90 RIFLE AND ROMANCE 



I remember the first time my dam led me out on the 

 little game-path winding along the steep mountain-sides 

 that hemmed in our retreat; above us the hilltops were 

 lost in driving mist, while from below rose the deep boom- 

 ing of a torrent in angry spate, as it leapt, turbid and 

 yellow, over a short basalt cliff, and roared down the valley 

 to join the swollen Tapti. 



Elsewhere it was still and oppressive, and the remains 

 of the last downpour dripped heavily off the sodden teak 

 leaves. Far down the valley a thin curl of blue smoke 

 behind the trees marked the huts of some hill-folk, while 

 away out beyond the low foot-hills lay the distant clear-cut 

 line of the plains, meeting the sky like the horizon of a 

 vast sea. 



Our life is seldom a stirring one ; we live in quiet retire- 

 ment in our lonely forests, not often seeing more of the 

 outer world than the little Korku hamlet at the mouth 

 of our valley affords when it lies wrapped in sleep, and we 

 wander nightly to visit the few ber bushes in its vicinity, 

 or when we hear the distant chopping of some solitary 

 woodcutter's axe. 



To live thus is to be sombre, deliberate, almost melan- 

 choly, and anyone who has studied our habits must know 

 this to be our nature, although he will also have had 

 experience of our keen perceptions and extreme natural 

 watchfulness. 



During my earlier days my dam and I seldom wandered 

 beyond the limits of the glen where I was born, which 

 was inhabited by only a few more of our species, including 

 one stag. I saw him now and again only, for he wandered 

 little, and showed a great reluctance to pass through the 

 forest while his horns were in the sensitive velvet stage. 

 Among the more interesting neighbours were a couple 

 of our little cousins, the khdkar, or barking deer, whose 

 ruddy little coats were to be seen in the grass bordering 

 the thicker copses, their white rabbit-like tails raised in 



