276 NOISY STAGS. 



of a bear. Whilst we were discussing the matter, a rustle 

 was heard in the wood behind us. On looking round, to our 

 utter amazement there we saw the long black visage of a 

 tahr not a surrow (termed " ramoo " in Cashmere), which is 

 sometimes in the more eastern Himalayas called tahr or 

 "thar," but a veritable tahr. He was standing among the 

 brushwood within twenty yards, and returning our gaze with 

 apparently equal astonishment to our own. Snatching up 

 the rifle, I blazed straight at him, letting him have the second 

 barrel as he rushed away through the bushes. Being sorely 

 wounded, he was soon overtaken, when another bullet finished 

 him. He was a fine, dark, shaggy buck with good horns, and 

 about the last animal we might have expected to see on such 

 ground, where his appearance was most unaccountable, for 

 there were no tahr haunts within at least thirty miles of it. 

 Ramzan told me that he remembered only once before having 

 seen a " kras," as he called him, on the Nouboog hills. This 

 one was evidently a stranger in the land, and might perhaps 

 have been chased from his own rocky fastnesses by wild dogs. 

 It was the rutting season, however, and love is sometimes the 

 cause of strange freaks. 



Leaving the two spare men to skin and cut up the tahr, 

 Ramzan and I tried to find one of the noisy stags which still 

 continued their roaring, notwithstanding the firing. To one 

 of them we got very close, but failed to get a chance at him 

 owing to the thickness of the cover he was in. We hunted 

 here for another day or two without firing a shot. Although 

 the deer were plentiful, the woods were too dense for working 

 them in. The villagers told us that bears had commenced 

 their burglaries at night among the walnut groves in the 

 neighbourhood ; but the moon was then too young to afford 

 light enough for looking them up. On dark nights, when the 

 villagers detect an old thief committing depredations on their 

 walnuts, they sometimes quickly surround the tree he is in, 

 and lighting a big fire under it, set up a tremendous shouting, 



