Reminiscences of Jungly pur. 125 



marking the spot where the little Cantonments lay nestling 

 in its embowering groves of trees. 



From the higher b alias, or flat tops around, came the 

 sharp, strident calls of the hill-loving painted partridge. 



As I admired these beautiful surroundings, and drank in 

 the light and invigorating hill air, those white dots, the 

 beaters, were gradually working along towards me. At 

 length they reached and entered the kagar, in which I felfc 

 that the stag and his hind must have halted. Their distant 

 shouts mingled with the crashing of boulders, which rolled 

 from above went thundering and bounding down-hill. I 

 began to guess at the distance to which the backsight should 

 be raised when the dark form of the hind issued from a 

 thick coppice. She trotted along the hillside, and halted, 

 her big ears moving to and fro in suspense ; then she began 

 to clamber at a lumbering canter straight towards me. On 

 she came, and then in about a minute there rang out a sharp 

 trumpet note of alarm, and a shower of stones rattled 

 down-hill, as she changed her direction on sighting or 

 winding me, and dashed into the glen below. Then, at last, 

 a crackling of leaves up-hill, and the huge yellow rump of 

 the stag, beyond which rose a grand pair of horns, disap- 

 peared behind a mass of bamboo thicket. 



Rushing up-hill I was just in time to see him cantering 

 along beyond rne on the narrowest of little paths that 

 skirted a steep face of black, basaltic rock. 



The first shot missed ; but the second bullet was no 

 sooner despatched than he executed a series of extraordi- 

 nary leaps, head laid back, and fore feet literally pawing 

 the air, as he rushed over the brow of a tremendous khud 

 and disappeared. 



With a heavier rifle I doubt whether I should have 

 got along as I did ; but with the little Lee-Metford in my 



