199 



CHAPTER XV. 



SHOULD the following account of the pursuit of the " hangul," 

 or Cashmere stag, chance to meet the eye of any one who, 

 like Leech's " Mr Briggs," has been " made free " of a Scottish 

 deer-forest, he may contend that stag-shooting in Cashmere 

 is inferior to deer-stalking in the Highlands. Well, in point 

 of numbers he is perhaps right. But he must take into con- 

 sideration that a forest in the Himalayas is very different 

 from a forest in the Grampians. The former is a true forest 

 in every sense of the word, where the deer are at all seasons 

 liable to be disturbed by beasts of prey as well as by hunters, 

 and where, in its vast wooded depths, they are often very 

 difficult to find ; whereas the latter, as is well known, is 

 nowadays usually one only in name, so far as trees are 

 concerned, where the cervine denizens, from being tended, 

 as it may almost be called, for the greater part of the year, 

 and sometimes even fenced in, like domestic cattle, to pre- 

 vent them from straying, are consequently more numerous 

 and less really wild, though during the stalking season they 

 become just as crafty as their confreres of Cashmere. But 

 to the keen sportsman and lover of nature the pursuit of 

 the noble Cashmere stag in wilds where its protection from 

 constant danger depends entirely on its own instinct, the 

 grand and varied character of the mountains, the perfection 

 of climate, the superiority of the trophies, 1 and, last but not 



1 Few deer, if any, except the wapiti of North America, carry finer horns 

 than the hangul, and hunting the "elk" (as it is termed) in the Rockies, I 



