184 By Mountain, Lake> and Plain 



and so we reached a high ridge that was 

 evidently the spying point they had been making 

 for. The hunters curiously watched me using 

 my glasses, 1 and I was not a little delighted to 

 be able to announce that a stag with a couple 

 of hinds were visible on a distant ridge. Un- 

 fortunately, the deer had moved out of sight 

 before I could make certain of the stag's points 

 or the shikaris had seen them at all. 



I tested the wind with a little dust. " You are 

 then a margan (shikari) ? " one of them asked. 

 Such knowledge as this was evidently not ex- 

 pected ! I had taken an opportunity of telling 

 them about some other animals varieties they 

 had never heard of I had shot in India, and 

 the satisfaction was now mine of knowing that 

 this small, but I had hoped expedient, trumpet 

 had only succeeded in securing me a reputation 

 of quite another kind ! 



We went on to the ridge where the deer had 

 disappeared and came on a deep ravine, on the 



1 I hold that the best equipment for stalking is a pair of pris- 

 matic binoculars, as well as an ordinary spying-glass. And if you 

 carry the binoculars, you want the telescope to be bigger than 

 that ordinarily carried, to make it worth carrying at all, say 

 one with an object-glass of 2| inches. The best size for the 

 binoculars is + 8. Stalkers in Scotland generally seem to carry 

 a single glass of no considerable power, an instrument it is difficult 

 to pick up game with, and extremely inconvenient to use when the 

 stalk is actually being made. 



