CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 85 



same lofty region, it rarely looks for trouble 

 from above, so that sportsmen often make a 

 long and tiring- stalk so as to get above the 

 game and fire down on it. The herd is always 

 on the move, inspired by a restlessness which 

 there is no difficulty in understanding when we 

 remember how scanty Nature's larder must be 

 at those frozen heights. 



The lowland cousins of the yak are the gaur 

 (which Anglo-Indians call " bison") and the 

 buffalo. The "bison" likewise clambers into 

 the teak and bamboo forests in the hills, feed- 

 ing up to a height of six thousand feet. Most 

 people are familiar with the animal, at any rate 

 in the Zoo : a powerful black ox, with a greasy- 

 looking hide, small feet and slender white- 

 stockinged legs, neat "breedy" head, and 

 powerful yellow horns tipped with black. The 

 finest of these horns measure over forty inches 

 across. The gaur, as, with all deference to 

 sporting nicknames, I prefer to call it, stands 

 fully six feet at the shoulder, and is perhaps the 

 most massive of all the wild cattle, as a big 

 bull, in good condition, will weigh not far short 

 of a ton. It does not love its neighbour as 

 itself, more particularly when the neighbour is 

 a European, but is one of the first among the 

 wild and timid jungle-folk to desert its old 

 haunts when these are invaded by civilisation, 

 and to seek solitudes still more remote in which 



