DRIVING A KHUD. 169 



locality I had killed a fine surrow there; this time, how- 

 ever, I saw only one or two gooral and a barking-deer. I 

 may here give an instance, which came under my observa- 

 tion, of how wild animals may recover from bad wounds. 

 On one occasion when hunting on this ground, I shot at Or 

 gooral — one of a herd of five or six — which went off with 

 its fore-leg so smashed that I even found bits of bone on 

 its track. The following year I was shooting there again 

 at the same season — November — when I saw what was 

 doubtless the identical herd on almost exactly the same 

 spot, and shot one out of it. This animal was found to 

 have a stiff knee-joint, the leg having evidently been broken 

 by a bullet, but the bones had reunited in a long indurated 

 lump ; and I have little doubt but that it was the same 

 gooral I had wounded there just a year before. I have the 

 bone thus mended by nature now in my possession. 



In the forenoon all our forces were marshalled, and most 

 of them placed under command of old Hookmee, the local 

 shikaree, to be disposed in the manner he thought best for 

 driving the gorge below. Strict injunctions were given that 

 no other noise was to be made than an occasional tap with 

 a stick on a tree-stem, except by the scouts posted on points 

 of vantage to watch the gorge as the beaters moved down 

 it, and to signal by voice any movements of our game they 

 might detect therein. This precaution regarding noise is 

 always necessary when driving deer in cover, as the beaters 

 usually make such an infernal row, and the game gets so 

 bewildered by their echoing voices, that a beast is just as 

 likely to break back as to rush madly forward in its terror, 

 instead of moving on leisurely, as it otherwise would be 

 pretty certain to do. 



Whilst Hookmee is proceeding with his small army of 

 beaters towards the head of the glen, I start off to take up 

 a position far down it, on a sort of promontory, overlooking 

 as much as possible the main gorge on the left, as well as a 



longer and palcr-grecn spines. It is the commonest kind of pine that grows 

 on the lower and middle ranges. 



