244 SEARCH FOR A TALISMAN. 



almost a yard in length, measured straight without the twist, 

 and were nearly a foot in girth at the base; but there is 

 invariably one bitter drop in one's cup of happiness. We 

 now discovered that my first two shots, both of which turned 

 out to be deadly, had unluckily been at the same animal, 

 which I had mistaken for a different one when I fired the 

 second time as he moved up with the others among the birch 

 bushes. We sighted a black bear in the distance as we were 

 descending to our shelter. It was much too late to go after 

 him ; and what cared I for a bear then, compared with the 

 noble animal I had just shot ! 



Besides the superstition respecting the snake-eating pro- 

 pensity of the rnarkhor, there is another entertained regard- 

 ing a small, smooth, dark-green stone 1 which is sometimes 

 found among the entrails of very old bucks. My attention 

 was drawn to this when, before starting for the hill in the 

 early morning, the shikarees made straight for the spot 

 where they had, the night before, carefully deposited the 

 gralloch oi the markhor. They rather unwillingly informed 

 me, with the utmost gravity, that they were going to search 

 for the said stone, which, amongst other properties they be- 

 lieved it possessed, was that of its being an infallible anti- 

 dote to the poison of snake-bite if applied to the wound. 

 Whether they found this talisman or not I failed to dis- 

 cover and in all probability, had they done so, they would 

 have kept it " dark," from fear of my depriving them of it. 



As we proceeded upward we started a musk-deer, at which 

 I was very nearly " letting loose," and glad I was that she 

 escaped, for on getting up to the bed from which she had 

 risen, we found her suckling offspring lying on it. After 

 following far on the tracks of our friends of the previous 



1 Bezoar, a calculous concretion sometimes found in the stomach of certain 

 animals of the goat tribe. The term comes from a Persian word meaning 

 antidote, which this substance was absurdly supposed to be, and is still by 

 Orientals, to the fatal effects of poison. 



