REMINISCENCES OF JUNGLYPUR 207 



stood suddenly, artful little dodgers, just behind some tree 

 trunk or bush ; then, with a short hoarse bark, off uphill 

 again. 



The clear fresh morning air resounded with the notes of 

 birds and the screaming of the little rosy-headed parrakeets 

 that swept along the hillsides to settle in a cloud on some 

 favourite tree. By this time we had reached the little pass, 

 or khind, by which the stag of which we were in search 

 usually mounted to his day retreat ; and I had already 

 begun to fear that he must have taken another path this 

 morning, or be already couched, and to curse inwardly the 

 annoyingly nocturnal habits of this fine species of the deer 

 tribe, that made it so difficult to find him after the sun was 

 up, when, simultaneously with some of the men, my eye 

 caught sight of two dark objects on the shadowy side of a 

 little spur, and the glasses showed me two sambar creeping 

 slowly along and up one of those narrow game-paths so 

 common in these hills. As the rearmost animal passed 

 across an open space, I noted with accelerated pulse that it 

 was the stag, and that the reports of the Korkus as regards 

 the size of his antlers had been in no wise exaggerated. 

 The extremely white and polished tips of his tines pro- 

 claimed that he could not have dropped his antlers last 

 season, and, although nothing is more deceptive at a 

 distance than the apparent size of the horns of the rusine 

 type of the Cervidce, I put him down mentally as carrying 

 a 38-inch head at least, for it is only fully grown stags, 

 which have attained to their prime, that cast their horns 

 irregularly. 



I thoroughly appreciated the good fortune which had, at 

 the very outset of the day, thrown him in my way. For 

 every good stag seen in those regions a surprising amount 

 of hard work and frequent blank days have to be under- 

 gone. 



I was using a '303 Lee-Metford carbine, which had not 

 long been in my possession ; and I had not yet learnt that 



