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CHAPTER XVI. 



ALL Nature's charms looked more bright and beautiful 

 when the clouds cleared away after two or three days of 

 almost incessant rain, and we again took the hill. In the 

 afternoon, after a long ascent from the camp, we sat down 

 to rest among the brackens on a steep spur, and just out- 

 side a dense pine -forest that clothed its northern slope. 

 Several stags were bellowing away in a thickly wooded 

 gorge far below. As we sat there consulting as to how 

 we should try to circumvent one of them, a shaggy-looking 

 animal suddenly bounced out from the wood on to the 

 open ridge, some 150 yards higher up than where we were 

 sitting, and after a few bounds downwards, again vanished 

 into the wood. We were all quite nonplussed as to what 

 it could have been, for it certainly was not a deer, and it 

 had neither the gait nor the colour of a bear. Whilst we 

 were discussing the matter, a rustle was heard in the wood 

 behind us. On looking round, to our utter amazement 

 there we saw the long black visage of a tahr not a 

 suiTow (termed " ranioo " in Cashmere), which is sometimes 

 in the more eastern Himalayas called tahr or " thar," but 

 a veritable tahr. He was standing among the brushwood 

 within twenty yards, and returning our gaze with appa- 

 rently equal astonishment to our own. Snatching up the 

 rifle, I blazed straight at him, letting him have the second 

 barrel as he rushed away through the bushes. Being 

 sorely wounded, he was soon overtaken, when another 



