194 RIFLE AND ROMANCE 



in a half cocoanut shell, as it oozed capriciously from the 

 surrounding rock. 



The sun had not long been above the horizon when we, 

 who had started from the valley below by the light of a 

 waning moon, stood close to the highest point of Chondo. 



Smothering the ground that had once been cultivated 

 was a dense mass of small leafless coppice, undergrown 

 and almost choked itself by that horrible jungle plant the 

 bandhar, whose rough, raspberry-plant-like growth is so 

 unpleasant to push one's way through. 



On every side the mountain sank away, clothed with 

 harsh yellow grass, to the edges of the basalt cliffs encir- 

 cling the hills around : below these short cliffs came a 

 succession of slopes clothed with yet green and thick 

 jungle and leading down into high-lying little valleys, 

 the streams draining these valleys at length, dropping in 

 their turn over the lower strata of basaltic precipices and 

 seeking the level of the main valley system of these 

 mountains. 



When one stands amid such solitudes and the mind 

 grasps the enormous extent of ground and covert stretch- 

 ing for miles around, the great difficulties attending suc- 

 cessful hunting in these hills become fully impressed on 

 the visitor. 



There is such a vast selection of hiding-places, even for 

 such large and conspicuous animals as bison and sambar. 

 In every direction lies a panorama of gorge on gorge, 

 mountain on mountain, cliff piled on cliff, the whole 

 smothered in an almost all-pervading forest of jungly 

 growth. Almost within the reach of a good shout lies 

 another series of knoll-covered mountain-tops, but between 

 us and it, all unseen, gapes a cavernous gulch some fifteen 

 hundred feet in depth. 



It is during the late rains and early part of the cold 

 weather that the sambar repair to the higher plateaux and 

 tops, such as that of Ch6ndo, and the now dried soil is 



