284 SUPERSTITIOUS CREDULITY. 



and solitude was now absolute. The monotonous babble and 

 plash of the brooklet which flowed past ; the hooting of owls 

 echoing dismally around ; the dirge-like sough of the cold 

 night wind as it rose and fell among the dark aisles of the 

 pine-forest ; and the snow-clad heights looming stark and 

 wan above in the pale moonlight, all served to augment the 

 idea of its being about as lonesome and elfin-looking a spot as 

 such a combination of depressing influences could make it. 

 At any rate, this seemed to be the opinion of my Goorkha 

 servant, who being, like most mountaineers, of a superstitious 

 turn of mind, next morning told me he had been all night 

 dreaming of hobgoblins coming down the glen to seize him. 

 He had most probably been partaking of a heavy supper of 

 venison, and listening to the wonderful legends told by 

 the Cashmerees as they sat round the camp-fire about the 

 wild haunted tarns of Choar Nag, which lie among the high 

 mountains at the head of this gloomy glen. Poor Kirpa ! A 

 few years later he was accidentally shot dead by a comrade, 

 with whom he was out hunting in the Dehra Doon forests. . . . 

 Whilst alluding to the superstitious tendency of the hill- 

 men, I may mention a little practical joke I was told of as 

 having been played on his shikarees by a sportsman when 

 ibex-hunting in days gone by on the Wurdwan mountains. 

 At that time the trigonometrical survey of Cashmere had 

 only been commenced, and the unsophisticated villagers 

 then regarded the scientific operations as a sort of " Mumbo 

 Jumbo " proceeding, which was quite beyond their compre- 

 hension. One day this sportsman, whilst resting beside a 

 cairn of stones that had been erected on a hill-top to mark a 

 survey station, began questioning his shikarees as to their 

 ideas concerning it. One of them replied that all he knew 

 about it was, that he had once ascended this very hill with 

 a Sahib (gentleman), who had set up a wonderful kind of 

 " durbeen " (telescope), through which he had looked in all 

 directions. He had also made a great number of figures on a 



