

EXORCISING AN EVIL SPIRIT. 67 



some burning stuff that he informed me was a charm with 

 which he was endeavouring to exorcise the evil spirit he 

 thought must have possessed it for, he added, he never 

 had known it behave so badly when he had been out with 

 me on former shikar trips. The following morning, how- 

 ever, my eye being considerably better, such ideas were dis- 

 pelled from their minds by my shooting a fine buck tahr, 

 and also a gooral. The tahr was one of a herd of seven ; 

 but owing to the broken nature of the ground, it was not 

 until after we had stalked quite close up to and shot him, 

 that we caught sight of his companions as they scurried 

 helter-skelter away among the rocks. My satisfaction at 

 being, at last, able to kill some game on this ground, was 

 added to by the opportunity it afforded of providing my 

 friends of the plateau with some venison in return for 

 their civility. 



The game here had been so much disturbed by niy wild 

 firing, that I now thought it advisable to try fresh ground. 

 About noon the loads were all packed and hauled up from 

 the rocky alcove. The laden men descended along the ridge 

 until they reached the lower extremity, as it were, of the 

 amphitheatre, where the torrent that drained it rushed and 

 tumbled down its rock-bound channel towards the narrow 

 gorge we had, a few days before, ascended with so much 

 difficulty from the river Goree to the plateau. Kurbeer 

 and I took a more circuitous route down through the crags 

 on the chance of finding game, but were unsuccessful. In 

 the evening we found the camp pitched beside some huts 

 near the stream, across which, and rising abruptly almost 

 from the water's edge, was a very steep and rugged hill-face 

 we intended scaling on the morrow. 



In the early morning we crossed the stream and com- 

 menced the long and arduous ascent, which must have been 

 some 5000 feet at least, and not a drop of water was there 

 to be found on the way up. It was past mid-day ere we 

 all had reached the top. The heat of the sun's rays, as 





