RAMZAN MEER, SHIKAREE. 97 



mcrhand (sash), without so much as the knife, invariably 

 carried by Moliammedans, visible, and his head was loosely 

 wrapped round with a huge white and very clean turban. 

 But there was something about his eyes which spoke vol- 

 umes. The Srinuggur man was, on the contrary, a noisy 

 hulking fellow, got up in the conventional impostor style, 

 with belt bristling with sporting appurtenances, and who 

 was continually boasting of his exploits with his former 

 employer, and what he now intended to perform with his 

 present one. Nor was Eamzan, though a good man and 

 true in many respects, quite " straight " where his own in- 

 terests were concerned, for I learnt from a brother sports- 

 man I afterwards met in Wurdwan, that he (Eamzan) had 

 a prior engagement with him, by letter ; but thinking, I 

 suppose, that " a bird in hand is worth two in the bush," he 

 had taken service with me. I owe it in gratitude to this 

 true sportsman (an officer then belonging to the 27 th Foot), 

 to record that, on my hearing the facts of the case, and 

 offering to give the man up, he generously refused to de- 

 prive me of his valuable services. And here, as a sample 

 of the dangers which sometimes attend mountain hunting, 

 I may also chronicle a narrow escape that this same sports- 

 man told me of his having made shortly before I met him. 

 He and his men were after a herd of ibex, and had but just 

 crossed a steep gully, when a tremendous avalanche of rocks 

 and stones thundered down it. Not many yards ahead was 

 another gully they would have to cross, but ere they had 

 recovered from their astonishment, to their dismay a similar 

 avalanche rattled down it also. Most probably both had 

 been the result of a landslip far above, which had, in some 

 providential manner, been diverted to either side of them in 

 its descent, or they must have been swept down by it. 



Our next day's tramp was at first across a low range 

 covered with wood, and then up the valley of Nouboog, to 

 a little hamlet consisting of a few log-built huts, much re- 

 sembling the ruder kind of Swiss chdlets. The scenery of 



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