606 
FOREST AND STFtEAM.- 
ifcjuHE ssB, 1902. 
my heart pounding in anticipation of a shot at a big 
gobbler the next moment, when out of the thicket rushed 
two fox squirrels in a mad race, evidently at play. They 
scampered about in the fallen leaves, then leaped to the 
trunk of a tree and chased each other up one side at a 
dead run, and clawed and scrambled and fell down the 
other much like two kittens, only a great deal rougher. 
Several times during their chase I could have killed 
both of them with one barrel, but refrained, as I have 
yet to find the sport in shooting squirrels with a shot 
gun; later I saw a dozen or more, all seeming to be 
having a good time. The different bird notes soon had 
me guessing, and I spent twenty minutes trying to lo- 
cate one whose peculiar and delicate whistling call was 
entirely new to me, although the bird may have been 
common enough in that latitude, which is quite unfa- 
miliar to me. 
My guide came up and disturbed my visit with the 
birds with the remark "The stuff is off — did you hear 
that dog?" I had. and had not moved a step since I 
heard the noisy brute. 
Taking the trail back to the boat, we explored the 
overflow and found plenty of deer signs, but decided the 
walking too heavy for a warm day — beside the bark- 
ing dog was still busy on the island. We launched the 
boat and floated along lazily, for it was a typical Indian 
summer day, and too warm in the sun for comfort. We 
found everything dull and quiet at the club house, every- 
one being away on different excursions, so I scribbled 
a note to Burt to inform him that if he did not pray for 
rain or rough weather the Uneasy. Club stood to get 
"skunked" completely. 
Next morning my old German friend prevailed upon 
me to go fishing again, as it was his last day's outing. 
We started off early and were soon located at the same 
log where two days before we had decided we had caught 
about all of them. Wc soon changed our minds, how- 
ever, for with selected minnows we landed over a dozen 
bass in short order, and, as usual, while I did not catch 
as many as my business-like friend, I got the big one, 
a three-pound black bass. I later thought my record 
spoiled when my German friend hooked what I thought 
must be a monster channel catfish; and what a fight 
was going on as I hurried up to help him, when with a 
leap clear out of the water an eight-pound dogfish 
showed himself — a fish as thoroughly disliked as a snake, 
but with the redeeming feature that he will fight. Con- 
vinced that my three-pounder was still the prize winner 
— for no true angler will string or count a dogfish — we 
proceeded to club the brute to death and tossed him 
out where the razorbacks would make short work of 
his ugly hulk. The guide, who had been down the lake 
bailing out an abandoned dugout, had secured a piece of 
board for a paddle, and by sitting in the stern could 
keep the bow, which was badly decayed, out of the 
water. With this ungainly craft and my steel rod, which 
I never supposed could be used as a fly rod, he pro- 
ceeded to attach leader and bucktail flies and paddled 
out and began to cast. Shades of Izaak Walton! This 
guide was an artist! and I found myself following him 
lip and down the pond in deepest interest and admiration, 
and when twice he landed doubles I was tempted to 
make him surrender dugout, rod and flies and let me 
be "it" awhile, when I remembered that I could cer- 
tainly not manage the boat any better than I could cast 
a fly, and so I continued to be an onlooker — and right 
there I promised myself I would learn the art of cast- 
ing before ever I claimed to be an angler. How like 
a pothunter I felt after taking all my catch with a gaudy 
bobber to tell you when to pull, and a big minnow that 
any fish woitld bite at! 
That evening, while I helped my old friend pack up 
for his trip home, I was sincerely sorry to have him 
leave, as we had become extremely friendly, and he was 
every inch a sportsman and good fellow. However, 
with favorable weather I knew I would have to desert 
him for the strenuous task of killing enough ducks for 
the fellows at home, and the bagging of a turkey, which 
were still on the programme, and he could not have 
joined me on these trips as much as I should have en- 
joyed having him. Bill, 
[to be continued.] 
To the Snow Line of the Himalayas 
(Continued from page 488.) 
The forests on the southern slopes of the mountains 
contain great quantities of oak trees and a pine locally 
called cheer (Pinus longifolia) . They are usually not very 
close together, and grass grows underneath them. On 
the slopes facing the north, the soil is more moist, and, in 
addition to. oaks, there are other species of pine, some 
very tall, and large weeds of various kinds grow under- 
neath, with a dwarf kind of bamboo in warm hollows, 
ft believe this is Arundinariai falcata.) There was a tree 
with leaves like the European holly, but it grew to a 
height of at least fifty feet, with a trunk two or three feet 
in diameter. It is probably an ilex. The most beautiful 
of all the trees is a cedar called deodar, a name meaning 
gift of God. It grows, in places, to a height of 150 feet 
or more, and the foliage is something like that of»the 
American tamarack. The extremities of the young twigs 
curve downward in a graceful manner. Its timber is 
excellent for a variety of purpose*. In many parts chest- 
nut and walnut trees arc common. The villagers grind 
the walnuts and press out the oil. which is used in cook- 
ing. In deep, hot valleys there are wild date palms of 
small size. 
During one of the marches through a thick fir wood, we 
were passing round the upper end of a ravine when an 
enormous marten ran past us thirty yards distant. I hap- 
pened to be in front, carrying the shotgun, and killed him 
with a charge of No. 5. Some clays afterward I killed 
another, and S. had the skins of both of them preserved 
for stuffing. We were shown a cave where the hillmen 
said a bear lived. It had two openings, separated by a 
pillar of rock a few yards wide, so I went, rifle in hand, 
in at one hole and out of the other, but the bear was not 
at home. While strolling with one of the coolies in 
the neighborhood of a camping ground, S. saw and killed 
a barking deer. 
Although our tents were small, the hills, even near the 
villages, were so steep that there was often much diffi- 
culty in finding a spot sufficiently level for pitching them. 
Sometimes we were obliged to rest the legs at the foot 
of our bedsteads on large pieces of rock before we could 
iie in an easy position for sleeping. 
The paths from one halting place to another were at 
times over a very awkward kind of country. On one oc- 
casion we had to climb a wall of perpendicular smooth 
rock, perhaps thirty feet high, by putting our hands and 
feet into small holes which the Puharries had chiselled 
out for the purpose. The coolies seemed to prefer walk- 
ing over uneven ground. If the regular path went round 
the base of a hill to a camp on the other side, they would 
go straight over the top with their loads. The only 
time they showed signs of real fatigue was during a 
march where the whole road was almost level. They 
then straggled in, one behind the other, half a mile or 
more apart. Every day they stopped once or twice to 
refresh themselves with a smoke. S. and 1 were non- 
smokers, and the coolies, having no pipes, made a substi- 
tute for one in a singular manner, which I have never 
seen elsewhere. Selecting a smooth and rather damp 
piece of the path, they bored two- holes meeting eacb other 
under the surface. In one they inserted a leaf folded in 
the shape of a cone, and in the other a leaf rolled so as 
to form a tube. Tobacco was put in the former and 
lighted. Then each man in turn lay flat on the ground, 
took three or four whiffs and drew as much smoke as 
possible into his lungs, holding it there until it made him 
cough. Fig. 5 shows how the leaves are used. 
While journeying through a narrow valley at the foot 
of a wooded slope, I saw a large eagle sitting on the ridge 
of rocks above the trees. I fired the two-grooved rifle 
with the 200-yard leaf sight raised, hut he flew away un- 
touched. Further on, wc entered a valley at right angles 
to this. On the side of the mountain straight in front 
but separated from us by a stream of water, was a bark- 
ing deer feeding, at what I judged to be 150 yards dis- 
tance. Raising the leaf sight I sat down and fired at the 
shoulder with the two groove. The bullet was afterward 
found to have struck too far back and rather low. pass- 
ing through the region of the liver. The deer went 
twenty yards and dropped, apparently dead. Two coolies 
went to where he was lying and were almost in the act 
of lifting him, when he sprang to his feet and galloped 
down the mountain side. We had. by this time, all 
crossed the stream, and some of the coolies tried to in- 
tercept the deer, which began to ascend the mountain 
again in a different direction. Dropp'ng my rifle, 1 raced 
up the slope and succeeded in heading him. when he again 
ran down and galloped past S., who fired with his rifle. 
The bullet passed through the abdomen, but had no 
apparent effect, and the deer disappeared among the trees 
which bordered the stream. Taking the Purdey rifle, I 
followed carefuly in the same direction, and found him 
standing in shallow water, forty yards distant, when a 
bullet in the center of the shoulder killed him in his 
tracks. 
The course from another camping place was a sandy 
path along the narrow and rather flat top of a grass-cov- 
ered mountain. Here we found the tracks of a tiger and 
followed them for about two miles with our rifles ready. 
They led to a part where trees were numerous, and here 
the tiger seemed to have heard us, for the tracks turned 
off abruptly through a cleft in some rocks, and down a 
very steep part of the mountain, where we could not fol- 
low further. 
In some of the valleys the flies were numerous and 
very troublesome. Beside myriads of the common house 
fly, there was a kind of very large gadfly, which came into 
the tent in the hot part of the day. and, if not watched, 
inflicted bites which caused drops of blood to trickle 
down the skin. I examined, wnth a magnifying glass, one 
which we killed, and found that the proboscis was sus- 
rounded with fine lancets. Then there was an insect about 
one-quarter the size of a house fly, which hovered in 
front of the skin, and, if not driven away, made a dart so 
quickly that the eye could not follow the motion, but 
suddenly a black spot appeared. If the skin were at 
once squeezed, an inky fluid exuded and there was no 
further trouble, but if left alone, the place would itch 
badly within a few hours. There were wild bees which 
built great masses of comb on the under sides of rocks 
projecting from the faces of precipices. There they were 
completely protected from rain and animal robbers. Many 
of the villagers kept bees, sometimes fixing the hives 
under the projecting portion of the ridge of the roof at 
the gable end of their houses. 
Among the patients brought by the coolies was a man 
almost totally blind, owing to a white film on the cornea 
of each eye. I told him that this could be removed, but 
the medicine to be applied would cause great pain, which 
would last for an hour or two. He said he did not mind 
that, so I began the treatment at once. The next morn- 
ing -when Ave were leaving, he sent word that the pain 
was not nearly so great as he had expected, and did not 
last half as long. A few marches further on another blind 
villager was brought, who told me he knew I could cure 
him, for the above-mentioned man had sent word that he 
could already see much better. I found that the poor 
fellow had fully formed cataracts in both eyes, and was 
grieved to tell him that nothing could be done, unless he 
went to the Government hospital at Mussourie, where 
he would be provided with spectacles after the cataracts 
had been removed by an operation. 
Our coolies, as well as the villagers, were liable to 
severe attacks of colic, caused. I imagine, by the flour 
vhich forms their chief food being imperfectly cooked. 
Davis' Painkiller, a patent medicine of which I had bought 
a bottle before starting, proved a quick and excellent 
remedy. 
On one occasion while marching we met a party of 
Tartars driving some flocks of sheep, each of which car- 
ried a load contained in two bags, which were sus- 
pended by a broad cloth band passing over the back. 
There is a considerable trade carried on in this manner 
between India and Thibet, the traders coming through 
the mountain passes every summer when the snow melts 
sufficiently to let them travel. They bring borax, salt and 
wool, taking back sugar, rice, flour and cotton, and other 
kinds of cloth into Thibet. Before returning, they sell 
the wool off the backs of the sheep to merchants in the 
lower valleys. Some of the traders employ goats, or 
yaks, as pack animals. Yaks suffer severely from the 
heat when passing from the high tablelands of the in- 
terior, but there is said to be a hybrid between them and 
the mountain cattle which is sometimes used for pack 
work, and can bear the temperature down to about 4,000 
feet above the sea. The average load for a sheep or 
goat is ten pounds, and for each yak or hybrid 150 to 200 
pounds. One of our camps was in a beautiful valley 
where the ground was unusually level for our tents. It 
was a plot covered with short grass about twenty yards 
wide and one hundred long by the side of a rivulet We 
were sheltered by an old pine wood with lichen hanging 
upon the trees, and beyond this, mountain rose above 
mountain like a succession of enormous billows covered 
with grass and forests. Here we remained two days and 
went after a herd of a kind of wild goat called thar, which 
some villagers told our men they could show us. Its 
scientific name is Hemitragns jemlmcus. The head is 
dark, the forequarters are of a light ash or grayish-brown 
color, but much darker on the hindquarters, legs and 
belly. The hair of the buck is long on the. neck and 
shoulders. The legs are stout and rather short. A full- 
sized buck weighs over 250 pounds, while the female is 
only about one-third of that weight. Both sexes have 
horns curving slightly backward, those of the male being 
from twelve to eighteen inches long. The hair of the 
female is reddish-brown, merging into dirty white on the 
belly. 
The favorite haunts of the thar are the steepest and 
most rugged parts of the mountains on their southern 
slopes, where there is grass among the forest trees. 
Two villagers, who acted as guides, led us up and down 
a series of ridges and valleys ending in a long and steep 
slope covered with short grass and timber, terminating 
with a precipice fully fifty feet high and overlooking the 
upper end of a ravine. On the opposite side of this was 
a wall of rocks about 100 yards distant, covered with 
trees. We sat down at the edge of the precipice so- as to 
be sheltered from observation by branches of trees behind 
us (which hung down over and in front of us), and 
waited silently. At the end of perhaps an hour, I saw five 
buck thar following one after the other and jumping 
down from rock to rock. 
Standing up in order to have a clear view through the 
leaves, I leveled the two-groove rifle at one which paused 
for a few seconds. The head of the foresight showed 
on the center of his shoulder, but before I could press 
the trigger, the mass on which my left foot rested, slid 
suddenly over the edge of the precipice. I was falling 
down headlong, when I instinctively let go the grip 
• of the stock, grasped a branch which happened to be 
near my face and pulled myself back. The thar had 
disappeared, but another had jumped onto the same 
rock, and I aimed at him. Before there was time to 
fire, that fool Jahtroo lost his wits from excitement so 
completely, that he seized my right arm with one hand 
while pointing franctically at the goat with the other. 
The rifle would have exploded if 1 had not instantly 
taken my finger off the trigger. By tbe time I had 
shaken Jahtroo away from my arm all the thars were 
out of sight, except one, at which I fired. At the in- 
stant the hammer fell he sprang behind the trees, and the 
bullet, of 13 to the pound, made a large white mark on 
the black rock, in front of which the center of his shoul- 
der had been, a fraction of a second before. All this 
time S., who was sitting five or six yards away on my 
right hand, had been unable to obtain a sufficiently 
clear view of the goats to fire, or he would almost cer- 
tainly have bagged one, being a remarkably quick and 
accurate rifle shot. 
It was useless to remain there any longer, so the vil- 
lagers led us back to the tents by a new route. Part 
of the way was along the steep side of a rocky mountain 
which sloped upward on our left hand, and down below 
us for hundreds of feet on our right. In one place 
there was only a path about a foot wide which had been 
scooped out, underneath a projecting rock. We had 
to crawl below this on our hands and knees for 40 or 50 
yards. After proceeding a few hundred yards further 
we sat down to rest, and while doing so I saw a female 
thar jump upon a rock at what I judged to be 150 
yards distance. Raising the leaf sight of the Purdey 
rifle I fired, but the bullet struck the ground on my 
side of the rock, and the thar instantly plunged out of 
sight. On walking to the rock I found that the distance 
was fully 200 yards instead of 150. 
At another halting place not much further on, we 
again delayed our march for a day and walked all round 
the upper part of a mountain looking for thar. We 
only found a place where one had been lying down 
shortly before. The ground was covered with short 
grass and so steep that in many parts it was necessary 
to cling with one hand to the bushes in order to avoid 
sliding or rolling down hill. 
On our way back I happened to be a little in advance 
of S. and the coolies, and while descending over 
some rocks, came upon a gooral only twenty' yards 
away. I was carrying the Purdey rifle and aimed at 
once, but the cap snapped, and before a fresh one could 
be placed on the nipple, the gooral had run out of sight. 
At the foot of the mountain we were within about 200 
yards of a large village, by the side of which the tents 
were pitched, and, saying that there was no chance of 
any game there, we handed our guns to the coolies. 
We were walking in single file along a path at the 
bottom of a deep, narrow valley covered with thick 
bushes breast high, when I suddenly heard two leopards 
spitting and growding not more than three or four yards 
in front. I halted and silently r beckoned to Jahtroo, 
who was carrying the Purdey rifle, to hand it to me. He 
had loitered several yards behind with the coolies, and 
while he was hurrying forward, some of the men looked 
underneath the bushes — saw the leopards and shouted 
"bagh" (tiger), making them run away before I could 
seize the rifle. A few moments afterward Jahtroo said 
that he saw one of the leopards among the rocks and 
bushes about seventy yards above us. Neither S. nor I 
could do so, and therefore told Jahtroo to fire. He took 
careful aim, but the shot failed to hit. 
I then made a vow never to part with the rifle again 
from the time I left the tent till I returned to it. One 
naturally acquires lazy habits in a country where a coolie 
is always at hand ready to carry anything. 
England. J. J. MeYRICK. 
