260 THE "AWAZ KE WAKT." 



Before parting with the old fossil, I, strange to say, casually 

 discovered, during our nightly palavers at the camp-fire, that 

 he was the father of my old friend Kazima. The fond parent 

 never tired of proudly describing his son who, he said, was 

 now in service as a shikaree as being as mighty a hunter 

 as he was a fine-looking fellow. But to turn to the pursuit 

 of the hangul. 



The time when the stags commence their roarings the 

 " awaz ke wakt," as the Cashmerees call it from about the 

 20th of September till the beginning of November, was now 

 at hand ; yet, notwithstanding my sanguine anticipations of 

 sport, it was with a pang of regret that I bade adieu to 

 beautiful Lolab, where time had passed so pleasantly, and 

 also to my fellow-traveller, whose cheerful companionship 

 had added so much to the enjoyment of my sojourn there. 



At the capital I found old Eamzan awaiting my arrival. 

 He looked more snuffy than ever, but was otherwise little 

 altered by an increase of several years to his already ad- 

 vanced age. He proposed that we should try the forests on 

 the hills above Nouboog Nye which beautiful valley I have 

 attempted to describe in a preceding chapter although the 

 general idea at that time was, that stags had become very 

 scarce there. This, however, turned out to be one of the 

 popular fallacies respecting the great decrease of all Hima- 

 layan large game. When I say this, I do not include the 

 game in the more easily accessible localities, such as the 

 Dehra Doon forests and parts of the Terai, where, from the 

 indiscriminate slaughter of milk-hinds and calves, which are 

 so often butchered from howdahs by those who call it sport, 

 the decrease of game is a sad truth : I mean the animals on 

 the higher and less accessible ranges. The real fact at that 

 time was, that in the Nouboog forests, owing to the late 

 grazing of the sheep there, the stags did not descend from 

 their summer haunts on the higher mountains so early as 

 was their wont in many other places in fact, not before 



