226 By Mountain, Lake, and Plain 



them at least, carpeted with dead leaves, had 

 a slipperiness that nothing else has. On them 

 I found my beloved Persian givas worse than 

 useless; nailed shooting -boots, at any rate those 

 with worn nails, little better ; so that both D. 

 and I found it in places absolutely necessary to 

 discard all footgear, chance the thorns, and do 

 our walking in our stockinged feet. It was 

 certainly arduous toil, and after some hours it 

 became a struggle between the human tendency 

 to relax care and attention in ever so slight a 

 degree, and the conviction that the moment I 

 did so would be that selected by fate to send 

 a stag across my path. 



The maral, like others of the family, at this 

 season has a sweet musk-like scent. To me per- 

 sonally it was not noticeable unless the animal 

 was quite close, but both Ibrahim and the shikari 

 had a pointer-like capacity for detecting a taint 

 in the air. Up would go their noses, they would 

 whisper " Gao" and step by step we would draw 

 up wind. I never actually found a stag in this 

 curious way, but there was no humbug about 

 it. D. discovered that he was endowed with a 

 nose even keener than his shikaris, and could 

 make a point as well as any of them ! 



There were other denizens of these forests 

 besides maral. We would sometimes catch a 



