

A Morning with the Mehtars Falcons 137 



hawk is frequently flown many times in a 

 morning. 



In Chitral, falconers, besides being masters of 

 their own art, have need to be skilled cragsmen, 

 as their hawks frequently take them among 

 precipices and into the most dangerous ground. 

 There was none of this sort of cragman's work 

 to-day, but a little incident occurred which showed 

 us what these falconers are capable of. A young 

 goshawk had been thrown off at a chakor which 

 swung round to the right to make across the 

 river. The owner of the falcon was delighted 

 to see his young bird, a tiercel, bind to his 

 quarry in mid - air over the river, and carry 

 him to the opposite bank. It was necessary 

 to take the hawk up as quickly as possible, 

 as he had not been flown at game more than 

 once or twice before ; so the falconer, in order 

 to avoid going round by the bridge, got across 

 by worming himself along the hollow stem of a 

 long thin poplar which served to conduct a small 

 irrigation stream across the river. The poplar 

 trembled and bent under his weight, and looked 

 as if either it or the side struts supporting it 

 must go, but luckily both held firm. The falconer, 

 after warily approaching the hawk where he sat 

 " depluming" the chakor, took him up successfully, 

 and returned by the same precarious way, with 



