INGENUOUS STALKERS 135 



among the graceful red birches, so like our own 

 silver birches, but with a beautiful pinkish red 

 trunk, stood a buck with long, widely curving 

 horns a foot or more in length. Just as I started 

 to creep down the bank as a preliminary to fording 

 the river, he gave another bark and trotted into the 

 bushes. 



I shall always admire George for resolutely 

 setting out on that nightmare of a path morning 

 after morning, its difficulties enormously increased 

 by a night of frost. 



He slept for two or three nights in a shallow 

 cave at the head of this glen, the better to reach his 

 ground early. In a short note, reminiscent of 

 Mr. Pepys at his best, he informed us the evening 

 after his departure from the village that he had had 

 a stalk after the herd on a rocky spur thickly 

 grown with rhododendrons; Yung-sha having poked 

 his head and most of his body round a corner to 

 " see what was happening," had put off the ram 

 when they were within fifty yards of it. This herd 

 evaded all their efforts, and had eventually to be 

 left. Though very nice fellows, these hunters were 

 not stalkers in the proper sense of the word. In- 

 deed, they broke the elementary rules of stalking 

 with the utmost sangfroid. When three steps 

 would place Lao- Wei out of sight he would walk 

 cheerfully along the top of a ridge in full view of 

 the opposite slope ; career gaily over a skyline, my 

 rifle blazing on his shoulder in the sun, an outward 

 and visible sign to any animal with eyes in its head 

 for miles that danger was abroad ; whilst, in the 

 middle of a stalk, the whistles of a peripatetic 

 marmot would fill him with an innocent and child- 



