SUBALPINE REGIONS 175 



He was shot near Pauri in Garhwal. We were three 

 guns, and were posted at the bottom of a deep ravine 

 filled with dense thorny scrub. The villagers commenced 

 to beat from above, with tom-toms and horns, and threw 

 down rocks till the bear, which had been damaging their 

 crops, came out with furious grunts down the bed of the 

 stream. We fired eleven bullets into him as he rushed 

 along, but he seemed little the worse until he got one in 

 his head at about two yards' range. The twelve bullets 

 were cut out of him when he was skinned, but most of 

 them had slipped round under the skin in the thick layer 

 of fat which covered his great body, and had not at all 

 penetrated his vitals. It took four men to carry away 

 his skin, tied to a pole with the fat sticking to it. He 

 must have weighed about ten hundredweight, and was a 

 very old male. Most bears one meets are, however, only 

 half the size of this one. 



To return to our march. I had to cross rather a steep 

 pass over one of the southern spurs of Nanda Devi. The 

 tramp had been a long and tedious one, ascending through 

 thick jungle all day. Near the summit there was a forest 

 of old and weather-beaten pines, some white and hoary 

 with age, their dead stems pointing to the sky. There 

 had been breaks in the rain, and the sun had shone at 

 intervals, and the air was close and oppressive. Immense 

 black clouds hung and rolled up towards the snow peaks, 

 and thunder pealed in the distance with ominous sound. 



We hurried to get over the ghat before the storm broke. 

 The villagers who carried the loads struggled on manfully. 

 We crossed none too soon, for flashes of hghtning became 

 more frequent, and night was fast approaching. A 

 deafening peal of thunder, simultaneous with a flash 

 which seemed to pervade the air and bhnd and dazzle 

 one's eyes, was followed by the crash of a falling dead 



