312 THE FORESTS OF UPPER INDIA 



evening, when returning down the valley, crossing ridges 

 among heavy timber, with Boodoo leading, we started 

 a sambur stag. He rushed across the hollow and stood 

 on the next ridge listening for a moment, affording me a 

 nice shot behind the shoulder with the 14-bore rifle. He 

 fell to the shot, and never moved. This was the finest 

 sambur of my bag, 42-inch horns, 41-inch spread, 8^ inches 

 round the beam, a very rare size. 



I had two German bloodhounds {schweiss - hund), 

 called Hirschman and Hela, brought from the Harz 

 mountains, which became very useful for tracking deer. 

 Fastened by a leash, one of them would follow on the 

 line, carefully nosing the ground where a wounded buck 

 had gone, and pulling hard to get on, old Boodoo holding 

 the strap, for long distances. Boodoo trusted his own 

 tracking far more, and did not believe in scent, which he 

 did not think much of as dogs in India run by sight 

 mostl}^ 



When riding an elephant in the open sal jungles below 

 the Bori forest, I had the unwonted fortune to meet 

 and shoot a very line specimen of the big swamp deer 

 or barasingha, with 12-tined horns and about the size 

 of the sambur. He stood for a moment gazing at the 

 elephant in an open glade, his great, wide-spreading 

 antlers resembling Landseer's picture of the red deer 

 on the hill. 



The next visit to the Bori forest was to collect timber 

 for building, and to explore a fine sal forest lower down 

 the valley, where great stems 100 feet high and 8 feet 

 in girth existed ; but these rare and useful trees grew in 

 land belonging to a Rajah. Anyone might easily tell 

 Government forest by the big old trees having all dis- 

 appeared. 



I was crossing one day an open space in the Bori valley 



