DRIVING A KHUD. 217 



only one or two gooral and a barking-deer. I may here give 

 an instance, which came under my observation, of how wild 

 animals may recover from bad wounds. On one occasion 

 when hunting on this ground, I shot at a gooral one of a 

 herd of five or six which went off with its fore-leg so 

 smashed that I even found bits of bone on its track. The 

 following year I was shooting there again at the same season 

 November when I saw what was doubtless the identical 

 herd on almost exactly the same spot, and shot one out of it. 

 This animal was found to have a stiff knee-joint, the leg 

 having evidently been broken by a bullet, but the bones had 

 reunited in a long indurated lump ; and I have little doubt 

 but that it was the same gooral I had wounded there just a 

 year before. I have the bone thus mended by nature now in 

 my possession. 



In the forenoon all our forces were marshalled, and 

 most of them placed under command of old Hookmee, 

 the local shikaree, to be disposed in the manner he thought 

 best for driving the gorge below. Strict injunctions were 

 given that no other noise was to be made than an occa- 

 sional tap with a stick on a tree stem, except by the scouts 

 posted on points of vantage to watch the gorge as the beaters 

 moved down it, and to signal by voice any movements of our 

 game they might detect therein. This precaution regarding 

 noise is always necessary when driving deer in cover, as the 

 beaters usually make such an infernal row, and the game 

 gets so bewildered by their echoing voices, that a beast is just 

 as likely to break back as to rush madly forward in its terror, 

 instead of moving on leisurely, as it otherwise would be pretty 

 certain to do. 



Whilst Hookmee is proceeding with his small army of 

 beaters towards the head of the glen, I start off to take up a 

 position far down it, on a sort of promontory, overlooking as 

 much as possible the main gorge on the left, as well as a 

 smaller lateral one on the right, running into the main one 



