v IBEX 87 



customer ; and in this place I may as well tell you, 

 that I consider all my success with ibex and the noble 

 sambur to be owed to old Largie Deer Park. I may 

 safely say the schooling I had undergone from a small 

 boy on that dear old hill has made me what I am (I 

 say it with a bit of pride) a patient, persevering 

 stalker. Once disturb an ibex, and in this wide world 

 there is nothing that I know of so difficult to accom- 

 plish as to get within shot of them. I'm off to-morrow 

 for some weeks after ibex and bison, which latter noble 

 animal I have seen very little of. And now for the 

 ibex-stalk. 



A day that will ever remain a strongly-marked one 

 in my sporting life was just softly dawning, as I 

 stepped out of my street - door into the clear fresh 

 morning air. Not a sound was to be heard ; the dead 

 silence of an Indian night had not as yet been broken, 

 even by that early riser, the black robin. Calling my 

 faithful follower, Francis by name (a native shikaree or 

 hunter who carries my second rifle and acts as guide ; 

 he is a Christian, and as dear a creature as ever 

 walked), we started, followed by a tall athletic 

 Lascar a fine handsome fellow, with an eye like a 

 panther's. His duty is to carry a spare gun if one 

 extra is wanted in case of tigers, panthers, or elephants, 

 and also to skin the dead game and carry the spoils 

 home to the tent. The hill we intended hunting over 

 that day lay about 4 miles behind the tents, and 

 was well known to Francis and myself as about the 

 best ibex crag in the Neilgherry Hills. With 'hope,' 

 which somehow, despite all one's previous experience, 

 will 'spring triumphant in the human breast,' we 

 strode over the rough craggy ground, in the uncertain 

 light of the gray morning, at a pace that soon brought 

 us within examining distance of the great mountain, 



