io8 



A VANISHING SPORT. 



IT is only in a few of the remotest recesses of 

 the rugged Hindu Kush that the old sport of 

 driving with hounds still lingers, and this mostly 

 in glens where the foot of few white men have 

 trod. In other places the arrival of the English- 

 man has been followed by game-laws, the necessary 

 concomitant of modern rifles. These all condemn 

 driving, and rightly, for the man with the weapons 

 of to-day stands in no need of four-footed assist- 

 ants to make things easier for him. It is other- 

 wise with the indigenous sportsman armed with 

 his old matchlock of prehistoric design. With 

 the crude weapons carried by Chitrali or Washi- 

 gam shikaris, not all the hunter's craft at their 

 disposal, nor the ownership of the best breeds 

 of hounds, would enable them to exterminate 

 game. 



The theory of the sport is based upon the fact 

 that markhor and ibex, when escaping from their 

 natural foes, leopards and wolves, fly to precipices 



