From Dalhousic into Chamba 93 



got up into the shooting-ground, we left our ayah 

 behind, and took with us one boy belonging to S., 

 his bearer, who did duty as valet to the party. 



Having sent on our modest luggage with coolies, 

 we left Strawberry Bank Cottage soon after breakfast, 

 one morning, and rode off by a winding path which 

 led to Kudjiar. Dalhousie once left behind, we met 

 no Europeans till we came back again: they none of 

 them wandered far afield, and seemed quite content 

 to spend their leave quietly in the hill station. 



What we did meet with, as we rode along through 

 the thick ilex and tall pine-trees, were monkeys, troops 

 of them. Suddenly the branches cracked and vibrated, 

 the leaves shook and rustled violently, and a great 

 monkey would swing across our path from one branch 

 to another, followed by a whole party, old and young. 

 On the side of the khud they sprang through the air 

 into space, as it seemed, down to the tree-tops below, 

 with a vast bound alighting on some branch far beneath 

 our path, clinging tight and swinging to the four 

 winds with the rebound. They were handsome fellows 

 in point of colour the Rhesus or Bhunda monkey, their 

 olive-green and yellow colour relieved by warmer tints 

 of a very bright chestnut almost amounting to orange. 

 Some of the old gentlemen had grey whiskers and 

 beards, others had an auburn halo round their faces. 



For cool impudence and audacity these hill-monkeys 

 stand unrivalled : they would slip into the bungalows 

 at Dalhousie, and carry off anything from the breakfast- 

 or tea-table if the room was empty, springing from 



