 'tis said to be the
highest place in the world. . . . There are great numbers of all kinds of
wild beasts ; among others wild sheep of great size, whose horns are good
six palms in length. The plain is called Pamier, and you ride across it
for twelve days together, finding nothing but a desert without habitation
or any green thing. "— YULE'S ' Marco Polo.'

THERE is nothing which arouses quite the* same
sort of romantic interest as crossing a great divide.
A longing to know what is on the other side is an
instinct of which one is conscious when surmount-
ing even ordinary ranges ; and how much stronger
it becomes when the drop down the farther side
brings one to a new continent, only those who
have experienced it can realise.

I had been marching for some days up the
Hunza Valley, a deep rift winding amidst some
of the highest mountains on earth, and had
arrived at the foot of one of the few passes which
cross the Mustagh range. On the morrow we —
that is, I and my small party of porters and ser-
vants— would leave the river system of India and

•M

On the ' ' Roof of the World " 157

enter that of Central Asia, with streams draining
into inland seas or meandering about waste places
till lost in the sands ; the land —

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man,
Down to a sunless sea.

The snow-line was low for the time of year, and
we had entered it early that morning, so we spent
the night in a cave named after one Gul Kwaja.
Towards evening a big herd of ibex had been
seen among the high crags above our den, and
through the night I heard between my dreams
the rattle of stones dislodged by their feet.
We started on the climb over the pass, which is
picturesquely called Mintaka — " the pass of a
thousand ibex " — about 3 A.M., by the half light
of a setting moon. The cold was intense, and furs
being far too heavy for climbing in at these alti-
tudes, the exertion only just served to keep one
from getting numbed.

An adventure befell us at the outset which
might have proved fatal to one of our party. No
one having crossed the pass that year, the guide
took a wrong line and led us across an ice slope
that was concealed by snow. The first I knew
of it was seeing his dim figure begin to slide
downwards, first slowly, then more rapidly. We

158 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

were not roped, and as his pace increased it seemed
that nothing on earth could save him. Near the
end of my line, however, carrying a load, was a
man of Hunza, whose quickness to grasp the
situation was only equalled by his resource.
Dropping his load he sprang out on to a project-
ing point of rock near which the man would pass,
and as he slid by, with the point of his native-
made ice-axe he gaffed him in his loose clothing
as one might a salmon . It was most cleverly and
promptly done. Dawn had broken before, with
the help of a rope all our party were safely across
the treacherous slope, and it was midday before
the crest of the pass was reached. The rest of the
day was spent in toiling through deep snow, now
softened by the sun into the worst possible con-
dition for marching, and evening closed in while
we were still pounding through it. The night's
bivouac under the stars, my first on the "roof of
the world," with the thermometer well below
zero, will long remain in my memory.

The cold earth slept below,

Above the cold sky shone,
And all around, with a chilling sound,
From caves of ice and fields of snow,
The breath of Night like death did flow

Beneath the sinking moon.

Next day we continued our march down the

On the "Roof of the World " 159

long snow-filled valley which leads to the Tagdam-
bash Pamir, another trying day in snow which
became soft before noon. Many of my porters,
sturdy men from Hunza, were suffering from
snow-blindness, so periodic halts were called to
drop into their eyes some cocaine solution which
I had included in my small medicine-case. For
my own part, though my eyes were not affected,
the glare of the snow, combined with the cold
wind, had made my face and lips swell and chap
to such an extent that I doubt if my dearest
friend would have recognised me. I was not
sorry, therefore, when the distant barking of dogs
indicated human habitations. These presently
came in sight, though still far away, in the shape
of a Khirgiz encampment — a few dome-shaped
tents pitched on the side of the valley where
black streaks showed the snow was beginning
to melt. Coming nearer, some children dis-
appeared inside, and an old Khirgiz patriarch
with flowing beard came out and took us in.
Never shall I forget the welcome of those tent-
dwellers. Chinese tea in blue porcelain cups, hot
bread, curds and clotted cream in wooden bowls,
were served by the kindly women of the house-
hold, who bustled in and out of the little
andarun, or females' apartment, and the adjoining
kitchen with real anxiety for their guests' com-

160 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

fort. After living in Muslim lands where females
are secluded, there was something rather homely
and pleasing in finding oneself among people
whose women are treated as something more
than slaves or toys. The nature of a nomadic
life makes the purdah system an impossibility,
with the result that among no other people in
the East is the standard of morality so high as
among the pastoral tribes of Asia.

More delightful than anything was the know-
ledge that I was at length on the Bam-i-dunya,
the mysterious " roof of the world," a land which
has probably seen fewer changes, both in its
aspect and inhabitants, than any other since the
birth of the human race. Here were the milk-
fed people and the Scythian latticed huts men-
tioned by Greek writers long before the Christian
era, and the identical landscape described by
Chinese pilgrims of the fifth and sixth centuries.
My surroundings were at that moment in all
probability exactly the same as those in which
the illustrious Marco Polo found himself when
he passed through this and other strange lands
on his journey to the court of the great Kaan
Kublai. Lastly, I was in the country of the
giant wild sheep, discovered by the same traveller,
and deemed fabulous, like many others of the
bold Venetian's tales, till modern exploration

On the "Roof of the World'1 161

came and vindicated the honour of the greatest
traveller that ever lived.

My first shooting camp was pitched at the
western end of the Pamir, in a valley called
Kukturuk, as dreary a spot at the time of year
as any in Asia — a snowy plain, only relieved by
patches of green and blue which marked the turns
of a frozen stream. Around us rolling mountains,
whose uniform whiteness was only broken here
and there by the black of a scarped rock. My
Kanjuti porters had returned to their own country,
having been replaced by yaks and magnificent
shaggy camels of the two-humped kind, supplied
by my Khirgiz friends, to carry tents and baggage.
The camels were loaded with a yurt, one of the
portable felt huts in which the nomads of these
parts live. They consist of a lattice framework,
over which pieces of felt are thrown, the whole
being anchored to the ground by ropes. In the
centre is a stove made of mud, in which burtza
roots or dry argols are burnt, the only fuel
obtainable on the Pamirs. These yurts are both
roomy and warm dwellings, but the acrid smoke,
which finds an escape with difficulty through a
hole in the roof, soon drove me to the conclusion
that my own tent was preferable, in spite of its
coldness. The only warm spot inside the latter
was the interior of my sleeping-bag of reindeer

L

1 62 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

skin, and it will be believed that the daily
process of emerging from it at an hour long
before dawn was not unalloyed pleasure. An
astounding series of garments, with leather over
all, receives me, but down to the long boots of soft
leather on which I had been sleeping to keep
them from freezing into boards, the exchange is
a poor one. Ablutions are a concession to having
once been civilised, but there is no temptation
to linger over them. Breakfast, of mutton chops
smoked over an unsavoury fire, and tea that
freezes while you wait, is similarly a duty which
has to be faced with some determination.

Outside I am met by a cutting wind like a blast
from the North Pole. Figures come crunching
towards me over the snow — those of my Khirgiz
hunter and the old stalker I had brought with
me from Gilgit, Gul Sher, my faithful compan-
ion for many years in the Himalaya. They are
pulling along by their nose -ropes our riding
animals, the hirsute and uncouth yaks. We mount
and disappear in the darkness, and the camp
settles down to sleep till warmed into life by the
beams of the rising sun. By that time we have
gone far, our steeds sometimes slipping and sliding
over a surface of ice, sometimes floundering in deep
snow ; but when possible we keep to the slopes,
where the wind has swept the surface compara-

On the "Roof of the World " 1 63

lively free. From an equestrian point of view the
yalcs failings are counterbalanced by a good many
useful qualities. He is unequalled on steep ground,
and at great altitudes he will plough steadily
through a depth of snow in which ponies would
flounder hopelessly, and finally, he can carry a
great weight of impedimenta in addition to his
rider. Against this he has a tendency to foot-
soreness, a phlegmatic nature which nothing can
rouse, and an irritating way of panting and grind-
ing his teeth. His straight shoulders and low-set-
on head arouse in his rider, when descending a
steep slope, most unpleasant expectations of the
result of a slip on a rolling stone. This is bad
enough at his usual slow pace, but when, as has
sometimes been known, he (figuratively speaking)
takes the bit between his teeth and bolts down a
steep and rocky mountain - side, it is difficult to
imagine a more undesirable position than that of
the individual on his back.

As dawn breaks, the air seems to grow more and
more intensely cold. Presently the grey sky turns
blue ; the sun has risen somewhere. His yellow
beams soon strike the mountain - tops, and we
watch the line of light creep slowly down the long
white slopes towards us. About this time the yaks
are left behind and we begin ascending to points
from which a wider view can be obtained. Stalk-

164 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

ing-glasses are pulled out and the ground in front
carefully examined, \ipoli are there, they will be
seen fast enough on the snow ; it may be a big
herd of rams on the move at this early hour.
Some of them are on the look-out, while others are
scraping at the snow with their forefeet to get a
nibble at the roots of last summer's grass. It may
be that a grey, cloud-like patch on a distant snow
slope reveals a big herd of females, all lying down
facing windwards. Possibly, however, no poll are
in sight ; only a gaunt wolf trots across the field
of view, or the eye is attracted by a slight move-
ment to a covey of snow-partridges nestling together
under a rock. There were few days, however, on
the Pamirs during the course of which poll were
not seen — generally, of course, females or small
rams, for really big heads are rare.

My first stalk after poll ended in a fiasco. The
herd was in an ideal spot for an approach, and I
had no difficulty in getting within seventy or
eighty yards of them, and as I planted my elbows
in the snow to take my shot, I looked on the big
ram of the herd as already mine. But as I pulled
the trigger, the cartridge snapped like the cap of a
toy pistol. Off went the herd, taking enormous
kangaroo-like bounds in the deep snow, their fore-
feet seeming scarcely to penetrate its surface.
Three more cartridges snapped like the first. The

On the "Roof of the World" 165

fifth was a good one, but instead of the big one of
the herd, a small one dropped. My disgust was
only equalled by the delight of my Khirgiz hunter.
Rushing up to the dead beast, " Ghosht lazim ? " he
shouted, "Ghosht lazim?" ("Do you want the
meat ? "), and without waiting for my reply he
began to strip great slabs of meat off the ram's
carcase, and having bound them on the pony, he
set off to camp. The cause of my cartridges
snapping was without doubt the intense cold.
After that I used to keep them in my pocket
instead of on a belt, and at night under my pillow,
and never had such another mishap.

But it is time a word was said about the appear-
ance of Polo's sheep. To start with, he is of course
nothing at all similar to the woolly baa sheep we
are familiar with. In shape he is more like a deer,
his pelage reddish fawn with the lower part white,
and the white " caudal disc" very marked. Stand-
ing about eleven hands at the shoulder, the ram is
a most magnificent-looking beast. A front view
is required to show up his wonderful spread of
horns, the record length of which (a picked -up
specimen) is over six feet, measured round the
curve of a single horn. At a distance, when the
head is " in profile," the horns are not visible, but
they give the beast's head a very characteristic
shape, rather like that of a huge sparrow.

1 66 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

There is no wild sheep that is easy to stalk, and
poli are no exception to the rule. Their sight
is marvellously keen, and their smell even more
so ; the ground they inhabit is open, and the wind
generally most shifty. Everything, in fact, is in
their favour and against the sportsman, so that
the day when a shot is obtained at an old ram,
or roosh as he is locally called, is deserving of an
entry in red in any sportsman's diary. Sometimes
a stalk is frustrated in a most unexpected manner.
One morning we had started when the wind was
blowing a gale from the north. "We had spotted
a herd, and had successfully reached a boulder-
covered spur from which the herd could be seen
two hundred yards below us, and quite uncon-
scious of danger. To approach nearer was im-
possible. By that time the gale had become a
blizzard, and undulating curtains of fine hard
particles of snow swept and lashed the ground
with indescribable fury. Our herd seemed quite
unmoved, for these sheep are protected by a thick
layer of soft wool, which 'underlies their stiff coats
and renders them impervious to any weather.
Between the gusts one could see them peacefully
moving about, but to aim was literally impossible.
Unprotected, the eyes could not be opened in the
teeth of the blizzard, while snow-goggles became
caked with snow in an instant. We retired

On the ' ' Roof of the World " 167

behind a big boulder and waited, but the blizzard
kept on with undiminished violence. Several
times I crawled to the edge determined to risk
a shot, but each time had to retire, till finally,
after some hours, we could stand it no longer, and
beat a retreat to camp.

Curiously enough, the biggest head shot by the
writer was the result of a very simple stalk. We
had topped a spur, and, as we did so, sank down
into the snow, for both Gul Sher and I had spotted
a ram not more than a couple of furlongs away.
He was near a big detached rock, so, dropping
down the reverse slope of the spur, we got the
rock between him and ourselves, and the rest was
easy. There turned out to be four big rams, and
a truly magnificent sight they looked from the top
of that rock. I should like to have watched them
for a space, but carpe diem, seize your oppor-
tunity, a moment's delay may lose you the shot,
so crack went the rifle, and the biggest ram
staggered, gave two or three bounds, and rolled
over.

The gigantic horns of a poli ram, wonderful as
they appear to us, are to the unfortunate owner
nothing less than a snare. Their great weight
handicaps him severely when pursued by his
cruel foes, chief among whom is the wolf; and
from the number of rams' heads with which the

1 68 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

Pamirs are littered, it seems they fall an easier
prey than the females. Why nature hands
the male over such a comparatively helpless prey
to his enemies is one of those mysteries of which I
have heard of no satisfactory explanation, though
we must believe that in some way or other the
existence of these magnificent encumbrances is
of some advantage to the race as a whole.

So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life.

While looking out with the glasses for poll one
morning, the writer's attention was drawn to a
wolf trotting away with so big a piece of meat in
his mouth that he had to sit down and rest every
now and then ; and shortly after more wolves
appeared, evidently belonging to one pack. Their
tracks all led from a point near where I was
sitting, and drew my attention to the body of a
freshly killed ram. The Pamir was bare and
white with snow for miles, and with the glasses
I could mark the course of a tragedy, of the prin-
cipal performers in which I had just seen the exit.
Far away were the tracks of a big herd of poll : a
sudden onslaught by wolves, and they had bolted
up the valley — all save one ram, presumably the
slowest in the herd, which had been singled out.
This one had shaped his course downhill. As he

On the "Roof of the World" 169

became exhausted in the deep snow, on the surface
of which the pack ran with ease, he galloped
round in rings, stood on a rock for a moment
at bay, then plunged on again. The tracks
became confused, showing his last desperate
struggles, and now what remained of him lay
in the centre of a trampled and blood-stained
circle of snow.

Wolves are not the only foes of Polo's sheep.
An opportunity of bagging a snow -leopard was
lost when I came face to face with one of these
handsome beasts on a recently killed ram. My
rifle was in its cover, and by the time I had
got it out he was gone like a shadow up a
boulder-covered hill, on the top of which, like
a great cat, he lay down to watch me, nor did
all the craft of my stalker get me a shot at that
embodiment of feline wariness.

The Khirgiz do all their hunting with the help
of dogs, and, in view of the possibility of a
wounded beast, it is well to arrange to have
one or two of these animals in camp. A
wounded poli is a far more difficult animal to
approach than an unwounded one, and that is
saying a good deal. Even when his injury is
a mortal one, after leading one a most exhausting
chase in deep snow, he may escape altogether.
The story of one such pursuit, which nearly ended

1 70 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

in the death of iny valued stalker, must con-
clude this sketch. We had picked up some
poli one morning, and had made a good stalk.
The herd, however, had divided in two, and
while I was examining one party with the idea
of picking the biggest ram, the others, which I
had missed seeing, were examining me, and, before
I got my shot, concluded they would not wait,
and bolted, of course stampeding the others.
They all went on to a bare hillside where a
stalk was impossible, and remained there till
evening, when they shifted their ground. I
made another stalk and got a shot, killing one
ram and wounding another, which went off.
We were out after the latter early next morning,
a man having been despatched during the night
to fetch a hound from the nearest encampment.
We found our ram very high up on a snow-
covered ridge, on the top of which he was
silhouetted against the sky as he looked down
on his pursuers far below him. My Khirgiz
hunter absolutely refused to climb, so Gul Sher
and I started without him up a ravine that
offered concealment. The ram in the meantime
moved on. We followed his tracks along a ridge
which was heavily corniced by snow, and pres-
ently found ourselves following them down a
snow-filled gully. The snow was hard and very

On the "Roof of the World " 171

steep, but we could get along by kicking steps
in it with our heels. Gul Sher was some seventy
yards below me, when a gust of wind took my
hat off and it went bounding towards him. I
shouted to him to stop it, and just as I did so
an avalanche shot out of a gully which joined
ours just below where I was. The snow broke
away from just in front of me, leaving the rock
black, bare, and glistening like the side of a
house, and the whole went rushing down on Gul
Sher. He had just reached my hat when he
heard the avalanche, and made a desperate effort
to get out of its course, but it was on him before
he could move a yard towards safety, and he
was immediately engulfed and lost to sight.

The roar of the avalanche died away, and all
was silence. I shouted, but there was no answer.
The whole thing was the occurrence of a few
seconds. It is impossible to describe the feelings
which came over me — of horror of my responsi-
bility in having indirectly been the cause of the
catastrophe, and of personal loss, for there seemed
little chance of Gul Sher being now alive, while
even the recovery of his dead body was unlikely.
I worked my way down with very trembling
knees. Arrived near the bottom, I saw the
avalanche had spread out into a sort of fan on
the plain, and on looking with my glasses I saw

172 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

something move. Hurrying down, I found Gul
Sher rubbing his eyes and just recovering con-
sciousness. The avalanche, instead of burying
him, had thrown him out ! There have doubt-
less been equally "hair-breadth" escapes in the
annals of Alpine adventure, but in many years'
hunting experiences in the Himalaya, this was
the most extraordinary that has come to my
knowledge. Gul Sher was no worse than bruised,
though his clothing was torn in a remarkable
way, and through the whole of his rapid descent
with thousand of tons of snow he had retained
his hold of my hat ! He accepted his escape
with the same philosophic calm with which he
would have met his death. Having thanked God,
he declared he heard a hound baying, and that
my messenger with the hound must have arrived.
We got on the ram's tracks again, and following
them up, after some time came on to the poli
standing on a boulder, round which two big
Badakshi hounds were leaping and baying. Fac-
ing this way and that, he was quite unmindful
of our approach, and I was glad to be able to
end his sufferings.

Pitching a ^ yit/t.

The end of his sufferi)igs.

173

LEH.

I.

THE town of Leh, situated in the midst of
stupendous Kara Korum Himalaya, is a meeting-
place between North and South, East and West,
a Nijni Novgorod in miniature. There are few
places in the world where a more varied assort-
ment of Oriental types are seen than in the long
street shaded by poplars which forms the chief
bazaar and rendezvous of traders. Besides natives
of the place, and visitors from Baltistan and half
a dozen other Himalayan principalities, there are
Indians of all creeds : Pathans, some subjects of
the Amir of Kabul, others belonging to inde-
pendent tribes ; Tajiks from Bokhara and Russian
Turkestan, Khirgiz and Kalmaks, Tibetans, Chinese,
and even Persians and Arabs. In its limited area
are churches, temples, and mosques ; while domi-
nating the whole from an eminence at the north-
ern end of the town is the Buddhist Monastery

174 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

attached to the castle which was the seat of
government of the old Kings of Ladak.

The occasion is that of the annual entry of
the British Commissioner. This official, together
with a colleague appointed by the Kashmir Dar-
bar, looks after the trade with Central Asia, and
resides for the purpose half the year in the
Kashmir capital and the other half in Ladak, his
arrival in the latter place being always made an
excuse for a f6te. It would be hard to imagine
a queerer spectacle than we presented as we, our
numbers augmented by the elite of Leh who had
come out to welcome us, toiled up the straight
track across the sloping plain of sand and stones
which lies between the Indus and the town.
The Wazir, a black - bearded Afghan Sirdar, in
dark blue and gold, bestrode a screaming Kabuli
stallion. The Abbot, stout, clean-shaven, and
wrinkled, in a lama's red robe and cardinal's
hat, sat hunched up on a fat white Tibetan
pony, which was led by an acolyte. The
Spituk " Incarnation," sleek but austere, was
otherwise remarkable by a wonderful yellow hat
of polished papier-mache. The ex-King of Ladak,
a man in these days of no political importance,
but much revered by Ladakis by reason of his
asceticism, prayers, and fasting, was evidently full
of alarms at finding himself on the back of a

Leh 175

pony. Add to these, traders, footmen armed
and unarmed, grooms, and attendants.

Though we had started before dawn, by this
time the sun beat down on the sandy plains
and black fantastic-shaped rocks of Ladak with
the intensity peculiar to elevated regions.

Presently we are among the fields and orchards
surrounding the town, and the sight of green
things is delightful. We traverse a narrow lane,
turn a corner, and pass from the silence of the
desert into a street thick with sightseers in
all manner of queer and picturesque costumes.
Simultaneously the air begins to throb with
the deep notes of great trumpets sounded from
the monastery above. The air is full of dust.
From a group of "red" lamas on a roof pro-
ceeds a burst of ecclesiastical music, solemnly
discordant. A brass band, the members of which
blow wildly into their instruments with no regard
to tune, add to the din. The crowd make way,
and we are met with a buzz of "joo joo " and
" salaam aleikum." At the turning into the
square a troop of Kashmiri dancing boys, at-
tended by their minstrels, begin to pose. Then
by the sarai and the rosy -faced Yarkandis at
its gates, down the straight road which borders
the Moravian mission enclosure and through
the Agency gateway, above which floats the

1 76 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

Union Jack. We are at length in our own
garden, and after the glare and dust, how de-
lightful the change was can be left to the
imagination. To the lady of our party, any-
how, after the long marches through a barren
wilderness of mountains, its cool shade savoured
of Elysium.

Our house was built some decades ago by
the first Commissioner and celebrated explorer,
Ney Elias. The walls were frescoed by lama
artists in the brilliant pigments used in Tibetan
monasteries. Those in the hall and climbing
up the stairs represented the Dogra invasion
of Ladak, with elephants, cavalry, and foot-
soldiers climbing over the diminutive green and
white pyramids which conventionally represented
the snow -crested Himalaya; while upstairs the
walls of the passages and of the dining-room
were done in rectangles, each one depicting a
Tibetan fairy tale. The drawing-room was on
the upper floor, and commanded from its windows
one of those views which always remain in the
memory. Looking over the garden and across
a wide sandy valley, one saw some five or six
miles away and a thousand feet below us the
glitter of the Indus meandering in a dark belt
of green. Beyond this a superb snowy range,
with towering crests 20,000 feet and more in

Leh 177

height, rose like a barrier to shut out all out-
side influence from the small world of Ladak.
From here one could see at the bottom of the
garden the square platform where the Dogra
General, Zorawar Singh, — who afterwards, with
his ill - fated army, met a terrible end across
the Tibetan border, — received the submission of
the Ladaki King, for the house had been
built in the old King's garden. At the other
end, half hidden in the foliage, a chorten gleamed
white and mysterious, its shadow, thrown by
the morning sun, falling across the little English
cemetery. Strange the fate which brought white
men's bones to rest in this remote spot. Among
them the trader Dalgleish, murdered on the
18,000-feet crest of the wild Kara-Koram, and
Stoliczka, one of the best of India's exploring
surveyors.

An entertainment was given that night in
the Wazarat courtyard, and by the time dinner
was over the Sirdar's Jamadar had arrived to
escort us thither. Muffled in furs we followed
him. The streets and bazaars, so crowded with
life in the daytime, were now almost deserted.
Grotesque shadows, thrown by the Wazir's myr-
midons, flickered along the white walls and
disappeared into gloomy porches and recesses.
Except for occasional lights in latticed windows

M

178 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

of upper storeys, all was darkness. Now and
again a warm laden air and the whinny and
stamps of mules advised us of the vicinity
of a traders' sarai, and peeping into one of
them we saw the recumbent figures of mule-
teers sleeping near their charges, and a group
of fur -clad traders sitting over the embers of
a fire discussing the day's sales. Dark figures,
whose sex it was impossible to guess, now and
again flitted across our path and disappeared,
and the whole breathed the mystery of an
Eastern city at night.

Presently we found ourselves passing through
a gateway; trees rose about us, and we inhaled
the heavy scent of flowers. Then another gate,
and we were in a large courtyard crowded with
people of both sexes. The enclosure was lighted
up by a huge fire of logs in the centre. Kound
it a square space formed a stage, of which the
audience occupied three sides. On the fourth
side was a row of chairs under an awning to
which the Wazir ceremoniously conducted us.
In front burnt a huge brass seven - branched
candlestick, and on the table supporting it
were arranged dishes of sweetmeats and, in
deference to European taste, a box of Egyptian
cigarettes.

The music immediately began. The performers

Leh 1 79

were few, but made up for this by tremendous
exertions. The instruments were drums and
clarionets, the latter most elaborately made of
wood, overlaid with silver and encrusted with
turquoises and corals.

The evening's programme began with a Ladaki
dance, in which all the performers were of the
fair sex. The coryphe'es, some twenty in number,
varied in age from young unmarried girls to
agile old dames of sixty and even more. I use
the word dance for lack of a better term, but
there was little about the performance of what
we imagine to have been the art of Terpsichore.
The women followed one after another in a
circle — a stumble followed by a lurch — the
pace gradually increasing till about " two-step"
time was reached. The hands, as in all Eastern
dances, were continually in motion — usually pick-
ing up or proffering flowers, or some such symbolic
action. There was also a curious shifting of the
cloak from one shoulder to the other, that had,
no doubt, some significance. All wore the pictur-
esque national costume, a scarlet cloak lined and
edged with white sheepskin, and below divided
skirts tucked into long Tibetan boots. At the
waist, a large round buckle of silver or brass sup-
ported a chatelaine of miscellaneous odds and ends.
The head - dress consisted of a long triangular

1 80 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

piece of leather, the point of which fell far
down the back. On .this a large number of
"matrix" turquoises were sewn; the perak, as
they call it, of a wealthy woman being a mass
of blue. Behind the ears big flaps of black
furs stood out, giving the wearer a remark-
able elephantine appearance. As the dance drew
to a close, the audience were staring up into
the trees over their heads, where the firelight
discovered a large ape, seated among the branches,
presently descend for " comic business " among
the crowd.

After this, the stage was held by a scarlet-
visaged dwarf, who shot up into a geni and
swayed about over our heads. Then a sword-
dance, always a popular turn in the East. Round
and round the dark-robed figures flitted, swords
playing like lightning round their heads, slowly
at first, then more wildly, till when the utmost
pitch of exertion was reached the assembly broke
into frantic shouts of " Barikulla, Barikulla ! "

A fire -dance came next, in which the artist
spun a long pole with a torch at either end
round his head more and more rapidly till he
was encircled by two bright rings of fire.

Between the performances the fire was tended
by men with wet cloths round their faces, look-
ing like demons in the ruddy glow. At each

Leh 181

fresh log the fire blazed up with a cloud of
sparks, rendering blacker the pitch blackness be-
yond its range, and making the tiers of strange
faces dance in the fitful light.

While these minor items were in progress, one
side of the square had filled with the sombre
figures of red-robed Lama musicians. They bore
trumpets of all sizes, from the huge telescopic
tubes of copper which required a boy in front
to hold them, to those the size of a huntsman's
horn ; drums held aloft on broomstick handles,
clarionets, cymbals, and many other queer "in-
struments of musick." From them a quavering,
rippling jangle of discords and minors rose, and
gradually increased in volume, till the big
trumpets joined in with deep, hoarse cacophonous
notes. At the same moment hideous masked
figures trooped in at a slow run, like great fowls,
halted at a drum -beat, flapped their wings, and
began the grotesque contortions of the dance of
devils. These lama dancers came from the big
monastery at Hemi, and the dance shown us
was a selection from the three days' religious
masque performed there every year.

The serious light in which the Ladaki audience,
especially the female part of it, regarded the
performance was quite unmistakable, both from
their wrapt faces and their reverential attitude,

1 82 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

with hands clasped. The Mahommedan portion
of the crowd, on the other hand, though in these
parts distinctly latitudinarian, expressed nothing
on their faces but indifference. From the per-
formers our looks wandered to the group of shaven
lamas standing near the entrance. Their sleek
faces had for the moment lost their habitual
apathetic expression, and every man was intent
on watching the dancers' feet, seemingly to catch
them making an incorrect step. For the frenzy
and abandon of their leaps and gestures was
apparent only, every movement in the dance
of devils being actually as rigidly laid down as
the evolutions of a well- drilled corps de ballet.

After another Ladaki dance, in which men
and women, now mildly intoxicated by unlimited
potations of chung, both joined, the Yarkandi
caravan men, of whom there were a good many
in the crowd, volunteered a dance. Fine rosy-
faced men, with splendid physique. Attired as
if for the road to-morrow — their normal condition
— in fur cap, sheepskin cloak, and high boots,
even to the whip stuck in their belts, a party
trooped on and lurched round in an ungainly
but rhythmical dance, and being encouraged by
the loud shouts from their comrades, kept it up
till pushed aside to make way for the big turn.

A gorgeously-dressed mandarin straddles on

Leh 183

— the wider the legs the greater the dignity —
accompanied by obsequious retainers : and a good
deal of excited conversation, all in Tibetan, results
in the despatch of a billet-doux. After some
impatient waiting, a blaze of lights in a dark
glade the other end of the garden announces
the arrival of the princess. The lady is seated
in a boat hung about with lanterns ; or to be
more accurate, the boat is attached to her — or
him, for the part is taken by a much painted
and bedizened young man. The slow approach
of the vessel is heralded by the most frantic
efforts on the part of the band. The drummers
wind themselves up to a pitch of exertion that
must make their arms stiff for days, while on
the "wood" side the screaming clarionets are
vehemently waved up and down in the act of
playing. The crew of the boat walk outside,
punting vigorously along with poles; but this
lapse from the realistic does not at all affect
the uproarious enthusiasm with which the princess
is received by the crowd.

For our part, we cannot but wonder what enter-
prising troupe of strolling players first brought
this new and original nautical comedy, with its
Chinese setting, from its birthplace in the Far
East to this remote spot in the heart of the
continent, or what scene in history it represents.

184 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

It may be we have before us nothing less
than the arrival of Cocachin, the fair lady of
Cathay, sent with Marco Polo to be the Persian
king's bride.

The princess is received by the mandarin with
great state and ceremony, but his advances in
the rdle of lover are repulsed. After much
"business" she re-embarks and orders her mariners
to take her home. On the voyage a storm arises,
and in spite of the strenuous efforts of the crew
the ship runs aground, and the princess is in
dire peril. The dens ex machind arrives in the
shape of the despised suitor, who effects a rescue.
A reconciliation takes place, the now lovers light
each other's opium pipes, and the scene ends in
the triumphant exit of all.

It was now late and we took our leave, the
Wazir escorting us to the end of the garden ;
and so home through the deserted streets. The
dub-dub of the unwearying drums, however, con-
tinued for long after, showing us the Wazir's
"At Home" was still going on.

Leh 185

II.

What Port Said is to the Suez Canal, Leh is to
the Central Asian Trade Eoad. The busy season is
in the summer, when the high passes to North and
South are " open." The rows of shops in the
streets and bazaars, which stand with closed doors
during the winter months, are then open and glow-
ing with Eastern wares.

Twice a-week during the season the main street
is cleared of its busy crowd and the polo players
have it to themselves. Up and down they career
with wild yells, urging their shaggy ponies with
whip and heel. The heavy ball of willow wood
flies into the shop windows and on to the roofs of
the houses, both crowded with spectators ; but
here plate glass is unknown and heads are hard, so
what matter !

At this time the caravan - sarais are full of
merchants and their goods. A visitor on entering
one of these is struck by a peculiar aromatic odour,
due to piled-up bales of the drug known as charas,
the chief import from Chinese Turkestan. Though
dealings in any intoxicating drug — and this form
of hemp is beyond all others harmful — is forbidden
to the Prophet's followers, but few of the trading
community resist the temptation of engaging in the

1 86 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

lucrative trade. In these days charas is a less
profitable article to deal in than it was, owing to a
heavy duty having been imposed on its importation
into India, a measure which, however unpalatable
to the traders of Ladak, was certainly sound ; for,
in addition to countless other evils for which the
charas habit is responsible, not a few of the
fanatical murders which take place in northern
India may be traced to its use.1

The sarais generally consist of two quadrangular
courtyards. The outer one has stables all round
for baggage animals, for the whole of the trade is
by pack transport ; while the inner one, for the
traders themselves, is enclosed by double-storeyed
buildings with verandahs. The inmates wear the
garb of Central Asia, voluminous wadded cloaks
tied in at the waist with a cotton girdle. On their
feet are long riding-boots, much crinkled at the
ankle, — the more usual kind being those which have
a detachable slipper for outdoors ; and the advan-
tages of such a footgear in a cold country, where
etiquette forbids the wearing of boots on a carpet,

1 Many of the charas traders belong to the queer sect of Maulais,
whose tenets allow the use of intoxicants. By a curious coincid-
ence these people are to-day's representatives of the Haschishins
(or eaters of the hemp compound, Haschish), who were famous in
history as the " assassins," and originated the word. They were the
followers of the Sheikh-ul-Jabal, or " Old Man of the Mountains,"
a name of terror at the time of the Crusades, from his methods of
secret assassination.

Leh 187

are obvious. The bronzed and weather-beaten faces
of these big bearded men testify to the hardships
of their lives. One cannot but feel some admira-
tion for a man who goes quietly off with his caravan
on journeys lasting for months in the wilds of
Central Asia, his start attended with as little ado
as that of a business man to the City. That red-
faced individual in the otter-skin cap is the latest
arrival from " the North," and as such is being en-
tertained by the Aksakal in his own verandah. As
they sit confabulating over their tea, one is brought
face to face with Sadi's tiresome acquaintance in
the " Island of Kish," who kept the poet awake
listening to his projects : —

" So and so is my partner in Turkestan, and I
have such and such merchandise in Hindustan,
and this is the title-deed for such and such lands
and for such and such property, and so and so is
security. Oh, Sadi ! I have one more journey
before me : if that be accomplished I will settle
down in retirement for the rest of my life. I shall
take Persian sulphur to China, for I hear it has
great value, thence I shall bring China ware to
Greece, and Grecian brocade to India, and Indian
steel to Aleppo, and mirrors of Aleppo to Yaman,
and striped stuff of Yaman to Persia : after that
I shall give up journeying."

The interchange of goods between India and

1 88 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

Chinese Turkestan, over the stupendous mountain-
ranges that separate the two, indeed demands born
traders such as Sadi's friend of Kish.

The " caravan-bashis " have their own theories
as to equine management. The most indigestible
of all foods, uncrushed barley, is given so that it
may remain in the animal's stomach " to comfort
him" as long as possible. Then on arriving at
camp after a hard march, ponies' heads are tied
up for an hour or so before they are fed or turned
loose to pick up whatever grazing there may be.
The theory is that a tired animal, if allowed to eat
directly his load is taken off, will just satisfy the
pangs of hunger and then go to sleep till morning,
when he will be hungry and unfit for a fresh day's
toil. But if his head is tied for a couple of hours
on arrival, he will sleep at once and afterwards
spend the night grazing, and so be ready to march
next morning with a full stomach ! Let veter-
inarians smile ; I for one think that the proba-
bility is that these travellers born and bred know
their own business best. The handiest animal for
this sort of work is, as usual, the mule. An
excellent type of this quadruped comes from Ush
Turf an in Chinese Turkestan, and whilst in Leh,
the writer had a commission to buy up as many as
possible for the Indian Government, both for
mountain batteries and transport.

These mule-buying days used always to attract

Leh 189

a great concourse of people to the polo ground.
My wife and I had our seats under an awning, and
by our sides on a carpet sat a Committee of reput-
able traders. After measuring height and girth
and trotting up and down for soundness — for an
animal could not have much wrong with him if he
trotted sound after a march from Yarkand — the
Committee would assemble to assess values. The
way this was done would be as mysterious to one
unversed in the Eastern art of dallali as the
operations of a modern thought - reader. The
owner of the animal would join hands with each
one of the Committee in turn, the clasped hands
being in each case concealed in voluminous sleeves.1
Emotions would then be seen to pass over the faces
of the bargainers, — engaging candour, surprise,
anger, encouragement, pitying contempt, — like
clouds on an April sky. Then they would drop
hands and the same operation would be gone
through with some one else. After five minutes,
the chief of the Committee might announce the
result of the dumb agreement : " Your honour,
this man has less sense than his mule. We are all
agreed that the animal is not worth more than
three hundred and fifty rupees, but he says he will
not take one rupee less than four hundred and fifty."
" Protector of the Universe," would interrupt the

1 The bargaining is done by the extension of the fingers of the
hand.

190 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

owner in a confidential tone of voice, " How could I
sell him for less than what I paid in Yarkand, after
bringing him all this way unladen in order that
he might be fit to carry the guns of the most high
Government to Kabul ? " And so the argument
would proceed.

After the purchase had been completed, the
mules used to be branded on the hoof, an oper-
ation to which some of them had the very strong-
est objections. One such mule lives in my
recollection, a big brown beast, nearly fifteen
hands high. He had defied all endeavours to
bring him to the brander, and had several times
broken loose and careered all over the town. Fin-
ally, Nasr Shah, a Lhasa trader, sent for one of his
Tibetan muleteers, a giant from Kam, with "an
enormous head and a pair of shoulders and jaw
that looked like a prize-fighter's. Seizing the end
of the leading rope, in spite of all efforts to break
away on the part of the mule, he drew himself
nearer and nearer, till with a sudden bound he
seized the animal's ear. A tremendous struggle
ensued, but the Tibetan's grasp never relaxed, and
finally, by sheer strength he conquered, and led
the beast like a lamb.

Nasr Shah was the principal trader with Lhasa,
and with his sons still remains one of the very
few Mahommedans who have the right of entry

Leh 191

there. His eldest son had that year been made
head of the Kashmir State Mission to Lhasa,
known as the Lapchak, whose return, a few weeks
after our arrival in Leh, was one of the events of
the year. We went to see his warehouses at the
time his Tibetan goods were being unpacked.
The pillared rooms were pervaded by a scent of
musk, the most valuable product of Tibet, that
was almost overpowering. If one was not aware
of the scientific fact that the most delicate odours
become nauseating, and conversely the most dis-
agreeable ones sweet, when taken in large doses,
one might have wondered how "musk and amber-
gris " became the synonym all over the Eastern
world for everything delicious.

T)ther bales were full of Chinese silks. There
were chests of " brick " tea from the same country,
rectangular slabs weighing eight pounds each,
the best of which fetched as much as four shillings
a pound, and is preferred in Central Asia to the
best products of Indian gardens. Nasr Shah's
costliest goods came packed in wooden chests,
over which raw hides had been sewn and allowed
to shrink. When the skins were cut off the boxes
tumbled to pieces, but as they had survived over
a thousand miles of mule transport, the packing
could not be considered bad. Some contained
parcels of turquoise in the matrix, the most

1 92 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

fashionable form of jewellery among Ladaki ladies.
Others, the first view of which had been the
principal object of our visit, contained Tibetan
antiques, mostly teapots, huge in size and of
extraordinary design, in silver, copper, or brass
inlaid with the precious metal, and in wood. There
were quaintly-designed pipes, some of which were
fashioned out of antelope horns and mounted with
silver and turquoise, chang jugs, drinking bowls,
and personal ornaments. But in Tibet, as in
Europe in the dark ages, art seems mostly
to have found expression in the adornment of
ecclesiastical buildings, and in the production of
images, pictures, and vessels used in worship.

I suppose there is no country in the world
where religion is so prominent a feature as in
Ladak and Tibet, where the monasteries form a
more conspicuous landmark than church spires at
home. Wherever there is a village, and often
where there is not, in remote and desolate places,
the eye is drawn to white cubical piles perched
up on precipitous crags. From below, the imag-
ination is caught by their massive sloping walls,
the yak's -tail banners, and the black figures of
monks silhouetted against the sky, while the swell
of musical instruments that now and again floats
down from these high places awakes conceptions
of exalted worship. A closer view of course

Leh 193

results in some disillusionment. The buildings
that looked ethereal from below are, in fact, reek-
ing with dirt ; the monks, or at least most of them,
not sad-faced ascetics, but carnal-looking priests,
and their religion far removed from the pure
teaching of Buddha.

But it is far from the case that a visit to
a Tibetan monastery results in disappointment :
indeed the most casual visitor cannot fail to be
struck by its strangeness. The maze of passages,
stairways, and cubicles ; the grotesque pictures ;
the queer - shaped vessels and appliances ; the
gorgeous vestments ; the libraries, treasure, and
image houses ; the pungent odours of lamps
and joss-sticks ; the dark-robed men themselves,
whose lives are bound up in the swarming ant-hill
of worship. One passes through dark galleries,
thronged with seated images whose presence is
more felt than seen. In the mysterious, dimly-
lighted temples the bare feet of attendant lamas
awake no sound on the polished stone, and the
clack of boot-heels seems strangely out of place.
Carved pillars stand up, their capitals invisible in
the obscurity above. One is aware of grotesquely
frescoed walls and worked banners of colours now
toned down by great age. From recesses in the
walls the eye catches the dull gleam of copper
and silver vessels. In front, before the carved

N

194 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

altar, lamps burn dimly and but faintly illumine
the jewel-decked figure of the great silver Tsong
Kapa. Here is that gloom

Within the inner altar niche

Whose dimness worship has made rich.

Ladak is likewise a country of festivals. Ke~
ligious ceremonies of all sorts may be numbered
by the score, for the Buddhist hierarchy well
understand the value of pageantry for attracting
the people. One of the quaintest of the latter
kind was seen by the writer at the village of
Sheh, to which a huge holiday crowd of pleasure-
loving Ladakis had been drawn ; the scene, with
the women's scarlet cloaks and turquoise peraks
under the bright sky of Ladak, being most pic-
turesque. One feature was the exorcism of a
monster dragon, which, with snapping jaws,
crawled round the grass plot in front of the
monastery, and in realism would not have dis-
credited Drury Lane Theatre. The charm was
worked by lamas, who preceded him, waving
branches of willow and burning juniper. The
chief excitement, however, was afforded by an
individual of the village, who, on this particular
day of the year, became "possessed." Dressed
in robes of red silk, with a mitre on his head,
he suddenly issued from a cell in the monastery,

Lcwia dancers.

Mtiral prayer-cylinders.

Leh 195

and, surrounded by lamas with smoking censers,
rushed wildly through the crowd uttering Sibyl-
line prophecies. He then mounted the steps of
the monastery. This edifice was on a high crag,
the escarpment of the perpendicular rock being
continued without a break by the monastery wall
to a dizzy height. On its summit was believed
to dwell a Lha, one of those spirits that live on
the high peaks above the clouds, but sometimes
descend to the habitations of men. From the
steps, the madman leapt on to the monastery wall,
which ascended to the topmost tower. The band
played deafeningly. Higher and higher he went,
till, just before he reached the summit, the music
stopped, and there was a hush over the crowd.
Irresistibly my mind fled back. I was again in
a London " Hall," and it was the moment before
the high dive ! The madman disappeared behind
a corner. Then a dark figure became visible on
the giddy summit, and, without pause or falter,
passed on. The Lha had protected his own.
Then the people yelled, — the band filled their
lungs with air, — and in another minute he was
descended among the people, had burst through
them, and was once more immured in his cell.

In this country of delightful incongruities, even
officialdom makes a concession to the spirit of the
people. Have I not seen with mine own eyes

196 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

a birthday parade when the troops, who marched
by the ruling chief's portrait, were preceded by
a troop of dancing girls ! Think of that, ye
utilitarian and kharki-clad warriors !

To those, in short, who are tired of civilisation,
of " presenting their compliments and request-
ing the honour and much regretting, of being
pinioned at dinner-tables, stuck-up in ballrooms,
or cruelly planted in pews," I would point to
Ladak as the place that affords " complete rest
and change."

197

A DAY AFTER BURHEL.

FATE had ordained that I should find myself in
the role of an "engineer" (as the term is used
in the East) in charge of one of the most diffi-
cult mountain roads in the world ; for the track
running from Kashmir through the Kara-Koram
Mountains to Chinese Turkestan is certainly that,
and is probably the most formidable road in all
"the seven climes" that is regularly used for
trade. Thus, instead of my days being occupied
among the typical surroundings of kutcherris1
and clubs, dusty offices and not less dusty polo-
grounds, durbars, dinners, and the usual Indian
round of work and play, I had tasks such as
cutting a passable track over a glacier, building
a ferry-boat fit to carry traders and their goods
across the tumultuous waters of a mountain river,
blasting a path along the side of a precipice. I
considered myself fortunate, for in the important
matter of play were there not the finest stalking

1 Kutcherris = law-courts.

198 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

grounds in the world before my camp, almost
wherever I chose to pitch it ?

On this particular occasion my camp was at
a desolate spot called Tuti Ailak, midway be-
tween two works then in progress. One was the
cutting of a road along the Talambuti ravine,
which was to turn the very trying ascent of the
Karawal Dawan ; the other was concerned with
the track that has to be maintained during the
summer over the big Sasser glacier to the north.
Incidentally it was in the middle of very good
burhel country.

That Thursday morning in August, as, accom-
panied by Siring Namgyal, I started from camp
in the cold half-light of a morning in the moun-
tains for a day after the wild sheep, I felt a
special indebtedness to my lucky star that I was
not employing the beginning of my week's holi-
day— like many poor devils in India — in a vain
attempt to recapture the sleep that will not stay
after its wonted hour.

After going for something under an hour, we
sat down to spy with our backs against a de-
tached rock as big as a cottage. That is the
advantage of having your camp very high.
Burhel generally live at an elevation of 15,000
to 18,000 feet in the summer, and it is a terrible
thing to begin your day with a stiff three or four

A Day after Burhel 199

thousand feet climb before beginning to spy. To
paraphrase John Bunyan, "He that is high need
fear no climb"; and that should be laid to heart
by the burhel hunter. The upper slopes below
the permanent snow-line were brightening yellow
under the sun, which was what we wanted ; for
without the sun's rays to throw objects into relief
burhel are most difficult to pick up. This, of
course, is true of most mountain game.

Siring Namgyal, my stalker, was a pig- tailed
Ladaki, who, like most of his countrymen, pro-
fessed the religion of Bhudda. I may say, without
fear of contradiction, that his face would have
attracted attention anywhere. Smiling, wrinkled
and ugly, it had something in it which reminded
one at once of a gargoyle and a faun. The oddity
of his physiognomy was heightened by his black
lambskin cap, with flaps intended to keep the
ears warm, now turned up like horns. His squat
figure I had never seen otherwise than enveloped
in a dirty sheepskin cloak held in at the waist
with a girdle forming above a pouch which held,
next his own skin, a varied assortment of useful
things, — his wooden drinking - cup, a ball of
tsampo,1 an image- box, his chakmak,2 and other
odds and ends. But these were not its only
uses, — I have seen produced from this seemingly

1 Tsampo = barley-meal. 2 Chakmak = flint and steel.

2OO Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

bottomless receptacle a dead hare and a live fowl.
As he often acted as my guide, I had frequent
occasion to examine his back, where my eyes were
invariably attracted to a dark triangular mark
starting from where his collar might have been
and reaching to the middle of his back, the origin
of which puzzled me till I noticed that it coincided
with the oscillations of his pigtail ! No descrip-
tion could give my readers a correct idea of Siring
Namgyal's personality without a reference to his
aroma, which was very markedly that of the genus
homo (unwashed) plus that of chang, a barley beer
of which he was very fond. For all his grotesque-
ness, the little twinkling eyes that looked out of
slits in the puckered yellow face of my shikari
were honest little eyes and those of a right good
sportsman.

After we had been looking with our glasses
for a few minutes, Siring Namgyal got quietly
up and, taking my rifle, went round the rock
under cover, struck an attitude, and began slowly
to revolve. One hand was on his hip, the other
outstretched, holding the rifle with a triumphant
gesture. A beatific smile was on his face. Sure
enough he was dancing, and what was more I knew
he had seen burhel, for one of the peculiarities of
this little hunter was that when anything occurred
to please him nothing could prevent him from

A Day after Burhel 201

executing a pas on the spot. After a minute he
rejoined me, where I was vainly trying to pick
up the herd, and showed me where to look.

I saw a ram standing up, then another beast
lying down, then another, and another, and the
longer I looked the more animals I saw. It was
a big herd of fifteen or more. They were amongst
a tumbled mass of rock debris at the bottom of a
grey cliff of rock, a kind of ground on which
burhel are almost invisible. The appearance of
a burhel dead, or in unnatural surroundings such
as zoological gardens, conveys no idea how these
beasts are protected by their strongly marked
colouring of slaty blue or brown, black and white.
They just lose themselves on suitable ground, and
the most suitable of all is the long slopes of
grey boulders so common in the higher Himalaya.
Against this background, even their dark olive-
coloured horns seem expressly designed by Nature
to imitate the black interstices of the boulders.

The stalk looked simple, as a ravine ran right
up close by the herd. So we started and climbed
steadily to our point, which was reached in some-
thing over an hour and a half. Here we found
that the herd had moved, and were now well out
of shot and the space intervening too open for a
stalk. An examination of the ground, with due
regard to the wind, which was in our faces, showed

2O2 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

that they were quite safe as far as we were con-
cerned if they stopped where they were. We
decided to wait, and this apparently was also the
idea of the sheep, as one by one they began to lie
down. I number burhel among the sheep rather
than among the goats, firstly, because their habits
are like those of other breeds of wild sheep, sec-
ondly, because they are excellent mutton. Scien-
tifically speaking, they form a link between the
two, having certain characteristics of both which
may be ascertained from any work on the subject.

The long glasses brought them up to within
a little over a hundred yards. How jolly they
looked, as unconscious of danger they composed
themselves for rest or moved about nibbling the
dry summer grass, and what a picture the scene
would have made if transferred to canvas — wildest
nature and nature's wildest children !

And why, wretched man, crouching behind that
boulder, wish to disturb the peace of the mountain
with your diabolical weapons and evil explosives ?

I imagine at times this thought must in one
form or another visit most sportsmen, and I
imagine also that most of us as we grow older
find the question harder and harder to answer
to our satisfaction. Answers of course there are,
both logical and scientific, but none the less the
civilised man with his twentieth century con-

A Day after Burhel

203

science going further than lago, who held it " very
stuff o' the conscience to do no murder," is be-
ginning to feel a certain repugnance to taking
life of any kind.

But suchlike heretical thoughts, however much
they may hover about the remoter recesses of the
brain — and even at times be admitted by the
keenest of sportsmen — are not those that occur
at the juncture we have reached this day after
burhel. You gaze at the old warrior of the herd,
so distant, so wary ; you think — almost with re-
sentment— of his extraordinary cuteness, of all
the mishaps that may befall, the odds against
you. And even when you finally draw a bead
on him, may not the bullet go wide ? No : at
this time the end seems too far for one to be
conscious of anything but the overwhelming de-
sire of the hunter. A base and elementary in-
stinct, perhaps, but we deal with facts.

I soon knew each ram by sight, and had set my
desires on a heavy beast with a magnificent pair
of horns. A burhel's head, it may be noted, is
by no means an easy thing to judge quickly or
at a distance, owing to the horns curving in two
planes. You look at the twin arches from in
front, but you cannot at the same time see the
terminal curve backwards ; while from a side view
it is the latter only that can be seen.

2O4 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

How did we spend the long hours that inter-
vened between our morning's climb and the next
scene in the drama, not enacted till the sun had
long begun to slope westward ? The view — a sea
of tossing white-crested mountains, the near ones
full of black-and-white contrasts, fading gradually
into the dim blue battlements at the horizon ; de-
sultory scraps of talk ; lunch — tobacco unfortun-
ately no temptation at that altitude. At one
time an eagle came to the rescue. We had first
heard the singing of the wind in his feathers as
he moved across the sky high above us. As he
played with the current of air, each of the strong
terminal feathers of his great wings and tail
seemed, as I watched him through the glasses,
to have its independent duty. Would man's in-
genuity even in cycles of years produce anything
to compare with Nature's perfected aeroplane, in
the evolution of which countless years and un-
limited material had been expended ? The prob-
lem was still unsolved when he sailed away out
of sight.

Far below us a dark thread winds slowly along
the sinuous valley. It is a party of traders re-
turning to Yarkand with their caravan of Indian
goods. It is a queer instinct which drives these
people year after year to far Indian seaports —
an infinity of pains and little profit, — scarcely

A Day after Burhel 205

less strange it seemed to me than the migration
of birds.

These men had left Yarkand in the spring,
with a caravan of charas and silk. Their first
difficulty was the Kilian Pass, 16,500 feet; at
Shahidulla the last Chinese habitations were left
behind, and the little party were engulfed in the
uninhabited labyrinth of the ranges. After cross-
ing the barren Dipsang plains and the Suchet
and Kara-Koram Passes, both over 18,000 feet
high, they had before them the two crossings of
the Shyok river, with the dreaded Sasser Pass
(17,000 feet) and the Karawal Dawan in between.
The passage of the Shyok river — in the early
summer a tumbling flood of brown glacier water
— itself provides sufficient sensation, of a kind
the traders would gladly be without. The pass-
engers and their merchandise — in some cases
comprising all their worldly goods — are put aboard
a flat-bottomed ferry-boat and rowed desperately
across the river. During the early summer the
question of crossing or waiting for a diminution
of the flood is often one for anxious debate. The
baggage animals are made to swim, being stripped
and driven in a herd into the tossing waters.
It is a sight to see the river dotted over with
ponies' heads, all being carried down stream at
a terrible rate and seemingly bound for destruc-

206 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

tion. Most of them land, however, one side or
the other, in the space of a mile or two — gene-
rally, strange to say, none the worse. Next comes
the Khardong Pass, 17,000 feet, for which (their
own animals being used up) yaks are generally
hired ; and so our party of traders arrive at Leh,
455 miles from their starting point. Here they
leave their animals to fatten up — and by then,
poor beasts, they need it — for the return journey.
The road on to Kashmir is another 250 miles,
in which one severe and two minor passes have
to be crossed. Thence some ten days with
wheeled transport takes them to the rail-head,
and in two or three more days they arrive at
the port which is the goal of their journey.
Then, purchases hurriedly completed, back they
have to toil before the passes get blocked by
snow. I often wondered what the City man,
accustomed to his saloon carriage to London
Bridge or King's Cross, would say to such a
journey on business !

The string of ponies toiling painfully along
below us was one of these returning caravans.
I had met the traders the day before at my
camp, and they had expressed their thanks to
the high "Sarkar" for the improvements to the
trade road and the new ferry - boat, in which
they had had a good passage across the Shyok.

A Day after Bur he I 207

The former reference was to the cutting, then
in progress, along the precipitous side of the
Talambuti gorge, by which the much - dreaded
ascent of the Karawal Dawan was avoided — a
terrible stony hill this, the severity of which to
tired animals is testified to by the bleaching bones
with which the track is littered. Some work still
remained on the cutting, and the frequent boom
of blasting operations reached us where we sat.
As for the crossing of the Shyok, the traders
could scarcely have said more if they had just
completed a passage in the Lusitania, which
shows how entirely a matter of expectations is
gratitude. How the passengers of the famous
liner would grouse if they were landed some
hours late of the usual time ; and here these
poor devils were overwhelmed with joy at finding
themselves with bag and baggage safely across
the Shyok.

I seem to have left our burhel. Let us return
to them. About three in the afternoon they
began to move slowly in our direction ; half an
hour later it seemed long odds that they would
walk straight up to me without giving me the
trouble of moving. But no reliance can be placed
on wild sheep, as had been impressed on me
only the week before. It was like this. I had
stalked a herd which, after giving me a climb

208 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

over 2000 feet of boulders, for no apparent reason
shifted their ground. As

the wise hares

Oft quit their seats, lest some more curious eye
Should mark their haunts, and by dark treach'rous wiles
Plot their destruction,

so the not less "wise" burhel ; and they repeated
the manoeuvre on my making a second attempt.
This time they lay down behind a ridge that
seemed made for a stalk. Climbing over boulders
under a hot sun at a great elevation is gruelling
work, but the wind was fair, and I had every
reason to think that my toil would be rewarded.
But the spirits of the mountains were against me.
I crawled the last few yards and looked over.
But as I — with the utmost caution — raised my
head, so simultaneously did every animal in that
herd spring to his feet and dash down the
mountain - side, that I had a sort of uncanny
feeling that they had been forewarned, and were
all lying with their eyes fixed on the ridge wait-
ing for the moment that a human head should
slowly appear before vanishing in a cloud of dust.

I therefore trusted burhel to do nothing but
the unexpected. What happened now was that
they walked straight up to within a hundred
and fifty yards of where I was lying, rifle in
hand. They probably would have come nearer,

A Day after Bur he I 209

but seeing my ram standing broadside on, I could
bear the strain no longer and pulled the trigger.
Once more the unexpected ! Every beast in the
herd was off — including my ram ! In less time
than it takes to write, nothing was left but some
dust hanging in the air and two disgusted men
staring at it.

Siring Namgyal and I went to the spot where
but a minute before that ram had stood and
offered as perfect a target as could be imagined.
No blood. The shikari said a miss, but I would
not hear of it. We followed the tracks a couple
of hundred yards. Still no blood, and the horrid
conviction that I had missed an easy shot slowly
gained ground and had me in its grasp. Is there
anything in the realm of sport that casts such a
dismal blackness on the soul as a hopeless, inex-
cusable miss ? I went back to the spot to see
if any hairs cut by the bullet had fallen — some-
times a better indication than blood, — leaving
Siring Namgyal to follow the tracks a little
farther.

Yes ; a few grey hairs showed a hit or a graze —
probably the latter. The shikari was busy track-
ing a long way on by now. But see, what on
earth is he doing? I raise my glasses. On a
ridge line silhouetted against the sky, one arm
thrown out in a triumphant gesture, the other

o

2 io Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

on his hip, Siring Namgyal is slowly gyrating.
Hooray ! There is no mistaking what that means.
Never, to my eyes at least, had he looked so
beautiful !

When I got to the spot, the ram was lying

dead at the bottom of a ravine. The bullet had

>

got him a hand's-breadth too far back.

21 I

THE FATHER OF ALL SHEEP.

I HAD pitched my tent one evening at one of
the numerous places called Kyangma Chumik, a
spring near the Tibetan border beyond Hanle.
It was as dreary and barren a spot as one could
find anywhere on the rolling uplands of " the
great Chang." But for the patch of green grass
round the little pool of water which gave the place
its name — Kyang's spring, — nothing met the eye
but a waste of round, sterile hills and sandy valleys
stretching away to the horizon. Above the low
line of purple hills to the west lay a bank of dark
clouds, from behind which a shaft of light struck
up into the rosy sky. The evening was intensely
still, but so rare the air, that as I sat watching
the tail of my little caravan come in, the shouts
of the yak drivers scarcely brought with them an
answering echo.

Kyang, the Central Asian wild ass, — handsome
beasts that looked like big, well-groomed mules,
of a bright chestnut colour and in splendid con-

2 1 2 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

dition, — were visible in the distance. My camp
was at the very spot where " the wild asses quench
their thirst," so the large numbers were probably
due to this being the only water in the neigh-
bourhood, and the time that for their evening
drink.

I was after Ovis ammon, the beast whom Kings-
ley termed " the father of all the flocks on earth."
And if the title is not his by right, he certainly
deserves it by courtesy, for in size and wariness
he surpasses all breeds of wild sheep, and seems
to have at his disposal the accumulated experience
and protective instincts of numberless generations ;
so that he who has fairly stalked and shot an
old ammon ram may truly be said to have gained
the blue ribbon of big game hunting.

I had been for some days on ground where I
might find the sheep, and though I had come
on several lots of ewes, I had seen nothing of
rams but their tracks. My stalker was Siring
Namgyal of the ugly countenance, on whose face
it would be as difficult to discover a space without
wrinkles as on the horn of the sheep we were
after. He was a good hunter, however, and when
once I had got accustomed to a somewhat marked
aroma, and had allowed him to exhaust the tales
of his domestic quarrels — he, with two other
brothers, after the custom of Ladak, had joint

The Father of all Sheep 2 1 3

interest in one wife — I found him quite an in-
teresting companion.

Next morning, breakfast was eaten by candle-
light, and we moved out of camp as the first
glimmer of light flickered over the sky. We were
accompanied by another Ladaki of Hanle, who
acted as guide and led the way. Of course we
were all riding, — sitting on ponies would be a
more correct phrase, — for in a country where the
lowest valley elevations are over 14,000 feet
above sea -level, any form of conveyance seems
preferable to one's own legs. Our road lay over
a low pass towards which we moved in single
file through the gloom like ghostly shadows;
though the thuds of Siring Namgyal's heels on
his sleepy pony's sides had a distinctly material
sound about them. We reached the top of the
pass as the surrounding blur of mountains
began to assume shape, — though still dark and
colourless. Waiting there till we could use our
glasses, we watched the grey sky become blue,
the dark wisps of cloud on the horizon flush
to pink and then whiten ; and sand, rocks, and
mountains draw their own tints from the light
of day. Below us, in the valley, dark amorphous
patches turned into green grass, and on them
some moving animals suddenly stood out sharp
and clear, though mere specks in the distance.

2 14 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

" Kyang," murmured the shikari before I had
even time to turn my glasses on them. No other
living animal was in sight, so catching hold of
our ponies, who had taken the opportunity of
going to sleep, we walked down the far slope,
and at the bottom mounted and pursued our
way. Presently the sun sprang up and the
warmth was pleasant. Now and then a big
woolly Tibetan hare would jump up from under
our ponies' feet and go away with the gait
peculiar to the species of the two lollops and a
bound, the latter a leap with hind legs
trailing.

Not infrequently a shrill gallery whistle, " teee,"
"teee," "teee," would make us look about, and
some slight movement would attract the eye to
an upright piece of sandstone, which inspection
showed to be a golden - coloured marmot, sitting
over his burrow and pretending it was not he
that whistled. Queer little beasts, found in queer
outlandish spots, no wonder legend has clustered
about them ; not the least entertaining being
that recorded by Herodotus of the gold-digging
ants.1

1 " In this desert, then," writes the veracious historian, " and
in the sand, there are ants in size not so big as dogs but larger
than foxes. These ants, forming their dwellings under ground,
heap up the sand as the ants in Greece do, and in the same
manner, and are like them in shape. The sand which they cast

The Father of all Sheep

215

Indeed, in spite of the barrenness of the earth's
surface in these parts, there is no dearth of animal
life. Our ponies were constantly stumbling over
the holes of the tailless Tibetan vole, bright-eyed
little rodents, whose confiding nature almost
ruined the character of a retriever pup I took
with me on the march. Their holes went no
distance into the ground, and our ponies' feet
constantly broke through, exposing to view piles
of dry herbs neatly stowed away — signs, according
to local lore, of an early snowfall. Kyang, of
course, were always a feature of the landscape,
and many a time did their appearance on a dis-
tant skyline make us slip off our ponies, only
to climb back discontentedly when the glasses
revealed their true nature.

up is mixed with gold. The Indians, therefore, go to the desert
to get this sand, each man having three camels. When the
Indians arrive at the spot they fill their sacks with the sand
and return home with all possible speed. For the ants having
readily detected them by the smell, pursue them, and as they
are the swiftest of all animals, not one of the Indians could
escape except by getting the start while the ants were assem-
bling."

M'Crindle identifies the ants with Tibetan miners, but it seems
much more probable that Tibetan men gave origin to one part
of the yarn, and marmots to another. The belief, however, in
the existence of gold-digging ants was so prevalent among the
ancients that it seems probable that Solomon, who was not
altogether innocent of the auri fames, in his well-known in-
junction to the sluggard, really referred to them. The speculation,
however, has nothing to do with Ovis ammon.

2 1 6 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

Now and again the faint but thrilling note of
wild geese reached us, and looking up we would
see high in the heavens the V - shaped skein
winging its way south from the lakes of Central
Asia to warmer climes. Once, as we rounded a
corner, we came on a big animal that was not
a kyang; but the excitement dropped at once
to zero, for it was only a female ammon. Getting
nearer, we expected to see her dash off, for there
is no shyer beast on God's earth ; but she allowed
us within ten yards before cantering slowly off.
She must either have been ill or guessed she was
safe. Siring Namgyal was extremely vexed at
my not taking the " chance " so providentially
offered, and declared we should have no luck ;
but the murder was out of the question, and
anyhow luck could not be any worse than what
we had been having. Shikaris all over the
Himalayas are great believers in sequences, and
if one has had no luck on starting a trip, they
implore one to kill something, if only a purchased
sheep, to break the spell. I would not swear
that a hankering after meat has nothing to say
to it, yet I am sure that superstition has a great
deal more.

On and on we went, little dots crawling over
the vast expanse of desert. The sun got high
in the heavens and struck down through the

The Father of all Sheep 2 1 7

thin air with great force, raising a quivering
mirage over the plain.

It was about one in the afternoon when we began
to ascend the gentle slope of a big round hill, from
the top of which we hoped to get an extensive
view. Our ponies wearily dragged themselves to
the top, and leaving them standing with heaving
flanks, we sat down to examine the view, and
lunch. The prospect was similar to that we had
been seeing all the morning, and indeed for days
past. In front, a great wide trough separated us
from the next swelling earth- wave, the colour shad-
ing from the green of the bottom to the brown of
the burtza-covered slopes and the yellows of sandy
tracts and stones. Beyond this, more earth- waves,
stretching away to infinity. The prevailing im-
pression was remoteness and loneliness — " So
lonely 'twas that God Himself scarce seemed there
to be." I will confess my own examination did
not take long. I had in truth become a little
disgusted at the fruitlessness of our search, so I
left the shikari straining his eyes over the plain ;
and after untying my lunch canteen and water-
bottle from the saddle, selected a soft spot among
the stones and sat down under the shade of my
kharki umbrella. Cold mutton and chupattis did
not tempt me to linger over the meal, and the last
thing I saw before my head began to nod and my

2 1 8 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

thoughts went drifting, was Siring Namgyal taking
alternate bites from his ball of tsampo and looks
through his telescope.

A touch aroused ine, and I saw the shikari stand-
ing over me, his face wrinkled and distorted in a
way I recognised as indicative of extreme delight.

"Abdus amarn ! " he whispered. This was his
best attempt at Ovis ammon, a name he must
have heard used by some previous traveller to
indicate the big sheep !

Far away, a faint irregularity of rather darker
colour than the rest of the ground was visible with
the binoculars. This the big spying-glass resolved
into a herd of eight ammon rams, lying down,
heads all facing up wind. Siring Namgyal had
seen one of them standing, which had since lain
down, and this had betrayed the herd ; otherwise
he might never have distinguished them from
stones, and we might have returned to camp
convinced that there was "not an ammon in the
whole country."

Leaving the ponies with the guide, we started
on the stalk. Half a mile away to the left some
undulating ground gave hope of cover, but after
reaching it we found it would only bring us a part
of the way to our beasts, and from there onward
the ground was so level and the undulations so
gentle that we had to proceed doubled up. Hard

The Father of all Sheep 2 1 9

work this at any time, but at 15,000 feet words
fail ! In this manoeuvre the shikari's shorter
stature gave him some advantage, not to speak of
his lungs, which had never known what it was to
breathe air below 10,000 feet. Coming suddenly
to a dip in the ground, we put up a herd of
gazelle, which went bounding away till their fluffy
sterns were lost in the mirage. We reached at
last the reverse slope of the hill on which the rams
were lying. The wind was all right, but from the
top, owing to the curve in the ground, the ammon
were not in sight, and we found that an approach
from that direction, though it looked feasible
enough from our starting-point, would have
brought us into full view while still out of shot.
So harking back we tried another line.

A shallow depression in the ground, down which
water might have trickled on the rare occasions of
heavy rain, seemed to trend in the right direction
and offer concealment. As we got nearer the herd,
the difficulty of keeping covered became greater,
and we were soon compelled to progress on all-
fours. Our depression served us well, however, and
when I got to where I judged was the right point,
I slowly raised my head. The herd had gone !
Eaising myself still farther, I saw them all on
their feet a hundred yards away standing looking
straight at me. What had they seen ? Probably

22O Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

my back or my hat, for at such times one is,
ostrich -like, too often under the delusion that
because the herd is invisible to the stalker he
must be invisible to the herd. Two courses were
open at this critical juncture. I could stand
straight up and take a snap, for from where I was
kneeling the heads only were visible, or I could try
to grovel closer to the curve in the ground and get
a kneeling or sitting shot. A standing shot with
my heart going like a steam turbine was not to be
risked, so I grovelled. Thirty yards on I was flat
on the ground and out of sight : and the herd ?
Well, I hoped it was within twice as many yards
of me. Drawing my legs under me with the
greatest care, I brought them in front, and slowly
sat up, keeping my rifle at the level of my eye.
Yes, eight white faces were staring at me within
almost shot-gun range, and one looked a grand
head. Another three inches higher and I could
see their necks and the top of their chests. Now,
if they would only wait one half- second more !
They did ; the bead covered the chest below the
big head and the trigger was pressed. Seven rams
were galloping over the plain. The eighth was
kicking up the sand in a vain effort to rise. It
was a glorious moment, and so thought Siring
Namgyal, for after begging my rifle, from which I
took the precaution of extracting the remaining

The Father of all Sheep 221

cartridges, that very ugly man proceeded to dance.
One hand brandished the rifle above his head, the
other was placed gracefully on his hip, and he
hopped slowly round the dead ram. He tried to
sing, but words would not come, and he could only
give vent to hoarse shouts : " Abdus amarn,
Abdus amarn."

The ammon was a magnificent specimen, and
I felt like joining in the dance. The hour, how-
ever, was late, so I set the shikari to work on the
obsequies.

We started for camp about four in the afternoon.
The way was interminably long, but I had only
to look at the ram's head, bobbing along in the
dark on the guide's saddle, for such feelings to
vanish. The latter's sense of direction was un-
erring, as is usual among children of the desert,
and he took us a bee-line to camp, but it was
not till the moon was high in the sky that we
saw welcome twinkling lights at the bottom of the
long, straight valley we had ascended that morn-
ing. And in another hour we had forgotten the
silence and solitude of the desert in the light
and warmth of camp. By that time there were
cravings of the inner man that had to be satisfied
without delay.

It is an unfortunate fact that in Ladak, in spite
of the game laws passed by the Kashmir " darbar,"

222 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

ammon are very scarce, owing chiefly to winter
shooting by changpas ; for, however excellent
regulations may be, it is difficult to ensure their
being observed in that remote country. Unfor-
tunately for the sportsman, recent events have
resulted in Tibet being, perhaps, more closed than
ever. Even if it were not so, it would be a
mistake to suppose that when once the border of
that enchanted country is crossed ammon become
plentiful. Chumurti and Kandur are the two
districts in Tibet where, according to report,
ammon abound ; but I found out by bitter ex-
perience that, at any rate as regards the latter
country, report lied, for during a tour in this
district with my wife, we only came on ammon
rams twice, and I failed to secure a single one.
The first of these failures was due to a stupid
mistake for which I had no one to thank but
myself.

We had heard from some changpas that there
was a herd of ammon in a valley a few miles to
the east of our camp, near Keltse Tso (lake), and
a start was made early next morning to look for
them. Going up a long valley soon after leaving
camp my wife spotted a buck gazelle. But he
had seen us too, and bolted up a side ravine. I
attempted a stalk, but the gazelle kept moving
from one ravine to the next, and then stopping

The Father of all Sheep 223

long enough to raise false hopes, in a most tan-
talising manner. When my patience had become
thin, I screwed up the Lyman sight of my rifle
to 300 yards and took a shot, and luckily knocked
him over, with a bullet through the base of the
neck. We went on a long way over sterile, sandy
valleys, till, after gradually climbing to a con-
siderable height, we saw the dark-blue lake lying
far below us, in a shallow basin of rocks and sand.
Beyond, ridge after ridge of ochre-coloured hills
stretched away to an immense distance.

We spotted the ammon soon after, and, leaving
the ponies, went on by ourselves. After half an
hour's walking we got to the end of a long pro-
montory of sand and stones, from which we
looked down into a valley 1000 feet below us,
where the ammon were feeding. After we had
waited some time, they moved to the other side
of the valley, where they would be in a stalk-
able position ; so taking my rifle I essayed an
approach, while my wife, perched up aloft with
her glasses, as in a box in a theatre, viewed the
whole scene laid out before her. With this critical
spectator I was more than usually careful, tested
the shifting zephyrs at frequent intervals, some-
times crawled, sometimes walked, till a restless
ram had moved out of sight, and finally had the
satisfaction of surveying the herd not eighty yards

224 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

away, from behind a sheltering ridge of rock. I
examined them carefully with my glasses to pick
out the biggest head, and then, as steady as one
elbow on the ground and the other jammed into a
corner of rock could make me, took my shot — and
missed ! I could scarcely believe my eyes. The
whole herd galloped straight away. I expected
every moment to see one of them fall, or pull up,
wounded, but they got farther and farther away
and I could not deceive myself with that belief.
Following them with my glasses I watched them
get smaller in the distance, and after the manner
of their kind again and again pirouette round, fore-
feet stuck out, to take a look back before dashing
on again. And so they disappeared, and I had
missed the easiest shot at ammon it is possible to
imagine.

A thought struck me, and I looked at the back
sight of my rifle. It was up to 300 yards, as I
had left it after shooting that wretched gazelle !

I have never forgotten the lesson, but have
often thought that fate was unkind to choose
such a momentous occasion as a shot at an ammon
to impress it on me.

225

AFTER ANTELOPE IN TIBET.

A WIDE sandy plain forms a trough among
rolling mountains. The strip of green winding
about somewhere near the centre indicates the
presence of a little stream which trickles and
stagnates, and at night freezes, among boggy
tussocks. If you were to look for the stream's
source it would be hard to locate, and if you
were to trace its downward course you would
find somewhere or other it had disappeared,
swallowed up in the sands that gave it birth.
Eventually, if you were to follow the trend
of the valley, you would come on a lake of
deepest sapphire blue, its margin marked by
dazzling incrustations of salt, into which great
evaporating-pan our streamlet would have found
its way by subterranean channels, thence to be
drawn up into the rare Tibetan air.

The foreground of the scene, unrelieved by
trees or shrubs of any kind, is of a light sandy
colour, except where a short, coarse species of
grass gives it a greenish tint. On either hand

p

226 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

the mountains display every shade of bizarre
colouring, not inappropriate to their fantastic
outlines. They nowhere ascend to any great
height above the valley ; but here, far more
than on the Pamirs, picturesquely called "the
Koof of the World," one can imagine oneself
on the leads, among the gables and chimney-
stacks of the old earth. The nearer slopes
exhibit startling hues in ochres and saffrons,
browns and reds ; but as they recede in the
distance the magic of the air tones them im-
perceptibly into the most tender shades of blue
and purple. Yet far away, where the glitter
of the stream is lost among a strange knot of
hills, two scarlet cones rise on the horizon,
looking like red halves of a monster pome-
granate set on end. Such are the "aromatic
plains of Tibet."

My wife and I had crossed the Pass forming
the boundary between Ladak and Tibet the
previous day, though we had been travelling
for some weeks in the strange country that
forms the western end of the great Tibetan
plateau. So far we had seen no antelope, the
acquisition of a few heads of which was among
the objects of our wanderings, though we had
come upon their tracks and knew we were at
last in antelope land.

After Antelope in Tibet 227

Not many years ago this particularly grace-
ful beast could be seen in large herds in the
Chang Chenmo and adjacent valleys of Ladak
on the northern Kashmir frontier; but of late
they have been driven eastward, till now they
are scarcely found to the west of the Tibetan
border ; while to see them roaming the plain
in any considerable numbers one has to travel
far into the forbidden country, and reach a
land inaccessible to mere globe-trotters and such-
like unleisured persons.

Every one has heard how the Tibetan ante-
lope scrapes for himself a hole in the ground,
in which he lies so still that his long slender
horns look like dry willow shoots sticking out
of the ground; and it was only this morning
that my wife had pointed out with delight
three little beds in the sand, side by side — a
big one, a smaller one, and a very diminutive
one, evidently the resting-place during the night
of some "papa, maman, et bebe" of the timid
wilderness folk.

As our long line of laden ponies toiled along
in the rear, we began that morning to ascend
knolls and elevated spots, from which we could
look out and examine the plain with our glasses.
Though the upper air was clear, with that won-
derful dry clearness only found in the high

228 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

altitudes of Ladak and Tibet, and which makes
a hill two days' journey distant seem within
an hour's ride, yet a mirage hung like a veil
over the ground and distorted or concealed
anything there was moving on it. Once we
saw some misty dots appear and then vanish,
and on going to the spot found tracks of
antelope, but the animals that made them had
gone. Tall columns, like shadows thrown by
men on smoke, would come near us, which we
would discover to be wild asses (or kyang) —
graceful animals without which no landscape
in Chang Thang would be complete, but none
the less meddlesome beasts, that spoilt many
a good stalk. It was not till we were nearing
our camping-ground by the light of the yellow
evening sun that on surmounting a little saddle-
back we came on a buck antelope standing at
gaze by the stream and not three hundred yards
from us. No doubt he had seen the tops of
our hats come bobbing over the horizon long
before we had spotted him. He only waited
to see me slip off my pony, with the idea of
stalking him black - buck fashion, to lay back
his horns and scour away over the plain like
an arrow from the bow. From the pace he
went one could almost believe there was some-
thing in the native story that antelope inflate

After Antelope in Tibet 229

themselves with air to " fly before the wind."
He did not stop till he reached the slopes
on the opposite side of the valley, where he
became a distant speck. But we saw with
our glasses that, antelope - like, his alarm was
but short-lived, and he had begun to graze.

Taking my rifle and a mounted man with
me, I made a detour, and soon reached the
undulating ground at the bottom of the slopes.
Here I dismounted, and leaving the ponies,
began what seemed an easy stalk. After cross-
ing some dry ravines I ascended the ridge I
had made for, the last few yards on all -fours,
but found I was still a good three hundred
yards or more from the buck, and no means
of getting any closer. It was too far, but
after waiting some time I sighted to three
hundred yards and took a steady shot lying
down. Off went the antelope, but dotty and
evidently hit ; and luckily for me he took a
line down the valley more or less in the direc-
tion of camp. Shouting for my pony, I ran
back and met my Ladaki dragging the animals
towards me and very excited. Then began a
long chase. My wife had watched the stalk
with her glasses from a rise in the ground
near where we had seen the buck first, and
grasping the state of affairs, mounted her steed

230 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

and, I should like to say, dashed in to turn
the buck towards me —

A sylvan huntress by my side
To chase the flying deer.

But, alas ! our shaggy Ladaki ponies, though
certainly of desert descent, did not match the
wind for swiftness. She, in short, disappeared
into the bottom, where the stream ran, and did
not reappear. My pony, too, had no idea of
moving out of a trot. Whip and objurgations
had no effect, and I could not decrease the buck's
lead. I just managed, however, to keep him in
sight, and after a couple of miles of the hardest
"finishing" I have ever done, saw him dip down
into a ravine and not come out again. "Now
you're mine," I thought, and leaving my pony
approached the edge, rifle in hand. But no buck
was to be seen. A blood spoor was there, though,
leading out of the ravine, and on surmounting
the far slope I saw the buck a long way off now,
going steadily away as hard as ever. Vires
acquirit eundo is too true of many a badly
wounded beast. I had been deceived by the
ground. My henchman was at hand, so taking
his pony, on I went. After more desperate
"finishing" with heels and whip, I got within
two hundred yards of the buck, when my pony

After Antelope in Tibet 231

put his foot into a rat hole and rolled me gently
on to the ground. I fired some shots in desper-
ation, the foresight of my rifle wobbling about
the brute's bobbing stern, but failed to stop
him, and thus had the mortification of seeing my
first Tibetan antelope go away. When he was
almost out of sight even with the glasses, he
made for the slopes and became hidden behind
a small spur. One is loath to leave a wounded
beast ; and though it was getting dusk, I went
after him on the chance of his having lain down.
Very cautiously I ascended the slope. Suddenly
a clatter of stones from below me, and out rushed
the buck, going at a great pace. A shot at ten
yards, however — even a snap — is not to be missed,
and to the crack of the rifle he rolled over. He
carried a fine head, the horns measuring over
twenty -four inches. Through one of them a small
splintered hole showed where one of my wild
shots had gone. I was never more delighted
at getting a beast.

There is something very charming, at any
rate to the official person, in being out of reach
of post and telegraph ; and here we enjoyed a
sense of freedom engendered by the many miles
of mountainous desert land that lay between
us and the nearest railway. But an altitude
of 16,000 feet above sea-level is a wonderful

232 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

antidote to excessive animal spirits, and makes
the avoidance of physical effort a thing to be
studied. So we never walked where we could
ride, and even got into the way of doing our
stalks in the saddle, at any rate the greater
part of them.

The programme of a marching day was some-
what like this. In the early morning dusk a
voice outside our tent would be heard : " It's
time " ; and day by day repeated, the simple
words in the cold and dark of a Tibetan morn-
ing came like a knell, for if the early morning
sleep is dear at sea-level, believe me it becomes
much more so when you get up to a great
height.

In half an hour, more or less, muffled in furs,
we would be sitting in the other tent, and old
Abdulla, ex -trader and ex - caravan - bashi, who
had travelled over half Asia with the explorer
Ney Elias and was now our trusted factotum,
would be bringing in the samovar and smoking
antelope chops. Breakfast would be eaten in
the bustle and apparent discomfort of breaking
up camp, striking tents, rolling bedding, and
loading up animals. Without dallying over
this duty meal, we would start on ahead of the
caravan, about the time the sun began to touch
the tops of the mountains. And how slowly

Lunch half-way.

A Tibetan antelope.

After Antelope in Tibet

233

the line of light used to creep down the
mountain -sides, the sun seeming to grudge us
cold mortals his feeble warmth ! However, all
that was soon forgotten in the look-out for
antelope and gazelle ; for once fairly on the
antelope plains, we rarely reached the luncheon
place without having a shot. Our cook with
the lunch things would have started early, and
about noon, rounding a corner, we would see the
shamiana or awning pitched, a white dot visible
miles away on the bare plain. For in this country
one experiences great extremes of heat and cold.
The sun at midday is a very different individual
to what he is at seven o'clock ; the heat of the
barren ground beats up with tremendous force,
and the country being destitute of trees, our
little shamiana used to be as welcome to us
as the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land
to Arab or Ishmaelite. About two o'clock on
we would go again, tea-things and water slung
about our retainers' ponies to use when we felt
inclined, and the camping - ground would be
reached about four or five. A camping place
in this country, by the way, means any spot
where there is grass for the ponies, water to
drink, and argols or burtza for fuel.

The baggage coming a direct road, and without
halts, would arrive shortly afterwards, or at any

2 34 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

rate we felt annoyed if it did not, and tents
would spring up like magic; but that delightful
adjunct of Himalayan camps, a roaring fire, was
conspicuous by its absence in this woodless
country. In this way twenty-five or thirty
miles would be covered in a day, — sometimes
more, for the distances in Tibet are so vast
that marches have to be lengthened in proportion
to reach anywhere at all. Fellow-travellers or
habitations there were none. The only inhab-
itants of the country are nomad Tibetans, or
Changpas as they are called.

As for supplies, we carried these with us, all
except the meat which walked — in the shape
of sheep, — though this became superfluous when
we were amongst the antelope ; while for milk
we had a little flock of white goats, each of which
contributed about a teaspoonful. (What would
an English cow say to being marched thirty
miles and milked at the end?)

As regards the sport of antelope -shooting in
Tibet, my experience of it came after many years'
shooting in the Himalaya, where every stalk is
a serious undertaking, a climax only attained
perhaps after many days' hard work ; and I must
confess that the pursuit of the nimble cheru gave
me a lot of pleasure. The fact that with luck
one might get two or three shots in a day did not

After Antelope in Tibet 235

to my mind at all detract from the pleasure of it.
Near the Ladak frontier the antelope are very
wild and difficult to approach, but farther east,
where they are less shot at, they are less so ;
though of course everywhere it much depends
whether they are found on an open plain or in
the neighbourhood of hills which afford cover
in stalking.

Antelope are pretty beasts, standing about
thirty-two inches high. Their colour varies from
brown to fawn, the under part being of a lighter
shade, almost white. Under the short stiff hair
lies a layer of wonderful soft white wool that
is woven into exquisite pashmina. This can be
plucked out in handfuls, and is valuable. Their
slender horns have a graceful curve, and frequently
have a high polish in the natural state. In a
country like Tibet, where an old provision tin
or the lid of a packing-case is a very valuable
asset, the horns are put by the natives to all
sorts of uses. Perhaps the most appropriate use
is as a rifle-rest, when a pair of them are attached
to the barrel by a hinge, the points when in use
sticking into the ground. The better the rifle,
of course the more help such a rest would be;
and it has often occurred to me to ask why
we should be superior to the idea for our in-
different shots in the Army. The Tibetans also

236 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

make an ingenious trap for antelope out of the
same material, and this they prefer using to
bullets or powder, which are hard to come by.
This consists of a ring three or four inches in
diameter, made of splinters of horn bound round
with goat-hair twine. Sticking out towards the
centre are a number of horn spikes, so arranged
as to allow an antelope's foot to go through in
one direction but not to be withdrawn. The snare
is covered with a sprinkling of sand, and set
attached to a heavy stone on one of the numer-
ous paths made by antelope.

Though their colour matches their surroundings,
antelope, owing to their being so often on the
move, are not as a rule difficult to see ; but
when motionless, like other hill beasts, they
"turn into stones." And by the same token
stones are frequently mistaken for one's quarry ;
and, curiously enough, if you start with the idea
that a stone on a distant hill is an animal,
the more you stare at it the more it appears
to be ascending the hill. In illustration of this
I must record an anecdote, which by the way
is the story of a "record." It occurred a few-
mornings after the first antelope had been shot.
The lady of the party, whose vision, I may
remark, was second to no one's, had for a few
days previously been particularly successful in

After Antelope in Tibet 237

spotting " pale-coloured animals " which appeared
to be " climbing up the hill." That too large
a proportion of these turned out to be of the
" sandstone " or " conglomerate " variety, I would
not venture to assert, but somehow the things
she pointed out on the hillsides came to be re-
ferred to as " pale climbers " (as opposed to ante-
lope), which was no doubt an absolutely unjust
reflection on her eyesight.

We were riding as usual some way ahead of
the caravan, when my eye caught sight of a
light sandy-coloured object on the side of a hill
which lay to one side of the track we were
following. It seemed too light a colour for an an-
telope, but then again it did not look like a stone,
though it was quite motionless. If I had been
by myself I should have used my glasses without
a second's thought ; but I had been talking about
"pale climbers," which made it difficult. The
wife had her eye on it I could see, but a similar
reticence on the matter seemed to overcome her
too, so we proceeded in silence.

After going a little way, when my thoughts had
drifted to something else, she suddenly remarked :
"Well, I'm not going to blunder on to an ante-
lope and pretend it's a stone, if you are," and
dropping the reins on her pony's neck she forth-
with took a survey through her glasses. It was,

238 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

she declared, a big buck antelope fast asleep !
And clearly it was the lady's shot.

We turned our ponies round, and sending a
man to stop the caravan, rode quietly round to
the opposite side of the hillock to that on which
the buck was lying. Tying the ponies' heads
together (in other countries this might make
ponies kick, in this country it makes them stand),
we left them and quietly ascended. Arrived at
the top, we found, as is frequently the case with
the round hills of Tibet, that the ground curved
away in front, and anything a little way down
the hill could not be seen at all. So we walked
cautiously down. Farther and farther we went.
Nothing in view. " Now, was it a stone after all ? "
I asked myself. Suddenly up sprang an antelope
from under our feet, like a hare out of her form,
and was gone a hundred yards before my wife
could sit down or I could whistle. Then I
whistled for all I was worth. Curiosity, thy name
surely is antelope ! He stopped and turned round
broadside. Crack went the rifle, and the buck
died in a heap. It was 165 measured yards, and
I believe the first Tibetan antelope shot by a lady.
I let some time elapse before I said anything more
about "pale climbers."

While on the subject of illusions I may mention
another to which the stalker of Tibetan antelope

After Antelope in Tibet 239

may, like the writer, fall a prey. I had had a shot
at a buck, and to all appearance missed him clean.
I had watched him gallop away till he had put
a respectable distance between us, and was de-
bating in my mind whether he was worth follow-
ing, or whether it would not save time and temper
to look for a fresh beast. Suddenly I saw him start
madly galloping straight towards me. On he came
at full split, when all of a sudden his legs seemed
to crumple up beneath him, and he came crash
down on the ground as if he had had a bullet
through the brain. I had seen nothing like it
before, and the analogy of a " towered bird " at
once occurred to me. I thought I must have hit
him with the small Mannlicher bullet in some vital
spot, but that the wound had taken a little time
to prove fatal, or the exertion of galloping away
might have caused some further injury. Anyhow
he was dead, I thought, and the reason of his queer
behaviour could now be ascertained. I hastened up
towards him, when what was my surprise to see
him on his legs again lolloping gaily away ! The
explanation seems to be in a small stinging grub
found underneath Tibetan antelopes' skins. What
I had taken to be the buck's death -run was no
more than the result of the sting of one of the
larvae ; but why the collapse at the end ? I have
witnessed the same thing on two occasions, so

240 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

suppose it is not uncommon, though I have
nowhere seen it mentioned by sportsmen.

There is naturally not very much variety to be
found in antelope stalking : but in their country
you have in addition the gigantic yak ; the burhel,
half goat half sheep ; the Ovis ammon, " father of
all the flocks on earth " ; and the Tibetan gazelle.

The rifle you require is one whose bullet will go
"a very long way in a very little time/' naturally
one of the modern small-bores with split soft-nose
bullets, with the flattest trajectory possible. The
drawback, though at the same time the charm, of
the country, is its remoteness. But at the same
time no one who has once penetrated into the
" mist of that dim land " has ever regretted it or
failed to succumb to its fascination.

Head of Tibetan antelope.

241

THE LAPCHAK.

LET the reader imagine himself transported far
away to the Tibetan borderland beyond Kashmir.
Here India has imperceptibly merged into Chinese
Tartary. The white-crested billow-like sierras of
the Hindu Kush have subsided into the heaving
swell of the great Chang, and the most elevated
region in the world is reached, where the lowest
valleys are lifted higher above the earth's mean
surface than the summits of the loftiest mountains
in Europe.

In a wide sandy plain, forming a trough amid
these mountains, lies a lake of deep blue water.
The margin of the lake glistens white with incrust-
ations of the salts with which the water is impreg-
nated ; and far away in the distance, where the
blue can no longer be seen, a white line waver-
ing in the mirage, and seemingly lifted up in
the dry quivering air, marks its extent. The
echoless silence of very high regions hangs over
all, only broken at intervals by the melancholy

Q

242 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

call of the Brahminy duck or the distant note
of wild geese.

The plain is at this season of a yellowy-green
tint, from the coarse scanty grass with which it
is covered, gradually fading into a lighter shade
where the plain becomes mountain. White patches
here and there mark borax and soda efflor-
escence. The sun beats down with the intensity
only felt in thin air. The scene is not without
animal life, for a herd of kyang, or wild asses,
can be seen on the yellow shale slopes, distant
it may be half a mile, it may be treble as far,
manoeuvring in sections and half sections like
a troop of cavalry. Distances cannot be judged
in the clear air of Tibet. Nearer still, where
the grass is thickest, little spots of white, ap-
pearing and disappearing, show, to the keen-eyed
only, the presence of a herd of goa, or Tibetan
gazelle.

The human element is present in a few black
tents pitched near an arm of the lake. Their
changpa owners can be seen sitting at their tent-
doors spinning wool, or else moving about among
the hundreds of yaks and goats scattered round
the encampment.

It is nothing short of marvellous how these
shepherds of Rupshu support an existence, the
conditions of which are so inimical to life. They

Changpa (nomad} encampment.

Ladaki dance.

The Lapchak 243

live at a height where breathing is itself a burden
to the normally constituted, in a country where
cereals and timber are not, and the only vegeta-
tion is the coarse grass and burtsa, which grows
sparingly on the hillsides and valleys. Even this
latter is not always obtainable, and then they have
to depend for fuel, in a climate where the ther-
mometer frequently falls many degrees below zero,
on dry droppings of yak and sheep. The cold of
these regions is intensified by bitter winds, but
their tents are of the poorest description, made
of black blanketing suspended from sticks from
the outside — the rude origin of the beautiful
pagoda architecture. Very different are they from
the roomy, warm, and comfortable yorts of the
nomads of the Pamirs. Flocks and herds are their
sole means of livelihood ; their only food besides
milk and " dairy produce " being the barley-meal
and tea they get in exchange for wool.

A track running east and west passes close by
the tents, and is lost to view in the distance,
where the mountains gradually merge into plain.
Towards evening, a cloud of dust, looking golden
under the setting sun, appears hanging in the west,
and attracts the attention of the tent dwellers. It
betokens the approach of a caravan, and as it
comes nearer, a black mass consisting of moving
yaks and men can be seen below it. The yaks are

244 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

some eighty in number, and laden with bales.
Moving on a broad front, they progress at a fairly
rapid rate, driven by bare-shouldered Ladakis to
an accompaniment of shouts and whistles which
can be heard from far.

Of the yaks and their drivers it would be hard
to say which would appear the stranger of the two
to one who had seen neither before. The latter
plainly belong to the yellow races, and have the
prominent cheek-bones, almost hairless faces char-
acteristic of this branch of the human race. Their
black hair is drawn into a pigtail at the back,
their heads being covered by a flapped cap of
lambskin, the flaps of which are turned up during
the heat of the day. Their clothing consists of
little more than a voluminous sheepskin cloak
confined round their waist by a girdle ; but these
are now slipped off their shoulders, leaving them
bare. On their feet are high boots of felt and soft
leather. They walk with a peculiar roll, but can
cover great distances. The Ladaki physiognomy
is distinctly homely, but honest -looking and not
unpleasing, offering in this respect a marked con-
trast to their nomad brethren, the tent -dwelling
changpas, whose double-facedness is proverbial in
these parts.

The bovines they are driving belong to the
variety known as the "grunting -ox," uncouth

The Lapchak 245

shaggy monsters that look as if they had walked
out of a "prehistoric peep." They are useful
animals in these high regions, from their ability to
carry loads at elevations where other animals are
useless, and in spite of their apparent clumsiness
are wonderfully sure-footed on bad ground. Their
value in these parts is enhanced by the fact that
grain is not a necessity for them. They refuse in
fact to eat it, a peculiarity which probably points
to comparatively recent domestication.

The caravan has now arrived at the encamp-
ment. Loads are taken off and stacked, and
the yaks turned loose to graze are quickly
scattered over the plain. The new arrivals and
the shepherds foregather round the fire, and as
the sun sets and the bitter night wind springs
up, their barley - meal and tea is eaten. The
twilight is soon gone, and by the time the last
flicker of colour dies out in the west and the
night is unfolded in its cloudless brilliancy, the
camp sinks into silence and sleep.

The rime is still sparkling in the light of the
morning moon when the camp awakes. The
strayed animals are collected and loaded up,
and before the beams of the rising sun strike
the distant snow-peaks the caravan is lost to
view and hearing.

A few days later, it is again evening, when

246 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

the cloud of dust appears once more, heralding
the approach of another caravan. Again the
black mass of yaks draws near and the same scene
is enacted, and so on for a fortnight, with a few
days' interval between each caravan. A few days
behind the rearmost caravan comes a party of
a different kind, whose arrival is announced by
a confused jangle of bells. At the head rides
an advanced party of two men, one of whom
bears a red standard. They are clad in red
velvet frocks shaped after the Tibetan manner,
confined round their waists by Jcammarbands, in
which are stuck crossways long swords with
silver scabbards, incrusted with turquoises and
corals. Their hair is smoothed down in a straight
fringe over their eyes, making their already low
Mongolian foreheads appear still lower. Felt
Tibetan caps with turned-up brims surmount
their heads, and the costume is completed by
long riding-boots of red and white numdah.
A little distance behind there comes a caravan
consisting of a hundred or more mules of good
size and quality, laden with bales and chests,
with a driver to every ten or so ; and behind
these again ride a company of apparently some
rank and title. It is time, however, before
describing these, that the reader should be
afforded some enlightenment as to the meaning of

The Lapchak 247

the procession of caravans he has encountered in
these elevated wilds.

In the days of Llachen de legs Namgyal,
King of Ladak, who was then lord also of the
province known as Ngareskoorsum in Western
Tibet, these territories were invaded by a Tibetan
army under the " ex-lama" Tsang. With the
help of the Nawab of Kashmir the invaders were
driven back, and were invested in the fort of
Tashisgang, on the Indus. The sequel may be
given in the words of the Ladaki historian, as
translated by the late Dr Karl Marks of the
Moravian Mission at Leh : —

"The Depazhung (or Lhassa Government)
desired the Dugpa Omniscient one (Mi-pam-
wang-po) to go and negotiate for peace. The
result of their deliberations was as follows :
'The Bodpa have come to consider that
whereas Tibet is a Buddhistic and Kashmir
a non-Buddhistic country, and whereas Bud-
dhistic and non - Buddhistic religions have
nothing in common, it follows that if at
the frontier the King of Ladak does not
prosper, Bod also cannot enjoy prosperity.
The occurrences of the recent war should be
considered things of the past.7

" The King, on the other hand, undertook

248 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

in future to keep watch at the frontier of
Buddhistic and non-Buddhistic faiths, and
out of regard for the doctrine of Sangsgyas
would not allow the army from India to
proceed to an attack upon Bod. As to
merchandise in demand in Kashmir, the
following agreement was come to : The fine
wool of Ngareskoorsum shall not be sold
to any other country ; that the price of fine
and coarse wool mixed shall be fixed at eighty
nyag or two rupees, to be paid both in
money and kind ; that the Chang - thang
people shall not be allowed to use the nyag
of the people of the Indus gorge; that it
shall not be said of the wool of the Chang
that it contains soil, stones, or moisture ;
and that to Kudok itself none but the Court
merchant shall be admitted. Regarding the
fine wool trade, four Kashmiri merchants
shall reside at Spectub and do the trading
with the Kashmiris of Kashmir ; this shall be
the only way by which it shall go to Kashmir.
No Kashmiri of Kashmir shall be allowed to
go to Chang-thang. Those Ladak Kashmiris
who go to Chang-thang shall not be allowed
themselves to go down to Kashmir with loads
of fine wool. Regarding Ngareskoorsum,

The Lapchak 249

Mi-pam-wang-po's stipulations were to this
effect : It shall be set apart to meet the
expenses of sacred lamps and prayers at
Lhassa, but at Minsar the King shall be his
own master, so that the Kings of Ladak
may have wherewithal to pay for lamps and
other sacrifices at Kailas ; and the lake, it
shall be his private domain. With this
exception the boundary shall be fixed at the
Lhari stream at Demjok. From Tibet the
Government trader shall come with two
hundred loads of tea, and nowhere but by
Ladak shall rectangular tea-bricks be sent
across the frontier. The King of Ladak, on
the other hand, shall send once in three years
a mission conveying presents to the clergy
of Bod. As regards presents to ordinary
lamas, the quantity and quality is not fixed ;
but to the Labrang steward shall be given
ten zho of gold, ten shang of scent, six pieces
of calico, and one piece of cotton cloth.
Throughout their sojourn, the mission shall
receive daily rations; for the road, beasts of
burden shall be supplied to carry two hundred
loads, fifteen baggage, and ten riding,
ponies ; private ponies shall have as much
fodder as they like for the steppe districts."

250 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

This, then, is the explanation of the succession
of caravans we have seen toiling eastward. It
is the embassy sent by the King of Ladak to
pay the triennial tribute to the Grand Lama1
of Tibet and the " Clergy of Bod." The fact
that there is now no King of Ladak, this country
having many years ago been absorbed into the
State of Kashmir, the result of King Llachen
de legs Namgyal's ill-advised request for assist-
ance, has fortunately not led to the abandonment
of the reciprocal missions between Ladak and
Lhassa. They still continue — that from Lhassa
coming to Ladak every year, and that starting
from Ladak going to Lhassa every third year.
The Lapchak, as it is called (properly Lochak),
returns from Lhassa the year following, carry-
ing return presents to the Maharajah of Kash-
mir, the representative of the old Ladak kings.
There are, indeed, pecuniary interests at stake
which, apart from other considerations, prevent
the old practice falling into desuetude. The
privilege allowed to the Lapchak of free car-
riage from Ladak to Lhassa and back, nomi-
nally to the extent of two hundred and sixty
loads, but really very much more, together with
other perquisites sanctioned by long custom,

1 This article was written before the flight of the Dalai Lama.
The Lapchak mission, however, still continues.

The Lapchak 251

make it an undertaking rewarded by no small
profits.

So the party forming the last of the detach-
ments consists of the chief of the mission and
his attendants. Sidiq-joo, the bearded man in
blue silk robes, white turban, and long Yarkandi
boots, is the head of the mission. He is a partner
in the well-known trading firm of Nasr Shah of
Leh, a family of Mohammedan Arghuns (half-
castes of Ladaki and Mohammedan origin) who
have long had the entree of Lhassa, and have
relations living there — a privilege usually denied
to all but Buddhists. The titular head of the
mission must, however, necessarily be a Ladaki
Buddhist of good family, for to none but one
of this faith could audience with the Dalai Lama,
or even with the Panchen Eimpoche of Tashi
Lunpo, second only in holiness to the Dalai
Lama himself, be accorded. The individual se-
lected this year as the head of the mission for
ceremonial purposes is one Bongpa, the clean-
shaven, austere-looking man in a rich silk cloak
with a black velvet mitre on his head. The
"Man who has to present the Lochak" is the
title by which he is referred to in the letter he
carries.

Behind these come a mixed escort of Arghuns
and Ladakis, conspicuous among whom is the

252 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

treasurer with an enormous bunch of keys,
and the tea - maker with his huge teapot of
copper and silver on the saddle in front of him.
The mission carry credentials with them in
the shape of letters from the Wazir of Ladak
to the civil and ecclesiastical dignitaries of Gartok,
Tashi Lunpo, and other important places on the
road, as well as to those of Lhassa. The style
of these is humble, not to say abject. Here is
a specimen, addressed to the Panchen Eimpoche
of Tashi Lunpo : —

"To the lotus-ornamented golden throne
of the most high, all -knowing, all -seeing
Panchen, the jewel of the vertex of all gods
and living beings, the saviour without equal.
The pious beg to submit with reverence.
Now as you are like the great lord who
has on his head all the different deities,
and who reaches unto the periphery of the
sea, and as you are the incarnation of the
great god to living beings, being firm like
a diamond, and having the wisdom of the
three secrets. Along with the returning
Lochak, as stated in the letter sent by you,
arrived the presents — a godly garment, fine
cloth, one piece. That was a great, great
favour. And have the white mind to help

The " man who has to present the Lochak"

The Lapchak 253

the High Government. Also, this year in
the former way we have sent this Man
who has to present the Lochak. Please look
upon him with grace and mercy, and help
him as formerly. Furthermore, may you,
who are the incomparable jewel of the vertex
of all the gods and men whom you are guiding
to heaven, be firm in your health. Send upon
the crown of our head your words of different
kinds, like the flowing of the cleansing water
of the four corners, — please, please.

" The presents which we lift up as a
prayer are a pure white scarf, a piece of
kimkhab, a load of apricots."

The following is a specimen of one of the
letters which the Lochak brought back with him
from Lhassa, in the " Water-monkey year." It
is couched in a somewhat different strain, and
is addressed by the Ambans to the ruler of
Ladak. The Ambans, it should be mentioned,
are the Chinese representatives at the Court of
the Grand Lama : —

" Know this, that by the Lochak your
supplication has reached, and that which
according to the treaty every year has to
be presented to both of us great ministers,

254 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

has arrived as stated in the letter; but
only because the bringer says with an
earnest mind that the way is very long,
and you presented it with great reverence
and a simple heart, we don't like to reproach
you. One load of dried apricots you may
reckon as accepted by us, but at the same
time we send you the one bale of cotton
cloth back. In the same way we give you
in return a present, and have sent two
pieces of cloth, two scarves, flinging them
away from our side to you, and you have
to take it immediately to your account.
Keep it always in your mind that you must
govern the people under you as well as you
can, and that you must keep peace with
the surrounding petty kings, and live on
friendly terms. This is most important.
Referring to this, you have to take it to
heart that you have to write a letter
to us."

Whether or no the " Omniscient Ones " at
Lhassa are really unaware that Ladak is no longer
a State feudatory to them, and that there are
remaining no " surrounding petty kings " with
whom the Ladak ruler could go to war, who can
tell ? They have learnt many things of late years,

The Lapchak

255

and perhaps this also. Perhaps the tribute-bear-
ing mission is recognised by them also as a
convenient fiction with which to cloak commercial
dealings with a non-Buddhistic country. Anyhow,
the Lapchak remains one of the few links con-
necting Lhassa with the outside, and, in Tibetan
opinion, the less important part of the world.

The articles of commerce the mission takes to
Lhassa are of different kinds, the most important
being : dried apricots, corals, velvet, saffron, and
English piece goods, also alwan, or pashmina,
from Kashmir ; for the Tibetans have not the
art of weaving their superb wool into the finest
sorts of cloth. In return, the Lapchak brings
musk, turquoises, cTierus (a sort of inferior astra-
khan), and Chinese brick- tea. The foundation of
the trade is the last commodity, for in spite of
the distance of Ladak and Turkestan from the
tea-gardens of China, this form of the leaf more
than holds its own with the Indian article in
these parts. Into Tibet the latter finds no entry
at all, as the brick-tea brought from Szechuan is
the monopoly of Government officials and State
traders, and a most profitable one, for it is thrust
on the people whether they want it or no. When
they do not want or cannot afford it, the trans-
action is simplified ; for on the payment becoming
due the official vendor receives his tea back, plus

256 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

his profits on the deal and interest. For Tibet is
a dark country, the people suffering the oppression
on the one hand of the officials from Lhassa, on
the other of the monasteries — the former having
complete powers over their bodies, the latter over
their souls.

The brick-tea which occupies such an important
place in the lives of all Tibetans, fulfilling as it
does most of the purposes of a currency, is not
really the rubbish it has been described by many
Tibetan travellers. The worst qualities of the tea,
it is true, are composed of the coarser leaves of
the plant intermixed with twigs, but the better
qualities are made from high- class pickings. But
all sorts have certain special qualities that make
the bricks invaluable to nomadic peoples. The
peculiar process of manufacture the bricks under-
go, which, so far, Indian factories have quite failed
to imitate, renders them easy to cut or break
without making them friable, so that they stand
transport well without crumbling. Connoisseurs
of Central Asia, affirm that this tea is far more
digestible than other teas, green or black, and
its final claim to superiority is that three infusions,
or I should more properly say decoctions, can be
made from it.

A Tibetan tea-maker's recipe might run as
follows : Thoroughly boil a handful of tea in

Wares from Lhassa.

Members of (he Lapchak^

The Lapchak 257

sufficient water ; when the liquor is of the
right colour, add an equal measure of butter
to the tea used, and salt to taste. Pour the
whole into the churn and agitate vigorously
for three minutes, or until the ingredients are
well amalgamated. Decant into a large teapot,
and allow to simmer gently on the fire. Serve
hot.

This compound looks like cocoa, but would, I
should say, have to be submitted to the European
palate — after the plan recommended by Euskin —
a good many times before any pleasing aroma
could be detected in it, and I have not so far
met any one that has had the courage to continue
the trial long enough. For Tibetans, however, it
is meat and drink, and they continue sipping
and drinking it for hours.

The turquoises brought by the Lapchak come
from the mines of Szechuan, and are quite differ-
ent from the turquoises of commerce which come
from Persia. They look like irregularly shaped
blue pebbles, varying in size from a pea to a
hen's egg. They are full of black veins and
flaws, and are almost useless for cutting as jewels.
In Ladak and Tibet they are chiefly used in the
ornamentation of monastery utensils and musical
instruments, and are also worn by the Ladaki
women as jewellery in great quantities. In fact,

R

258 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

the movable wealth of a Ladaki woman is always
converted into turquoises.

The musk brought from Lhassa consists, of
course, of the pods of the musk-deer which are
said to abound in the birch-forests to the south
of the chief province of Tibet.

Among the articles brought by the Lapchak,
I should not forget to mention the beautiful
copper, silver, and brass teapots and other vessels
which come from Lhassa and Kham, and form the
object of many a curio-hunter's visit to Leh. The
shapes of these are particularly quaint and beauti-
ful, albeit the frequent occurrence of the dragon
betokens in many of them a Chinese origin of
design. The workmanship is also exceedingly
good.

The curious custom of trading by means of
State embassies is not confined to the Lapchak
mission, although this, and the return mission
from Lhassa, known as the Chabba, are the most
notable instances. Many other missions of a
similar kind, sanctioned either by long custom
or agreement, pass backwards and forwards over
the frontier. Among these may be noticed the
mission sent to Tibet by the Stok and Masho
Gyalpos, the present-day representatives of the
old ruling family of Ladak, and from the Tibet
side that despatched to Ladak by the Garpons of

The Lapchak 259

Gartok, the joint- viceroys of Western Tibet. The
monastery of the red lamas at Hemis, and a few
other of the more important Ladak monasteries,
also enjoy similar privileges in conjunction with
the affiliated monastic institutions in Tibet.

The Lapchak, which is the Kashmir State
mission, is financed to some extent from the
State coffers. The rupees advanced used formerly
to be repaid to the State, after the return of the
mission, in Chinese tea -bricks; but the auction
of this quantity of tea gave rise to so many abuses
that the present custom of repaying both principal
and interest in cash was substituted.

But to return to the caravans, which we left
moving slowly eastward. In a few days they
will have crossed the frontier of Ladak, the " Lhari
stream at Demjok," and entered the forbidden
land. Their road lies along the banks of the
Indus, but lately sprung from his cradle among the
peaks of Kailas. The famous river is here but a
child in the Buddhist land of its birth — a small and
shallow stream, sometimes rippling along between
grassy banks, sometimes meandering sluggishly
among boggy flats, fordable nearly everywhere.
Who would recognise the same river in his
tempestuous youth, when, with leaping waves,
he thunders and surges down the gorges of
Haramosh and Chilas ? Or who, again, in his

260 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

middle age, where he emerges from the Himalayas,
having triumphantly burst through these stupen-
dous barriers, a broad and deep but silently rolling
flood ? Still more unlike his trans - Himalayan
childhood is the old age of this mighty river,
for this is passed among the deserts of Sind,
where, bearer of ships and commerce, he blesses
his banks with fields of verdure, and turns a
wilderness into a garden ; till, gliding peacefully
onward, the end of his long journey is attained
— the ocean and Nirvana.

A week's marching along the banks of the river,
after leaving the Ladak frontier, will bring our
caravan to Gar Gunsa, or Gartok, the summer
headquarters of the Garpons, a town composed,
with the exception of the Garpons' residences,
entirely of tents. The yaks will here be dis-
missed, and their loads will henceforth be carried
by Tibetan-owned animals. The mules, however,
which are the traders7 own property, and carry
the more precious loads of coral, saffron, &c., will
go the whole way to Lhassa.

At every place of importance on the route the
Lapchak will be received with almost royal
honours, their approach being heralded by the
hoarse boom of great trumpets from the monas-
teries perched up on high places. At Gartok the
mission will find the annual fair in progress, and

The Lapchak 261

will meet traders from Kulu, Lahoul, Nepal, and
all the surrounding parts — a strange medley, knit
together by a strange creed.

Passing on from here, they will continue their
journey towards the rising sun, through the land
" where there is gold," leaving the sacred moun-
tains of Kailas, the mystic sources of Indus and
Brahmaputra, and the famous lakes of Mansarowar,
on their right hand, and so on to the great monas-
tery of the yellow lamas at Tashi Lunpo. Here
they will rest for a while and present their offer-
ings to the Panchen Kimpoche, the head of the
Gelugpa sect. They will then enter on the final
stage of their journey, and three months after
passing through the gates of Leh, will enter the
holy city of Lhassa.

262

ABOUT YAK.

MEDIEVAL beasts and birds may be divided into
two categories. Those whose image became, as
years rolled on, less and less defined, till they
merged into the purely legendary ; and those, like
the dong, as the wild yak is called, whose existence
has been confirmed by modern travel. Let me
first present a picture of the yak as he lived in the
imagination of old Eastern writers. "This is a
very wild and ferocious beast," says the Tarikhi
Kashidi, "in whatever manner it attacks it proves
fatal. Whether it strikes with its horns or kicks
or overthrows its victim. If it has no opportunity
of doing any of these things, it tosses its victim
twenty yards into the air with its tongue, and he is
dead before reaching the ground."

According to the Haft Iklim, the yak kills " with
its horns, by its kicks, by treading under foot, and
by tearing with its teeth ; " J while the Emperor
Humayun is reported to have made the remarkable

1 Yule's Marco Polo.

About Yak 263

statement, that after it had knocked a man down
it skinned him from head to heels by licking him
with its tongue !

The real wild yak, while not possessing quite
the fearsome attributes these writers invested him
with, looses little in interest by the light of public-
ity that in these days beats on the most retiring
of animals. What if his combatant instinct is
(pace Sven Hedin) small? Till human hunters
came on the scene, he was sole monarch over his
wind-swept plains and valleys, and had no struggle
for existence of the kind that develops truculency.
What if his terrible hoofs are used for no more
aggressive purpose than to carry his huge bulk
over high mountains, his horny tongue for nothing
more sinister than to scrape up the mosses and
vegetation that afford no tooth-hold? His home
is the uninhabited regions of Tibet, midway
between heaven and earth, and his vast frame is
nourished by the sparse verdure that fringes the
region where no green thing can grow. It is
hardly strange that an animal of his size, that can
find sustenance and congenial surroundings where
the normally made perish for want of oxygen,
should have been given a supernatural halo of
ferocity.

From a sporting point of view, the yak has his
failings. He has not the eyesight of other moun-

264 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

tain game, — in fact, he might almost be called
myopic : he is not the fighter that his kinsmen
of the Indian jungles are. But do not let any big-
game hunter imagine that when he goes out to
slay a yak he will have a mere butcher's job in
front of him. He may start from home with this
idea. But after reaching the country, where a
small incline sets the heart thumping in a most
disquieting manner, and the mere thought of a
long climb provokes a feeling of " is any animal
worth it ? " ; when the quarry is spied at the head
of a long valley that seems to slope endlessly up
to the sky ; when the wind is patchy, and it will
take half a long day's toil to encompass a doubtful
stalk, — then he will lose the farm -yard idea, if
indeed he ever retained it after reaching their
wild bleak country.

Fortunately, it is possible to ride over much of
the ground, and even to do parts of the stalks on
pony-back. The stress of living in high altitudes
is great, and the man that wants to be fit to climb
when necessity arises, not to speak of having his
nerves in fit condition to shoot, should ride as
much as he can and undertake no unnecessary
work.

On the " Chang" there are two kinds of grass —
the coarse scanty kind that grows on the hillsides,
and the short succulent spang that is found at the

About Yak 265

bottom of the valleys and near water. Yak prefer
the latter, and are rarely found far away from it
except when on the move. These bovines are of
course ridiculously easy to see and quite unmistak-
able when seen. Bulls and cows are not readily
distinguishable at a distance. The males stand
higher and are bigger all round, having especially
much bigger necks than the cows. They have also
bushier tails, and their horns are thicker, and do
not, like the cows' horns, have a marked terminal
upward curve. Careful as he may be, the inexperi-
enced may fail to distinguish the sexes, but a man
of the country should never make a mistake. I
would not, of course, guarantee their judgment in
the matter if the camp happened to be short of
meat !

The biggest bulls are usually found alone or
with one or two companions of their own sex,
except in the late autumn, when they join the
herd. It must be admitted that the yak, uncouth,
hirsute, and monstrous as he is, fails somewhat in
dignity of appearance. His head is set on too low,
while the matted fringe of hair falling down from
his flanks and quarters like petticoats, and the
great bush of hair at the end of his tail, give him
an aspect more "prehistoric" than majestic.

In that interesting book of travel ' The Memoirs
of Colonel Gardner,' an account is given of the

266 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

way these animals are hunted : " When pursued by
horsemen and dogs and on the point of being taken,
it hides its hindquarters in some bush and there
waits for its enemies, imagining perhaps that if it
could conceal its tail, which it considers perhaps as
the object they are in search of it for, it will
escape unhurt."

Would I were able to describe the manner in
which I participated in so picturesque a scene, but
this I fear is impossible, for several reasons. Since,
however, I have essayed to write about yak, I will
attempt to describe a day in pursuit of this quad-
ruped as it actually happened, and since there can
be few ladies who have been at the death of a
Tibetan dong, it shall be a day on which I was
accompanied by my wife.

Scene, a camp amid rolling mountains, 15,000
feet above sea-level. By the light of the morning
star a man and a woman emerge from their tent
with the absence of conversation that character-
ises very early rising, scramble on ponies, and
with two pig-tailed men similarly mounted put
their steeds at a mountain-side whose crest-line
is dimly outlined against the stars. Day breaks,
and they are still climbing upwards. The scree
is steep and rough going ; the air is cold — though
little enough of it — and they try walking. By
the time the crest -line is reached the country

About Yak 267

is bathed in sunlight, and on every side an ocean
of rounded hills and valleys can be seen stretching
away in the distance. Glasses out, an examin-
ation reveals — nothing. So on to the next ridge,
and the next, and the next.

The sun was high when we arrived at the top
of a crest -line similar to many we had crossed
that morning, but when we looked down, lo !
the valley beneath us was full of yak. There
must have been a hundred of them scattered
about in groups, some lying down, some grazing,
big and little, — a regular bazaar of yak. It was
a sight, the greatness of which was not lessened
by the fact at once apparent, that by walking
down behind the ridge we were on we could get
within a hundred yards of the concourse, unseen.
But no such easy triumph was to be ours, for a
prolonged and careful examination of each beast
showed that there was no bull among them.

Perhaps it was as well. Whilst we were watch-
ing them, some mysterious animal telepathy seemed
to arouse in them a sense of danger, for they
drew together in a solid phalanx and in this
formation walked unhurriedly away. One was
soon unable to distinguish individual beasts, and
then I think was the time we were most struck
by the strangeness of the sight. What were

268 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

they like ? A patch of velvet mysteriously sliding
over the mountain-slopes of its own accord, or a
gigantic swarm of black insects ?

An hour later we were looking with the tele-
scope up a wide valley that debouched at our feet
and sloped gradually upwards to a high pass
some six miles away. Below the pass, where
the green grass ended, three black dots were
faintly discernible through the thin clouds that
hung about the upper end of the valley. Since
these dots shifted their position they were de-
clared by our men to be yak, and since there
were three only they were declared to be bulls.
It was some way past noon, and the stalk would
be a long one ; owing, moreover, to the shape
of the ground and the unsteady wind — for the
yak's chief protection is his extraordinary sense
of smell — it was evident that the stalk would
be full of hazard. The only certainty, if we
tried it, was that of being benighted. My wife,
however, indignantly rejected the proposal that
she should take one man back to camp, so we
started.

By making use of the lateral ravines we got
over some four miles of the ground on our ponies,
but were then brought to a standstill by finding
that the line we had selected to guard our wind
was the wrong one for the shot. The valley had

About Yak 269

to be crossed in the open, so we left our ponies
and proceeded. What need to describe the
anxieties of that flank movement ? The three
of us made a line to present but one profile.
Then running, walking, stooping, crawling, as
the ground exacted, we crossed. Every hunter
of big game knows the mingled feelings of hope
and fear with which this crisis in the stalk was
accomplished. Breathless, but extraordinary to
relate undetected, we found ourselves behind
the corner of a ridge of rock which ran close
by the place where the yak were grazing. A
minute's pause, to let the heart -thumps caused
by a rapid scramble at somewhere about 18,000
feet quiet down, and the final stage of the stalk
began. In twenty more minutes I was sitting,
elbows on knees, with the 450 cordite rifle
held with hands none too steady on one of
the three beasts eighty yards below me. All
were big bulls. At the shot, one of them furi-
ously whirled his tail, and all began to trot up-
hill ; but before they turned the corner and were
hidden I had had a shot at each of the three
of them. When we had got down to the bottom
they were in view again. The one I had shot
at first had collapsed ; another was walking away
evidently sore stricken ; the third doubtful. We
followed hard. Legs soon turned to lead, and

270 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

my breath came in gasps. It was evident that
going uphill the wounded beasts had the legs
of us. As I got to the bottom of the steep
ascent leading to the pass, one of the yak was
half-way up, some three or four hundred yards
away ; the other had separated and made for
going up a big mountain to the right, and was
now a long way off. I determined to try and
cripple the wounded beast still more before he
topped the pass, so took the *256 and lay down.
Two shots went low ; the third, as he stood for
a second at the top, seemed like a hit, for he
gave a whisk with his tail — then he was gone.

It was too late to go farther, so back to
where my wife had remained an excited spec-
tator, taking with me the dead yak's tail. The
others would have to be seen to to-morrow. A
hasty cup of tea and we started on the long
ride to camp, made longer because we had to
take a circuitous road by the plains instead of
the morning's route, which would have been
impossible in the dark. The sun sank, and we
were soon riding by starlight. There is some-
thing in the effect of a long ride by night which
is almost hypnotic. The eye, it may be, fixes
itself on a single star. Sometimes the body
sleeps while the mind is awake, sometimes the
other way. It seemed as if the dim figure of

About Yak 271

the guide swaying in front was part of a dream
that had been going on from the beginning
of time, and as if an eternity had been spent
riding by —

Plains that the moonlight turns to sea,
Mountains that never let you near.

At last the twinkle of a camp-fire, and we
awoke to find we were still an hour's ride from
camp. When we got in we were surprised to
find it was not yet midnight, but that day
had included eighteen hours of hard work at
an extreme altitude, which for a lady may be
accounted no mean performance.

I was on the ground early next day. The
bull which had crossed the pass was followed
and found dead a mile beyond it. The other
had wandered on and was not seen again,

After all, a great part of the difficulty of
shooting yak lies not so much in the stalk as
in reaching yak ground, for they are being
driven farther east into the interior of Tibet
every year. They used to be found in the
district of Changchenmo in Ladak, but now,
except for an occasional stray herd of cows,
they are never seen there. The writer's expedi-
tions after yak were shortly before the expedition
to Lhassa, when the hated Piling (European) was

272 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

forbidden by the Tibetans to cross the frontier.
The frontier people's orders, which it must be
admitted were humane, were first to persuade
the stranger and his followers to go back.
If they will not hear persuasion, to threaten ;
if they do not care for threats, to beat them
with sticks, and seizing them, convey them
across the frontier (away, memories of the
Criterion " chucker-out " ! ) ; but if they defend
themselves by using guns, to use guns also, but
not till at least one Tibetan has been killed.
Judging from my own experience of that time,
which included one very awkward business near
Gartok, my advice would have been to avoid
the Changpas. Now, it is said, the latter have
lost some of their antipathy to strangers, and
the difficulty in entering their country is of
another kind. In any case, it is as well to
remember that the way to a Tibetan's heart is
through grain. A mule-load of barley will be
more efficacious in persuading Changpas to become
unaware of your presence than silver.

May I be permitted to give a word of advice
to those who contemplate an expedition after
yak. Do not go on shooting yak after having
bagged the four or five you may really want.
Though the animal is a magnificent one in his
shaggy uncouth way, neither head nor tail are

A deaa yak.

Wardens of the Tibetan marskes, Gartok.

About Yak

273

really fine trophies, and it would be a thousand
pities if he were to meet the fate of elimination
which has overtaken so many of the finest
breeds of wild oxen of other lands. Not that
this is at present likely or possible. All the
damage that is in the power of the most wanton
to inflict is to help to drive them from the
districts adjoining Kashmir, as they have been
driven from Kashmir territory itself into the
far interior of what still remains "the forbidden
land," but this would be pity enough.

For humanity's sake : use a heavy rifle and
not a small-bore.

For your stomach's sake : when you kill a
yak, keep the tongue and likewise the marrow
bones for your own table, and let your followers
have the rest. They will be incapable of march-
ing the next day — but you too, perhaps, will
not mind what is known in the East as " a
Europe morning. '

274

DEER- STALKING IN KASHMIR.

WHO will ever forget the occasion when he
first heard a stag's roar ? What a thrill the
sound gave him, and how his blood went racing
with the knowledge of the beast's mere prox-
imity ! Life seemed eminently liveable at that
moment. Even the first view of a stag scarcely
affords so unalloyed a pleasure — for who is there
among us that will not confess to at least a
qualm at that crisis in his life as to how he will
acquit himself, when the rifle has to be held in
hands that do not shake, and the trigger pressed
with a finger that does not convulsively indicate
the state of his nerves? Again, the first stag
one sees may be, probably is, a small one ; but
the first roar, so loud, so deep, one can never
conceive issuing from any but the throat of a
monarch. Such, at least, was my conviction as
I rode one September evening up to my tent
below the Tral Forest, and heard the weird sounds
come stealing down from the wooded mountains

Deer- Stalking in Kashmir 275

above — that half-grunt, half-bellow, with the sus-
picion of a squeal about it, with which the
Kashmir stag issues his challenge.

My camp was near the hamlets which nestle
below the forest, among orchards and vineyards
and those groves of magnificent walnut- and plane-
trees for which the lovely vale of Kashmir is
famed. I could look up at my shooting ground
whence came those thrilling sounds, and see
tier upon tier of hills clothed with alders and
willows, birches, hazels, and chestnuts, all golden
with the tints of autumn. Here and there dark-
green patches showed clumps of fir-trees, and
these grew more numerous the higher one looked,
till at the crest-line they merged into a dark
belt, cut up by straggling arms of yellow. Eoar
soon began to answer roar, and those were the
last sounds I heard before sleep came and dreams
of monster stags. Next morning all was silent.
As my Kashmiri stalker led the way uphill,
through woods dripping with dew, and grassy
glades, it was pure delight to snuff the keen,
crisp air, and to catch the pungent odours of
autumn. After an hour's climb we reached a
ridge, beyond which a wide grassy corrie opened,
a sort of amphitheatre, surrounded by forest. We
had not spied this for more than a fraction of
a minute before Eamzana, in a very excited state,

276 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

whispered, " Look, sahib, a stag and two hinds ! "
" Where?" I whispered. "Straight opposite,"
he said ; " they are visible to the naked eye."
I was looking at the ground close in front of
me, expecting from Kamzana's excitement to
see them quite near. Suddenly I felt his
fingers close about the nape of my neck.
" There, sahib, there — there — there!" he said,
jerking my head forward in the required
direction.

Very fortunately for him, just at that moment
I did catch sight of the beasts ; otherwise, the
humour of the situation could scarcely have saved
him. I have often since laughed at the remem-
brance of his cold, strong fingers round my neck,
and wondered if my peaceful submission en-
couraged him -to try his original method with
other sahibs — and with what result. Anyhow,
the fact remains that my resentment was for-
gotten in the excitement of examining the deer.
The stag and hinds were not near, but some
500 or 600 yards off, close to the forest. He
was a ten-pointer and a good one, but the stalk
seemed difficult. Though the wind was right,
the ground in front was open, and a hare could
not have crossed it without being seen. The
beasts were, on the other hand, so close to the
wood that if we tried a stalk that way, it was

Deer-Stalking in Kashmir 277

a hundred to one they would hear us on the
dry leaves.

A whispered consultation between Eamzana
and his son resulted in the latter being de-
spatched up the hill to work round and move
them. After the best part of an hour — or, at
any rate, a period that seemed like that — up
went the beasts' heads, and they gazed fixedly
at the forest behind them, and then began moving
slowly our way, making as if they would cross
our ridge a couple of hundred yards or so above
us. So we, too, went up and prepared for their
reception. I got comfortable lying down, my
rifle by my side, and watched them coming
slowly along. If nothing should put them away
now I was certain of a shot. I had with me
two rifles, a double "500, the worth of which had
been proved in the jungles of Central India,
and a new Mannlicher which I was anxious to
try. The latter was a splendid shooting weapon,
that I knew, but its bullet looked so ridiculously
small that I had no hesitation in selecting the
old rifle for my first Kashmir stag.

The beast came straight on. Two hundred
yards only separated us. Now it is a hundred
and fifty. Who has ever the patience to wait
long enough in such circumstances ? The stag
turns half broadside on, stands a moment and

278 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

looks back. As I fire he gives a bound, seemingly
hit, and begins going slowly uphill. My second
bullet is high. Now he is two hundred yards
or more away, a distance at which a black powder
*500 cannot be relied on, but going so slowly
that I feel sure it is only a matter of a few
yards before he will be down. Happy thought ;
the Mannlicher as a cripple stopper ! It is loaded,
so I raise the Lyman sight a trifle and fire.

Before the echoes have died the stag stops,
staggers, and comes tumbling down the hill. In
another quarter of a minute we were examining
our quarry — a heavy beast, with massive antlers
both rough and black, and points hard and white
as ivory. " By the way, Ramzana, where did
my first bullet hit him ? " We turned the beast
over. There was the Mannlicher hole right
enough, small and clean, no exit. The bullet
had broken into smithereens inside him as it
should, but our careful examination showed no
wound by the big bullet. My first shot had
missed him clean, that was evident, and I realised
with a sort of shock how near I had been to
losing my first stag altogether ! But how about
the bound he gave when I fired, and his slow
pace away? It was certainly odd, but might
be explained by the wind of the bullet and the
beast dazed by the report, and not certain of

The ten-pointer,

Deer-Stalking in Kashmir 279

the line to take. The thing happens now and
again, as every deer-stalker will bear witness.

The Kashmir red deer is a very similar animal
to the better-known Scotch variety; the two,
in fact, would be identical but for the difference
in the sound of the roar, which presumably
indicates a structural difference in the larynx,
and the greater size of the Kashmir beast. The
latter is a forest-loving animal (perhaps Scotch
deer were too, once upon a time), and this alters
the form of sport. It is, as a rule, only in the
evening that they emerge from their secluded
retreats, often too late for a stalk, and they
are back again before the sun grows hot on the
hillsides. So, as still hunting is quite impossible
during the autumn, the sportsman has to be
early. He then hopes to pick up beasts at once,
for little ground can be covered before it becomes
too late to find deer in the open, and then
nothing remains for him but to select a com-
fortable spot in which to pass the day. This is
the tedious part of the business. But, after all,
the man who has to while away some hours
under a Kashmir sky, surrounded by Kashmir
scenes of mountain and forest, lake and stream,
is not much to be commiserated. That, however,
is a matter of temperament, and a book is cer-
tainly a desideratum with most. Then there is

280 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

always the chance of seeing a black bear come
nosing out into the open, or exhibit himself on
the top of some distant tree, birds to watch,
and nature in a thousand other forms. About
three o'clock the first roar resounds from the
forest. The book is put away and glasses pulled
out. The sound is repeated at intervals, answered
maybe by others, and you find yourself already
calculating the size of the beast. The sun sinks
westward with astonishing rapidity, the shadows
creep along the hillsides, and a chill conies into
the air, but still the deer do not show themselves.
There is barely time for a stalk now. How
impatient you grow ! Suddenly your shikari
nudges you, and you become aware of deer
feeding in the open, where a deep shadow is
cast by a clump of fir-trees; but by the time
you have fully made them out, the stalker has
disappeared at a run, snapping his glasses as he
goes, and you follow.

A word here about the Kashmir shikari. All
have splendid physique and, as a matter of course,
wonderful eyesight. As stalkers they are good,
though not to my mind the equal of the men
one gets further north "beyond the Passes,"
— Gilgitis, Chitralis, and Ladakis, at any rate on
strange ground. They know the habits of deer
well, and, in short, will get you as many shots

Deer-Stalking in Kashmir 281

as is possible. But they are by no means fault-
less. The preference of the inhabitants of the
famous vale for speaking "the thing that is not"
rather than "the thing that is" is notorious,
and the shikari is no exception to the general
rule. He has also a particularly aggravating way,
and one it is difficult to persuade him to drop,
of treating his sahib as a mere shooting automaton.
The reader may perhaps remember Froude's de-
scription of the French King who loved to imitate
Providence, "especially in the secrecy of his
methods, with scant success, and often the most
unfortunate results ; for secrecy," the historian
went on to observe, "can only be successfully
employed by an intelligence that does not err."
This puts in a nutshell the average Kashmiri
shikari's attitude towards his employer, and with
that we will leave him.

Unlike Scotland in this respect, the winter stalk-
ing in Kashmir is a superior sport to that obtained
when the stags are roaring. One winter not long
ago I was out many days after a reputed fourteen-
pointer. I would get news that he had been seen
in a certain glen, and thither I would betake my-
self as quickly as might be. The nights were spent
in some Kashmiri hamlet, — not the most savoury of
quarters, — and I would be out on the hard snow
before daybreak. This was the best part of the day,

282 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

for soon after the sun had risen and bestrewn the
surface with a million sparkling gems, the crust
became soft and walking a toil. Unlike the autumn
stalking, in the winter one can be at work all day.
The forests, now bare of leaf, can be spied from
the opposite sides of the valleys, and in these one
may see the deer lying down or moving about, and
queer it is to see how big stags force their way
through the thickest cover, their antlers, thrown
right back on their haunches, seeming to impede
them but little. On one occasion we had spied
some deer moving towards the open, and were pre-
paring to be present at the point where they would
emerge, when the dark form of a panther glided
across the snow and stopped on the very spot
we had marked for ourselves, and there lay like
a cat on the watch. Unfortunately, a path to a
neighbouring village ran near, and a too melodious
passer-by put him away before we could get near
enough for a shot.

I got some good beasts that year, but the four-
teen-pointer was not among them. In fact, I never
saw him, and the mendacity of Kashmiri shikaris is
such that it is by no means certain that he existed.
Not that stags with fourteen points are never shot
in Kashmir. Since the game laws were introduced
several carrying this number of points have been
shot, notably a magnificent specimen which fell to

Deer -Stalking in Kashmir 283

the rifle of the Maharajah's brother, the late Sir
Amar Singh, and there is no doubt that stags with
big heads are getting more numerous every year.

That winter I did come across one very fine
stag. This was towards the end of March, a
good month for stalking, as the deer come out
into the open after the young grass and crocuses,
and the history of my meetings with that slippery
beast must conclude this sketch. His haunt was a
steep forest, extending for a mile or so below a
high hog's-back, the top of which was serrated in
such a way that from no point on it could more
than a few yards of the ridge be watched. The
other side of the hog's-back a number of deep,
grassy ravines fell steeply down to the plain a
couple of thousand feet below.

We first spied the royal, for such he was, ac-
companied by a small ten-pointer, below us in the
forest, but the snow, which lay deep on this, the
north side, was crisp and difficult to get over
silently; dry branches cracked with a terrible
noise, while others, bent down with the weight
of snow, sprang suddenly up as we crawled
through them. Of course, the stalk was a failure.
When next we saw them, a couple of days later,
they were in the same place. This time we de-
cided on a drive, and having collected my baggage
porters, the shikari took them into one end of the

284 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

forest, while I placed myself on the top of a
" bealleach," by which the beasts would cross to the
next valley. It was the right place. I soon saw
deer moving towards me. First some hinds came
by. When quite close they saw me, and with a
start of alarm galloped by. Then a switch-horn
stag. I was tempted to take him, but let him go
for fear of turning the royal. Presently a confused
murmur and shouting reached me. I saw the
black figures of beaters running over the snow,
and guessed our stag had broken back. It was so.
Looking with the glasses I saw him and his satel-
lite, the ten-pointer, just clear of the forest the
far end, and going hard, and in a moment they
were lost to view.

After a few days both were back in their old
haunt. Before reaching our spying place we had
walked along the ridge, and in doing so had come
on tracks in the snow, showing that the two stags
had crossed over the evening before for the grass
on the south side and had returned early in the
morning. We did not actually pick them up
that day till late in the afternoon, when we saw
them moving up towards the ridge, evidently in-
tending to cross it. Keturning there, we sat down
to wait for them. It has already been said that
there was no point on the ridge from which the
whole could be watched, and of course the place

Deer-Stalking in Kashmir 285

we chose was not the one our beasts selected
to cross.

After waiting till nearly dark, we went along
the ridge looking for tracks, and to our deep
disgust found that the stags had already crossed
at a point not sixty yards from where I had been
sitting. We ran like mad down the hill after
them, and came on them far down, thoroughly
enjoying themselves in the lush grass. Alas, it
was too dark to risk a shot, and we climbed back
without alarming them. Next morning (it was
the 1st of April) we were on the ridge long before
the sun, but they had recrossed before us. We
went on to our spying points, and after some time
made them out far down in the forest. Presently
they lay down. A hurried consultation was held.
It was, I must repeat, the 1st of April, and any
day now that royal might shed his antlers. Some-
thing had to be done. He was too cute to be
driven, and waiting on the ridge in the evening
was too uncertain. A stalk, difficult as it seemed
in that dense, dry forest, was our only plan. This
time I took my double cordite rifle with solid
bullets, as more reliable than the Mannlicher,
for the latter's bullets break up on touching
a twig.

We slided and crawled down a deep snow-filled
gully, taking extraordinary care. Every twig that

286 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

cracked sent our hearts into our mouths ; once we
went down twenty feet in a rush with a small
avalanche of snow. Over a ridge and across
another gully, up another ridge, and we hoped to
be within shot of our quarry. Slowly we raised
our heads. Nothing. Too high up. Back we
crawled and repeated the manoeuvre lower down.
A dark mass is visible through some undergrowth,
about seventy yards away. We move a few yards
to get a clearer view. A stag lying down, his
antlers almost concealed among the branches. I
take a good look through my glasses. "See if
that's the one," I whisper ; " he seems to me more
like the small one." The shikari puts the glasses
to his eyes and looks long and carefully. As he is
looking the stag sharply turns his head. " That's
the one, sahib ; take him ! " I rest the rifle against
a tree, aim at the middle of the brown, and fire.
The stag springs to his feet, takes a few convulsive
bounds, and falls. Mine at last !

Knife in hand, the shikari plunges down the
intervening gully and up the opposite side to per-
form the hallal. I stand up, a pleasant relief after
being on all-fours the best part of two hours,
and begin putting the rifle in its cover. A shout
comes from the stalker, and I note an absence
of joy in it. Something wrong ?

"What?" I yell.

Deer- Stalking in Kashmir 287

The answer comes, and I catch the words " got
changed."

" What do you mean ? "

It is clearer this time. " Hai, hai, sahib, you
shot the wrong one! Tobah ! tobc/ih!"

It was the ten-pointer after all ! The royal was,
of course, gone, and I never saw him again. I
had left a man to spy from the top, and he
afterwards told me the big beast had been lying
only ten or fifteen yards below the other. Such
is sport ! " The little more how much it is ! The
little less how far away ! "

288

A CANVAS CANOE.

WHEN the "Alys" was launched there were no
cheering crowds, no display of bunting, and no
ladies' gay dresses. No champagne flowed, nor
even, I think, honest Scotch whisky. It was in
truth a very quiet proceeding. We had been in
pursuit of ibex and wild geese at the head waters
of the Yarkhun river, following up which to its
source we came on the sheet of water known to
Wakhis as Kul-Sar. A wonderful spectacle opened
before us as we topped the snow-covered ridge
that had hidden the lake from us whilst we climbed
the last few miles of the ascent. The lake lay
glittering at our feet, indescribably beautiful.
Light breezes played over the greater part of its
sapphire surface, but in one bay that was protected
by a long black headland, the inverted image of a
giant snow mountain lay almost as still as the orig-
inal. Great rugged mountains bordered the water
on all sides, except for a depression in the range
where, in the far distance, the blue water found

A Canvas Canoe 289

an exit into the Karumbar river. No touch of
colour relieved the black and white of rock and
snow, except on the margin of the lake where the
early snow had melted, and strips of green showed
us the summer grass had not yet faded. To these
we directed our glasses, in the hope that white
dots would reveal the wild geese we were in quest
of ; but never a one was visible, nor after a pro-
longed examination were wild-fowl of any descrip-
tion to be seen on the whole broad bosom of the
lake. It was too late in the year, no doubt, and the
geese and duck, which breed here in the summer,
had migrated southward. Some of the narrower
arms of the lake which the wind did not touch
were already coated with a steel-blue film of ice,
and though the month was only October, the wind
from Wakhan which blew after sunset, the piercing
nature of which has passed into a proverb in these
parts, was enough to freeze one's very marrow.
Still, geese or no geese, the "Alys" was to be
launched. Built in Canada of pine and canvas, so
light a single man could carry her, she had come
by sea to Bombay, by train to Peshawar, on mule-
back to Chitral, and thence on men's shoulders to
our lake of Kul-Sar, a basin hollowed by glaciers,
15,000 feet above the ocean. Here she was to
emerge at last from her chrysalis ; and in truth
this start in her career was peculiarly appropriate,

T

290 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

for as it was the first time she ever rested on deep
water, so it was the first time the still waters of
Lake Kul-Sar had ever been cut by mortal-made
keel ; though whether or no the witch of Atlas
ever glided here in her phantom craft, who can
say?

The pinnace passed
By many a star-surrounded pyramid
Of icy crag cleaving the purple sky
And caverns yawning round unfathomably.

So it was Chitrali hands that for the first time
unlaced her outer cover and helped to fit keel and
ribs into their places and gradually fill out her
canvas skin till she assumed the proportions of a
Canadian canoe. And it was a man of Wakhan
whom we asked to lift up her bows while we took
the stern and slid her gently into the water.
Neither Chitralis nor Wakhis had ever seen a boat
before, even in their dreams, and when she floated
lightly on the water on even keel they said so
loudly; and finally, when I paddled out into the
lake, mere words were inadequate to describe their
surprise and wonder, and they could only ejaculate
loud cries of "Ya Allah, ya Allah!" If those
Wakhis were the true travellers I take them to be,
what tales the Kussians across the borders must
have heard ! Nothing less, I feel convinced, than

A Canvas Canoe 291

the advent of a British flotilla up the Chitral
river.

A few weeks later I was crossing the Shandur
Pass on the way to Gilgit. The Pass consists of a
broad plain some 12,000 feet above the sea, one
side of which is taken up by a lake four or five
miles in length, frequented during the autumn by
geese and wild-fowl.

In winter it is, of course, fathoms deep in snow,
and it was in this state that Colonel Kelly and his
gallant men crossed it in '95 on their famous march
to Chitral. I was walking round the farther shore
accompanied by my old stalker, Gul Sher, in the
hopes of a shot. Mounting a narrow promontory
which ran out into the lake, we peered over and
saw a gaggle of six or eight geese preening them-
selves on the grassy margin, and not eighty yards
away. A chance for the four-bore and no mistake.
The ponderous weapon was pushed over a rock and
levelled, and with a setting of teeth and bracing of
muscles — for a single four-bore burning ten drachms
is no plaything — the trigger was pulled. The flash
and roar was over, and I had survived the stun-
ning kick that made the TopJchana (artillery field-
piece), as Gul Sher used to call it, a gun for only
great occasions, and three geese were flapping on

292 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

the ground. The remainder got up, and wheeling
round towards us came honking along within shot.
Two barrels from the twelve-bore dropped another
dead ; but in the meantime one of the cripples,
which had regained the water, went sailing out
into the middle of the lake. The "Alys" was
handy, however, and putting her together we
started in pursuit. We beat the " barhead " at the
paddling, and it was not long before another charge
of number three saw him gyrating in the water
head downwards, and next moment hauled on
board and deposited in the stern.

The Shandur Lake is one of the sources of the
Gilgit river. Starting from the eastern end, a
tiny stream trickles out, falls a thousand feet in
four miles or so, and then winds along an open
valley covered with dwarf willow jungle. The
stream then falls rapidly again to Ghizar, twenty-
five miles from the lake, where it can be called
for the first time a river. Foaming through this
little mountain principality, it enters a large, flat,
grassy plain, at the farther end of which is a
smaller lake called Pandur. At one time or
another the whole plain was a sheet of water
formed by an enormous dam, which had been
thrust across the river-bed by a glacier protrud-
ing from the right. At the present time the river

A Canvas Canoe 293

winds sluggishly along from side to side of the
plain. Its banks are fringed with a dense jungle
of dwarf willow, through which it is almost im-
possible to force one's way. On previous journeys
up the valley I had seen flights of duck follow
the course of the river and go down somewhere
out of sight, but owing to the jungle aforesaid it
was an impossibility to get a shot at them. With
the help of the " Alys " these duck were now to
be circumvented. A screen of reeds was arranged
round the bows, through which peeped the long
barrel of TopJchana. I sat behind the big gun,
the twelve-bore handy, Gul Sher behind me —
there was just room for two— wielding the paddle.
And so we started.

Considering this was the first time the shikari
had ever sat in anything nearer akin to a boat
than an Indus raft of inflated skins, and this was
a canoe that wobbled, he managed well. We
shipped a little water when we stuck on a sand-
bank in the middle of a small rapid, but finding
no harm resulted, he quickly gained confidence
and became almost skilful. The current soon
brought us among the jungle, where we hoped
to find a gathering of duck. Silence was essential,
and we floated slowly down, only keeping the
canoe's head straight with an occasional stroke
of the paddle. As we rounded a corner some

294 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

duck came overhead, but I was not quick enough
to get on them ; and, indeed, if the reader has
ever sat in a canoe he will know that a shot to
the right is an impossibility, and in any other
direction quite difficult enough. Some teal next
came by, sixty miles an hour, with a like result.
This was not cheering ; but the sight for which
we hoped was a big gathering of duck on the
water, and then a raking shot with the four-bore
into the middle of them, and this was not long
in coming. At the next turn, a dark line across
the water, three or four hundred yards ahead,
showed with the glasses a big gathering of
mallard. The four -bore was cocked, and we
slowly bore down on them. Soon we could see
the duck, not thoroughly alarmed, but swimming
strongly away from us. Then they apparently
made up their minds to let the strange mass of
weeds float by them, for they huddled under the
willows on the bank in a dense mass. We were
not more than a hundred yards from them, and
in another twenty yards I intended to let drive.
I will admit that I was not convinced that the
firing of the four-bore would not capsize the canoe ;
and though he uttered not a word, it appeared that
there were similar doubts in Gul Sher's mind.
The mistake was that when I pulled the trigger
the canoe was not end on with the line of fire.

A Canvas Canoe 295

Anyhow, there came the usual fearful explosion
and kick, the canoe gave an awful lurch, up went
my heels into the air, and I found myself lying
on my back, and the canoe nearly full of
water. She was still floating, however. Gul
Sher had extracted the twelve - bore from the
bottom of the canoe, and was pouring the water
out of the barrels.

But the duck? Not a single one lay dead on
the water, and not even a cripple. I had evidently
shot over the whole lot. The exclamation that
left my lips is not to be recorded. Wet and un-
happy, we baled out the boat and paddled on.

" We nearly upset that time," I remarked.

"Yes, sahib" replied Gul Sher; "but I just
managed to save us."

"You ! " I said. "Why, if you had kept the canoe's
head straight it would never have happened."

"That may be, sahib," he replied; "but I knew
that when you fired the TopJchana, unless I held
the boat very tight we should upset, so I lay down
the paddle and held both sides with all my might,
and thanks to that we are still afloat. But it was
a very near thing," he added.

It was a day of disasters. Farther on I missed
a single gadwal that came over us. At the Pandur
Lake we took the canoe out of the water to go
to camp, as there was nothing there in the wild-

296 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

fowl way. But as we were climbing up the big
boulder-covered dam, the faint metallic note of
wild geese made us look up. A skein of geese
were flying high in the heavens. Catching sight
of the water below them they suddenly dropped
their long necks, and with a rush of pinions came
swooping and diving straight downwards. The
sky was dark with clouds behind them, but the
setting sun lit the great birds up, making them
flash like silver against the gloom. The effect
was one a Japanese artist might have transferred
to canvas, but no one else. Murderous thoughts
prevailed, however, and we stalked them ; but
their wary eyes must have caught sight of a cap
or bent back among the rocks, for they got up a
long way off, and Topkhana again belched forth
his three and a half ounces of B.B. in vain.

The next act in the career of the " Alys " was
far from this, on the Tibetan border. She had,
in the meantime, been carried to Srinagar, where
she had floated on the picturesque water-street
of this eastern city of gondolas, and from there
to Leh, whence she had accompanied me on a
trip to Tibet. Eeturning from this, my way
lay by the Indus, here a slow stream meandering
from side to side in a wide sandy plain. After
weeks of continual riding with the caravan, it

The Alys.

^he river street of Srinagar,

A Canvas Canoe 297

was pleasant to lie back in the little canoe,
umbrella over my head, and be towed along
and listen to the rippling of the water against
the bows. The plain was covered with coarse
scanty grass imprinted with innumerable hoof-
marks of kyang (or wild asses), but from the
canoe only the great mountains surrounding the
plain could be seen, apparently swinging and
revolving round me as the river wandered back-
wards and forwards. Now and again a sandbank
would intrude, and I was aroused from far-away
thoughts to seize the paddle. Sometimes the
leaders would signal geese, and I would get
out to see distant specks of white quivering
and heaving on the bank in the dry clear air,
and the big gun would be got out for a shot,
not usually in vain.

The shore of the Pangong Lake is the next
spot where I will ask my readers to picture the
" Alys " stripped of her covering. My wife and
I had been for a trip over the Tibetan frontier,
and after shooting yak and antelope had wandered
south-west past Lake Tso Dyak, over 16,000 feet
above the sea. Here also the " Alys " cruised,
the highest piece of water she (or any other
boat ?) has ever floated on. Continuing our march
from there, we struck the Pangong east of the

298 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

old ruined watch-tower of Karnak. We had
been seeing mountains before us all day, seemingly
only a few miles distant, which I recognised as
being beyond the lake ; but distances in that
moistureless air are beyond belief deceiving, and
it was not till late in the evening that we heard
the welcome trumpeting of geese, saw patches
of green grass, and finally emerged on the lake
side, where we pitched our tents. The next
day I went a long way inland after Ovis ammon.
When I returned I found the " Alys " had under-
gone a transformation, for, not to speak of a new
coat of paint, a mast had been stepped and a
sail rigged up, with which to take advantage of
the morning east wind on our voyage homewards
— an improvement not originally contemplated by
the makers.

The Pangong Lake is a serpentine sheet of
water, 14,000 feet above sea-level. Of its eighty
or hundred miles of length, half is in Tibet
proper and the remaining westerly half in Ladak.
There are really two lakes, but these are connected
in the middle by a winding canal-like waterway,
opening here and there into lagoons, in most
parts not more than thirty feet across. The
eastern lake is fresh water, but in the western
the water is worse than salt — bitter. Our camp
that night was a few miles to the east of the

A Canvas Canoe 299

junction, so there we had the fresh water to
drink ; but our next camp on the way back
to Ladak was to be a fresh spring on the shore
of the other lake, an unknown distance off. Ex-
cept at the occasional fresh springs, where for
a few yards grass grew luxuriantly, the whole
country was barren, without vegetation of any
sort. Inhabitants there were none, and but
for the occasional sight of Tibetan nomads
one might travel for weeks and not see a soul.

Starting off before daybreak, we slipped along
before the breeze and made for the opening of
the " canal," whilst our caravan of ponies was
toiling in a long line round the bay. That
was a great day for geese. We found them in
large flocks in the lagoons, and in twos and
threes on the banks of the " canal." One trium-
phant shot into a gaggle, which the lady in the
canoe skilfully manoeuvred up to me as I lay
concealed in the reeds, secured six. Some mer-
gansers, too, swam for miles in front of the
canoe, and when they were tired of that dived
down and reappeared behind us.

What with looking after the geese and a
short halt for lunch, it was not till late in the
afternoon that we got through the narrow water-
way and paddled out into the bitter lake. The
caravan had long since left us behind, and how

3oo Sport and Life in the F^wther Himalaya

far on the fresh spring was we had not an idea.
The breeze now blew in our faces, and as our
round- bottomed canoe could only sail before the
wind, we hitched on the tow-rope. About evening
the wind dropped entirely, and as the sun sank
behind the distant mountains it was a dead
calm. More weirdly beautiful days than these
we spent sailing, towing, and paddling down
the great lake, I have never seen. The barren
mountains round were themselves of every shade
of bizarre-colouring, the near ones standing out
startlingly bright and vivid, with every stone
and rock throwing a perfect image on the clear
water, the distant ones exhibiting blues and
purples of every exquisite shade, and of the
kind only seen where mountains are arid and
waterless. One might have imagined oneself
sailing down the Eed Sea, but with the purple
mountains of Baluchistan on either side.

We had hoped to reach camp by sundown,
but night fell and the moon rose behind us,
throwing a wavering reflection of itself in the
wake of the canoe, and we were still towing on.
We now kept as far out as possible, for fear of
snags under the surface that would rip up our
canvas walls like paper. By-and-by we neared
a long promontory running far out into the lake,
behind which our guide told us was a fresh

A Canvas Canoe 301

spring, and our camping-ground. So a portage
was decided on, and we struck inland, up a wide
valley, and, leaving that, across what seemed an
endless plain. The lake no longer was in sight.
Now and again we heard the sound of galloping
hoofs, and caught a glimpse of a startled herd
of kyang disappearing in the dim light. After
going a couple of hours or so, our guide seemed
uncertain of his direction : track there was none,
so we turned left again to fetch the lake side,
where at any rate we knew it was simply a
matter of time finding the camp ; so we went
stumbling along over the sand-dunes, till in
time the lake appeared once more, shimmering
below us, and we could see the moon -lit mountains
on the other side and the moon's bright path
across the waters. Almost at the same time
the distant but welcome twinkle of a camp-fire
somewhere near the shore, but almost behind
us, told us our change of direction had been
none too soon. Otherwise we might have
wandered the night long through these desolate
wilds and been farther from our camp at the
end than at the beginning.

Next day there was a spanking breeze, and
we stood out into the middle of the lake for
a run down. But, clear of the headland, we
got more wind than we had bargained for. The

302 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

waves quickly rose to a great height, and it
was with difficulty we could keep the canoe
from broaching to, for the "Alys," buoyant
little craft that she was — "the foam upon the
waters not so light " — was innocent of keel. To
run for the shore was impossible, as we should
have to a certainty foundered in the trough of
waves which were sweeping down the length of
the lake. A couple of miles on loomed a head-
land, behind which, if we could get there, would
be comparatively smooth water, and for this we
steered. The gale increased, and the great waves
following threatened to poop the little canoe
every minute. We had a good deal of way on,
however, and the noise of the waves dashing
against the rocky point was soon faintly audible.
Getting nearer, and shutting one's eyes, one could
have imagined oneself back somewhere off the
cliffs of old England ; only the cries of the gulls
were wanting to make the illusion complete.
We passed within a few feet of " the needles,"
a few strokes of the paddle brought us into
smooth water, and we could look back and
laugh at our escape from the locker of which-
ever of the Tibetan godlings corresponds to
"old Davy."

The wind as usual dropped when the sun got
high in the sky, and we towed through the

*

1

A Canvas Canoe 303

afternoon, only paddling across deep indentations
in the coast. What a queer sight we should
have presented on an English towing-path ! First,
the long line of little baggage-ponies with their
pig-tailed drivers scrambling along the loose rocks
which lined the shore. In places the cliffs de-
scended sheer into the water, and the ponies
were taken a cut inland, but generally there was
a sort of natural towing-path, which could be
traced all round the lake some fifteen feet above
water. It was the water-line of some past period,
very rough, and covered with angular fragments
of rock, but practicable for Ladaki ponies, who
are as nimble as goats. Next came our towers,
a couple of Ladaki men, usually riding, wearing
cloaks of sheepskin about their waists. Lastly
the "Alys" and ourselves in her, slipping along
in deep blue water twenty or thirty feet out. I
call the water blue, for generally it was sapphire-
hued as the Mediterranean ; but now and then we
passed over patches where the nature of the lake-
bed changed it into all wonderful shades of gleam-
ing green, but so transparent that, when calm,
one could see the boulder-covered bottom at
great depths ; but it was a dead sea, without
weeds or fish or any signs of organic life. Some
of the rocks of which the cliffs were composed
were themselves of a dark - green colour, a

304 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

species of serpentine, while here and there the
sandy bays would be littered with crystals and
bright-coloured pebbles. We had another day's
run in the little " Alys " before we reached the
end of the lake and the first signs of human
habitations we had seen for six weeks, and here
she was taken out of the water, her dark green
almost unrecognisable from incrustations of salts,
but otherwise none the worse for her journey
in unexplored waters.

In the Bhil country of Dungarpur, far away
from the Himalayas, a fortified Kajput city nestles
among the jungle-covered hills. Hills these in the
true sense of the word, and not as commonly used
by the Anglo-Indians when speaking of the vast
northern ramparts of India. On one side a big
lake forms the defences of the city, the bastioned
walls terminating on the water's edge. Palm-trees,
temples, palaces, old ruined tombs, make up the
glowing picture of an Eastern city. A wide flight
of steps leads up from the lake into the market-
place, and on this the scarlet skirts of women
drawing water show vivid patches of colour. Pea-
fowl wander about unnoticed, and snake-birds sit
with wings extended like bronze images on the
sacred cupola in the middle of the lake. An
elephant lying flat on his side in the water, his

A Canvas Canoe 305

head half submerged, is being scrubbed by his
attendants. The far end of the lake is fringed
with jungle and grass, " with reeds and rushes,"
and in this, one glorious cold-weather evening, not
long ago, the writer was sitting watching a mass
of duck some way out from the shore. Presently
from the other side a lady appeared, and with her
two men carrying the " Alys " ready for action.
The manoeuvre was obvious. She was stepping
into the canoe when, from the palace near by,
the little Rajput king of the place came hurrying,
and begged to be taken on board. His retainers
panting after him arrived in time to hear the re-
quest. They looked at the frail craft, then looked
at the fair lady, and were horrified. Horrified was
the fat tutor in pink, horrified the Prime Minister
in canary yellow, still more horrified the marriage
ambassador from a neighbouring State, in grass
green. One and all begged him to desist from
his rash design and to " draw the feet of temerity
under the skirt of prudence." Threats were even
held out of the displeasure of the dowager mother.
But these were all in vain, and the " Alys " bore
the hopes of a nation from the shore. Though it
was not in a blue-blooded Rajput to show fear,
he evidently thought it more than possible that
the weedy bottom and crocodiles would be the re-
sult of his rashness.

u

306 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

" Do you think it will drown ? " he asked the
lady, when out of earshot of the shore. She did
her best to reassure him, and evidently with some
success, to judge by the next remark he let drop
after settling himself comfortably in the stern,
" Madam, this is very pleasant." Prince and lady
were now nearing the duck, which were getting
up in swarms and circling round the lake, and the
bang -banging and flop of falling duck showed
that he in the jungle was also having a pleasant
evening.

But one more scene in the career of the " Alys."
Many years ago an Indian Maharajah, who ruled
over a big tract of country in Eajputana, observed
a river running through a gap in a range of hills.
It struck him that if the gap were filled in a fine
lake would be formed, where he could build him-
self a plaisance. So the order was passed, and
men dug and carried baskets of earth and plumped
them down in the gap. After some hundreds of
thousands or millions of baskets of earth had been
deposited, the river was dammed and spread out
into a huge lake, with islands and promontories
and long arms of water stretching out among the
jungle-covered hills. The great barrage was then
paved with blocks of white stone and retaining
walls were built up on both sides ; a marble temple

A Canvas Canoe 307

was added, and little summer palaces of wonderful
Indian architecture were dotted here and there on
the surrounding hills where the best views of the
lake could be obtained. It was here the "Alys"
next saw the light. Our host the Resident's camp
was on the top of the barrage, while the Maha-
rajah's successor stopped in one of the white
summer-houses. He was a keen sportsman and
tiger-slayer, and each day of our stay there was
devoted to drives for tiger and panther or the
lordly sambur, or expeditions on the lake after
the wild-fowl which frequented the farther end
in thousands. There were other boats on the
lake, but where these could not go the "Alys"
could, and sometimes afforded us a shot at geese
we should not otherwise have had. But wild was
no word for them !

Imagine, then, the start on such an expedition,
while the cool morning breezes were still fanning
the lake. As we approached, the great white
pelicans, sailing majestically on the water like a
fleet of warships, would first rise and slowly circle
round the lake. Farther on, regiments of gleam-
ing flamingoes, standing knee-deep on a sandbank,
would spring into the air. The geese, with a roar
of water lashed into foam by thousands of pinions,
would be the next to get up, while the sarus
cranes, in pairs as usual — emblems of conjugal

308 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

fidelity — waited till we were quite close before
they, too, would stride along the surface of the
water, to lift themselves with laboured flaps into
the air and add their shrill, rasping cries to the
clamour. The duck, in the meantime, would have
been getting up on all sides with lesser roars, as
the sound of small-arm firing to that of heavy guns,
and would be flying swiftly to and fro over the
lake to find less disturbed corners. Here, while
the air is full of myriads of flying forms and re-
sounds with the music of reedy Indian lake-lands,
let the curtain fall over our canvas canoe.

309

IN THEORY AT ALL EVENTS.

IT is some years ago now that I read, no matter
where, a few brief but eloquent sentences setting
forth the superior attractions of the camera over
the rifle. The sentiments were worded with
Ruskin-like charm, and found an answering echo
in my bosom, so that I forthwith determined to
lay aside for a time, if not for ever, the rifle, and
in future depend on the camera for records of my
glimpses of the wild inhabitants of forests and
mountains. I had no previous experience of
photography, but knew that an animal, taken at a
fair sporting range of 200 yards or so, would not
appear in the picture at all, or, if it did, would be
so small that it would require a microscope to tell
what it was. I therefore put myself in the hands
of an eminent firm of photographic dealers, and
confided to them my ambition, They thought it
a most laudable one — naturally — and were full of
suggestions. What they eventually recommended
was a portable box camera, with " 's Telephoto

310 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

Lens, combined with a . Slides, diaphragm,

shutter, and other details might be left to
them."

Their descriptions and promises left nothing to
be desired, so I placed my order with them, and
on my return to the remote station in the Hima-
laya where I happened to be quartered, found
myself in possession of the complete apparatus,
which cost me as much as two good rifles.
Anxious to test the range and capabilities of my
new instrument, I had out my old grey hill pony
to practise on, and made the syce hold him at
various ranges. Though a useful animal, and
unsurpassed on a hill road, he was no beauty to
look at, and my proceedings caused the syce the
profoundest astonishment. As, however, the trials
proceeded day by day, he began to look at the old
pony with fresh interest, thinking, no doubt, that
all did not depend on looks, and that there must
be some quality in him the existence of which he
had not hitherto suspected. As his cogitations
had the effect of making him groom the pony
more frequently than was his wont, I did not
enlighten him as to my object.

The pictures were fairly successful. The defini-
tion was not quite sharp, but I put this down to
the pony's nondescript colour. I could only hope
that my ibex — this was the noble animal I had

In Theory at all Events 3 1 1

determined to try my 'prentice hand on first —
would stand as steady. When the time came for
carrying my project into execution, I found I had
somehow postponed taking my old shikari, Gul
Sher, into my confidence; perhaps there was a
lurking suspicion in my mind that he would not
take the proper Euskinian view of this form of
sport ; and when you come to think of it, to a
man whose ideas of shikar were mainly connected
with meat, it might appear to be "a little too
thick."

The morning for the start arrived, and still 1
had not unburdened my bosom to him, and finally,
when he came into my quarters and began to take
my '256 from its case, and wipe it down prepara-
tory to slinging it over his shoulder, I did not like
to shock him by telling him to put it back, salving
my conscience with the thought that it would be
as well to make a show of going shooting, in order
to humour the old man, as without a rifle he might
flatly refuse to go out at all.

The month was July, and the ibex were on the
very tops of the mountains, among the crags and
aiguilles, whence they would only venture to
descend in the mornings and evenings to crop the
luscious verdure below them. Our path the first
day ran along the side of a roaring torrent swollen
by melted snow, the damp mist from which blew

3 1 2 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

delightfully cool in our faces during the heat of
the day. The second day, passing through the
belts of juniper and pine, we emerged about even-
ing on an open slope, knee -deep in grass and
flowery stars and bells, below the jagged crests of
the range. We were approaching our camp, which
had been sent on the previous day, when Gul Sher
called my attention to the bulky leather case con-
taining the camera, which was being carried by my
"tiffin cooly," and asked what it was. Further
concealment was impossible. I entered into an
explanation as to how hundreds of sahibs had shot
thousands of ibex, but no one had yet succeeded
in taking a photograph of a wild ibex — a feat that
was far more difficult, and therefore more meri-
torious.

"After having taken his picture, sahib, I
suppose you shoot him?"

"Yes," I said, with the mental reservation,
" if he's there."

" Of course," he replied, and so the conversation
ended. He had let me down easier than I had
expected. Next morning I and my shikari and
a cooly carrying the photographic paraphernalia
were up before light, and by the time rocks and
trees began to be visible and the snow-peaks
in the distance to glow with the light of early
dawn, we were among the crags ; looking down

In Theory at all Events 3 1 3

with our glasses into two ravines which came
to a head below us, Gul Sher soon spotted in
one of them a small herd of ibex consisting of
two bucks and some does. They were not stalk-
able in their present position, but were grazing
in the direction of the other nullah. By running
down this, therefore, I should, barring accidents,
be certain of a shot — with the camera, of course.
This we proceeded to do. After going 150 yards
down the nullah, Gul Sher crept to the ridge
and looked over into the other ravine. "Now
for it," I thought. Out with the camera, lens,
focussing hood, slides, tripod screw, all there.
Screw him up; so far, so good. Now crawl to
the edge and look over. There are the ibex,
but they have taken a lower line than we ex-
pected. We must go farther down. Up with
the camera again. "Now catch hold, cooly, and
come along." Gathering up the odds and ends
of the camera, we begin again to scramble down
the scree. After going down fifty yards, the
cooly drops the case of slides, and I find he
has left the tripod screw behind. I send him
back for this, and taking the camera in my arms
follow the shikari as quickly as I can. My pro-
gress, encumbered as I am, is not rapid, and
Gul Sher is signalling frantically to me to make
haste. Breathing anathemas on the rolling stones,

314 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

the camera, and the cooly, I struggle on, and
arrive where Gul Sher is crouched, looking over
into the next ravine. It seems all right. The ibex
are some 250 yards off, moving slowly towards
a point some 70 yards below us. I determine
to point my camera at this and await their
arrival. And now to fix up.

" Quick," whispers Gul Sher.

" Keep cool," I admonish myself, and begin
to set the apparatus up. The tripod had been
made with legs only a foot long, in order to be
easier kept under cover. I now find that this
modification has the unexpected result of making
it most difficult to manage. The rocks, too, are
sharp and angular, and not a bit of earth is
there in which to fix the points. " Quick," again
says the shikari, as I vainly attempt to induce the
tripod to stand. The legs wobble about in all
directions. After a minute's struggle, during
which the tripod seems to be endowed with
fiendish intelligence and determined to thwart
all my efforts, I at length get it to stand. The
ibex are, in the meantime, approaching a rock,
round which in a few seconds they will disappear,
and Gul Sher is groaning with anxiety.

" Quick, sahib" again he whispers. The camera
is very unsteady, and as I direct it on the point
the ibex will pass I remember with a pang the

In Theory at all Events 315

directions for the use of the telephoto lens —
"Extreme rigidity of the whole apparatus is
essential."

The focussing hood over my head, I find I have
forgotten to open the shutter.

" One gone," says Gul Sher. I open the shutter
and again adjust the hood.

"Two gone, three gone, the big one is last of
all," he whispers. This is agonizing. I begin
to focus, when a gust of wind whirls round the
corner, the tripod staggers and collapses, and with
it the camera.

" Four gone, quick, sahib — now the big one's
going ! " groans Gul Sher.

It was hopeless to try to set the camera up
again, and nothing remained but to make use
of any expletives I happened to know. The
remainder of the herd, before suspicious, were
now thoroughly alarmed (and no wonder, the
reader will say), and began to move off quickly.

Was it that Gul Sher thought the collapse of
the camera indicated the end of the sitting, and
that the photograph was complete, or had he
a keen appreciation of what is known as the
" psychological moment " ? Anyhow, at that pre-
cise instant he shoved the loaded rifle into my
hands and whispered, " Take him, sahib" I
raised it just as the big ibex" was having a last look

316 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

round over his shoulder preparatory to turning
the corner. Where were now my good resolutions ?
Crack, and down he went, head over heels. Gul
Sher plunged down after him, knife in hand, his
thoughts intent on meat, and I was left gathering
up the debris of my camera and thinking of
the place that is paved with good resolutions.

I returned to camp sadder and wiser. Gul Sher
came in later carrying the head, and, to his sur-
prise, I refused to look at it. With dinner, how-
ever, came reflection and a degree of consolation.
I made up my mind to do better on the next
occasion. My chance to-day was not a fair one,
the animals were on the move and the ledge I
was on unsuitable for photographic experiments.
On another occasion I would take their portrait
sleeping or grazing.

The next opportunity did not present itself till
some days later, but what an opportunity it was !
An ideal family group, consisting of a number of
ibex of both sexes lying down in a grassy corrie,
while above them, motionless on a needle of rock,
stood a magnificent old patriarch looking down
into space. The wind was steady and the stalk
easy, and in my imagination I had the picture
already in my possession. We got up without
any difficulty to within a hundred yards of them.
I fixed up the camera behind a rock and raised it

In Theory at all Events 317

noiselessly into position. Again the difficulty with
the tripod legs, but with an infinity of care and
trouble I had it at length propped up with stones
and fairly firm. I raised myself slowly up and
pointed the camera at the herd. They still had
not moved. " Now, my good shikari, drop that
rifle and hand me the focussing hood." He handed
it up and I began to focus.

At this moment a fine mizzle began to fall
and I had to wipe the lens before finishing
focussing. " It's very difficult," groaned Gul Sher.
Still the herd had not moved ; there was the
family party enjoying their midday siesta and
the patriarch still doing sentry-go. Again I drew
the hood over my head and began to focus. One
turn of the screw, two turns, three turns, now
the image is getting distinct, rocks and trees
begin to appear; now everything is clear, but
where, oh where, are the ibex ? "Where are they?"
I whisper from under the hood. " Gone," an-
swered a sepulchral voice. I threw the hood off
and gasped " Where ? " Gul Sher with a stony
face pointed to a ridge half a mile away, and
there, there, was the herd all standing in a clump
looking back at me. After a moment's pause
they disappeared. "Come, pack up," I said, "I'm
off." "Yes, sahib" replied my shikari, and we
returned to camp without another word. Though

3 1 8 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

I did not again put Gul Sher's belief in my
sanity to the test by taking him with me on
such expeditions, this was not by any means
my last attempt at animal photography. The
results were, however, invariably the same, and
I have since come to the conclusion that the
writer of those few Euskinian sentences which
persuaded me for a time at least to join the
ranks of " nature photographers " might have
had experience of sea -anemones as subjects for
photography, but certainly had none of ibex.
So I again took my rifles into favour, and my
efforts at photography are confined to still life.
The triple extension box camera and the lens
with a long name repose on a back shelf, and
are the property of any one who will take them
away.

319

ABOUT BEARS.

WHEN Kahmat, shikari, walked into Gilgit from a
day on the hillside with the seat of his breeches
torn out by a bear, he had not only had a
good pair of homespun garments spoilt, but had
run a narrow escape of losing his life. But in-
stead of being a hero for sympathy, the tale he
unfolded (I might say tail !) aroused nothing but
merriment. The fact is, that though Adamzad
is really a wicked villain, his rdle on the jungle
stage is not tragedy, and never has been since
his ancestors disputed lodging rights with the
cave man; his absurd gait, his short sight, and
the extraordinary noises he makes, all forbid it.
So, for any one not principally concerned, it is
as difficult to be serious over a bear adventure
as over a bull episode in a green English field.

Labiatus, the sloth bear, is found in most
forest-covered parts of India, where human habit-
ations are remote, and was the member of the
family whose acquaintance I made first. This

320 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

was in Central India, where big families of them
are found amid jungle-clothed hills, in bamboo
brakes, and in deep ravines with cool grottos,
where they can get shelter from the sun. Some-
times we beat for them ; sometimes with the help
of an anar, or sort of infernal machine, we bolted
them like rabbits from their caves. The first
time I tried this method the anar was dropped
into a crevice which the bear had thoughtlessly
left in the roof of his parlour. The writer stood
— not without qualms — on a narrow path a few
yards from the cave's mouth, a hill on one side
and a steep drop on the other. First there came
a rumbling such as might precede the exit of a
gigantic bunny, then out he came full tilt and
uttering terrifying noises. Both barrels of my
rifle went off, I took a step back, and tripping
over a stone fell flat on my back. According
to tradition among shikaris, of which care is taken
not to leave the British sportsman ignorant, bears
always go for the face of a prostrate foe. So
for an appreciable instant I was under the pain-
ful expectation of feeling the enraged animal
beginning on me in the orthodox way. When
I got to my feet, however, the bear was gone,
and he was soon discovered in extremis at the
bottom of the hill, which the reader will justly
remark indicated better luck than management.

About Bears 321

A bear's charge is in fact more often than not
an effort to escape, as is shown by another incident
of the same sort which happened to me very
shortly after. I had marked a panther into a
narrow cleft which ran deep into a cliff of rock.
After posting myself at its mouth, I told my
shikari to throw a stone in as far as he could.
Loud roars were followed by the rush of an animal,
fortunately perhaps for me not the panther, but
a big black bear into which the panther had
seemingly transformed himself. Scarcely had I
time to fire before I was knocked down by the
beast, who went straight over me and away. We
followed him by the biggest blood track I have
ever seen, but after going some miles the blood
stopped, — the commonly accepted story is that a
bear himself stuffs leaves and moss into a wound,
—and I never got him. This was clearly no
charge but a dash for safety, his savage roars
being, I imagine, mere make-believe to clear the
way. She-bears with cubs do, however, some-
times mean business. One such I met on the
top of a round hill, the name of which remains
fixed in my memory — Gidh Toria, the vulture's
" Tor." On being disturbed by two men with
guns, the family made off in the high grass. A
snap at the nearest, which turned out to be a
cub, was followed by the most piteous howls,

x

322 Sport and L ife in the Further Himalaya

hearing which, the mother promptly wheeled
round and came straight at me. My orderly
with a second rifle missed her, but she went down
to my second barrel when not five paces away.
A miss here would certainly have meant a maul-
ing.

Another time I had shot a nearly full-grown
cub from a tree towards the close of a tiger
beat. A bear that was following close behind,
most probably the mother, on hearing the shot,
to my astonishment deliberately stopped and
began looking up in the trees to discover her
unseen foe. The Bhils of Central India, real
jungle people, treat bears in a very offhand sort
of way — in fact, pay them no courtesy at all.
During a beat, I recollect seeing one of them
run after a bear and with his stick catch him
a sounding thwack on the part that no self-
respecting animal should show to his enemy.
Not that this really proves anything, for every
one who knows the "Bagri" Bhil will testify
to his foolhardy pluck even when in the presence
of the tiger.

In the Himalaya the black bear is an individual
that demands much more respect. He is, in fact,
as Artemus Ward says, very " onreliable." Kipling's
picture of Adamzad —

About Bears 323

Horrible hairy and human,
The bear that looks like a man,

is a poetic inexactitude, for a bear does not
attack on his hind legs ; but there are a good
many natives of Kashmir who, like " the old
blind beggar," have paid dearly for an encounter
with him.

Let me try to describe a bear hank in Kashmir.
A few white tents dotted on a strip of turf by
the banks of a stream that might be in the
Peak district. The village near by is hidden
in walnut and fruit trees, through the tops of
which glints the graceful spire of the mosque.
Beyond the stream, the hillsides are cloven by
forest - filled valleys, all in autumn's burning
tints, which alternate with bare grassy ridges.
As we issue from our tents, the hoar-frost on
the grass is melting, the sweet scent of a
Himalayan wood- fire is in the air, and over
the hills hangs the morning's veil of blue mist.
Breakfast is eaten in the open near a roaring
fire, and while the ladies retire to put on the
latest thing in shikar helmets, pipes are lit,
and the shikaris come up with their plans for
the day. "Four beats before lunch and two
after, inshallah a bear or two in most of them,
while in the first beat there is a good eight-

324 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

pointer stag which may or may not come out.
God knows."

We are soon on the road, accompanied by
a crowd of beaters armed with thick sticks and
chattering as only Kashmiris can. The latter
by-and-by separate off and we find ourselves climb-
ing in single file up a steep grassy spur. Silence
is now the order. Presently we reach a wooden
structure built into a tree some six feet from
the ground. Nothing is left to chance here, for
we are beating one of the Maharajah's preserves.
Places are drawn for — longest at the top, shortest
at the bottom — and the lowest gun climbs into
his machan. The line of machans extends up
the hill, four of them, with a couple of hundred
yards between each. They are facing the jungle,
the edge of which extends up the hill some
twenty yards from the line of machans. We
have drawn the top place, and as we climb into
it a faint sound on the breeze shows that the
signal whistle has been heard and our hundred
beaters are forcing their way through the jungle
towards us, each one yelling as he thinks for
dear life, for the Kashmiri has a holy horror of
the bear at close quarters. For a long time
nothing breaks, the jungle is silent in front of
us ; but looking down towards the next rifle we
see him slowly rise to his feet, — bang — a faint

About Bears 325

grunt, and he subsides again. A rustling in front
makes our hearts thump, but out breaks nothing
more than a big red fox, that with a whisk of
his brush is gone. More shots down below prove
that the beat is proving no "frost." The noise of
the beaters is growing nearer, one can almost
catch the streams of abuse showered on the bears
and their relatives. A louder shout, this means
something; the stops high up on the ridge echo
it, "Hangul, hangul " (stag). Across an open
grassy space above me — close on a hundred and
fifty yards — are streaming a lot of hinds, no
stag so far, — but stay, here he comes. I take a
point well in front of his neck, and to the shot
the fine beast comes rolling down the hill to yells
from the shikaris of "Afrin, afrin."

I have scarcely loaded before a bear is out of
the jungle in front of us and is lumbering off as
fast as he knows how between our machan and
the next. To my snap-shot he gives a grunt of
anger and throws himself head over heels down
the hill. Over and over he goes like a ball,
to an accompaniment of grunts which get fainter
and fainter till they can be heard no longer. Well,
we know what that means — a wounded bear to
be followed. The drive is soon over, and the
beaters emerge and stand awaiting orders, as
well-trained beaters should. The guns assemble

326 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

and the bag is totted up — one stag and three
bears dead and one wounded. Before the next
beat the latter has to be seen to.

Tracking a wounded bear begins by being thrill-
ingly exciting, and generally ends by being dull
to the point of boredom. The sportsman, usually
on all-fours, crawls along the path the bear has
made for himself in the dense cover of birch,
hazel, alder, and willow. Now he is worming
down a burn, now making his painful way through
a thicket of briar. The air is close with the dank,
bitter smell of moss and leaves. Extreme caution
marks the beginning of the chase, the imagination
depicting an angry bear at every turn, but as the
search is prolonged and nothing happens, the
sportsman gets very brave indeed. As to the
actual denoument, the chances are that if the bear
is not found very near he will not be found at
all. The writer looks back on a certain occasion
when he tracked a wounded bear in the aforesaid
manner as one of the most dangerous in his life —
not on account of the bear, for we lost him, but
because my shikari had, as I discovered on reach-
ing the open, been crawling behind me with my
second rifle loaded and off safety. The sportsman,
on the other hand, may come on the bear wounded,
and in such circumstances it is well to have some
one with him. Once, when I was out with a well-

About Bears 327

known shot, we found ourselves in the position of
having to follow an animal wounded by the latter.
To make a long story short, we came on a black
mass which could be none other than our friend.
He was above us, when, according to all theory,
one should never take a shot at bear ; but he was
so still that my friend, who was the owner, said he
would risk it, and I was to reserve my fire. In
the thick undergrowth it was impossible to dis-
tinguish head from tail. He raised his rifle — bang,
bang, answered by " Wough, wough," and the bear
was on us. My friend, with extraordinary facility,
precipitated himself into a thorn bush and un-
covered my fire, but it was only my second barrel
that luckily caught him in the head and laid him
at my feet, so near that I could have kicked him.

Let us now have a look at the red bear in his
loftier solitudes. This beast rarely comes below
8000 feet. He sleeps through the winter, but
when the spring comes he may sometimes be seen
moving about the fans of snow in search of the
bodies of ibex that have been killed by avalanches.
At this season he has been known to kill cattle
and goats ; and this is the only time that lapses
take place in what must otherwise be considered
a blameless and estimable life, for at all others he
is content with the simple life and a vegetarian
diet.

328 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

One does, however, hear of mischievous indi-
viduals. My Gilgiti stalker used to tell of one
that was a terror to the goat-herds sent to graze
the village flocks in the Eakhiot glen — not only a
robber, but a truculent one, who committed his
crimes in the broad light of day and cared for
neither man nor dog. Gul Sher encountered him

when out with T , a noted shot from amongst

the small party of officers then at Gilgit. Behind
them yawned a precipice, in front was the big
beast grunting and slavering at the mouth, — the
devil and the deep sea. They faced one another

"while men could count a score," and still T

did not shoot. The bear advanced.

"Shoot, for God's sake," said Gul Sher, but

T only looked round over his shoulder. The

bear came on. Then T slowly put his rifle up

and shot him dead through the head.

" And why had not T shot him before ? " I

asked.

" That is what I wanted to know," the stalker
said ; " and what he told me was that he was just
looking for the easiest place to go down the pre-
cipice in case the bear was not killed ! "

I was sitting hearing the story at the exact
spot it happened, and going to the edge looked
over. The first thing to break a fall was a green
lawn of pine-tree tops 2000 feet below !

Aboitt Bears 329

That bear was the sort of individual that
spoils the reputation of an innoxious breed of
animals, for the Isabelline bear is in truth not
savage, and, in fact, has little to recommend him
to the sportsman but his pelt. A red bear's skin
in good condition, as it must be honestly stated
they rarely are, is very fine.

Kather than to incidents of the hair-breadth
kind, the recollection of the sportsman that has
spent many hours in red-bear-land will turn to
scenes of a different sort. Big brown puppy-like
beasts rolling over one another in play on a grassy
slope ; a mamma with a pair of fluffy babies at
heel, teaching them the rudiments of honey hunt-
ing— may he not, like some one I know, be haunted
by the wails of the retreating nursery after a bullet
has ended the mother's days.

He will remember how he found an old bear
curled up in the shade of a rock, his nose clasped
between his paws, and the comical sight he after-
wards presented as he danced up and down on his

hind legs to find out who the , what the ,

had rolled all the stones down the hill on the top
of him !

It is possible, however, that our sportsman's
pleasantest recollections of red-bear-land will not
be mainly connected with bears at all. He will
think of the shade of giant firs in the heat of the

330 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya

day, the odours of wild flowers and thyme, the
hum of bees, the distant sound of a waterfall,
the eagle sailing in the sky, the snow-cock shoot-
ing across the valley. His memory's eye will
range from pine-forest to precipice, green lawns
to snow-filled chasms and jagged chaos, and so
upward to the enchanted mountain - tops with
their tattered cloud - wreaths. He will mark
again the mists drive ghost -like up the valleys
and bank themselves into lines of sullen breakers,
or with a smile dissolve into a rainbow. He
will think of the first flush of dawn on snowy
ranges, glittering sierras in a crystal air, the
ineffable sadness of evening stealing over purple
mountains. Such are the scenes that crowd the
memory of one that has lived for a space in
the haunts of the snow-bear.

THE END.

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