My own theory is, that, unless he has
remarkable luck, a stranger, in the hands of an ignorant shikari, and
knowing nothing of the language, has but a remote chance of sport. If the
shikari does not happen to know the district thoroughly, he is necessarily
in the hands of the villagers, and has to trust to them to arrange the
beats and place the guns. The villagers want their four annas for a day's
shouting, but do not know or care if a bear is in the neighbourhood, so,
having planted the gun (and shikari with him), they proceed to beat after
their own fashion, in other words to stroll, in Indian file, like geese
across a common, along the line of least resistance, instead of spreading
out and searching all the thickest jungle.
Much yelling serves both to cheer the sahib, and frighten away any bear
which might otherwise haply frighten them.
I cannot say I regret the time I have spent looking for bear. The scenery
has always been fine--sometimes magnificent, and there has always been a
certain cheering hope, which sustained me as I lay hour after hour in the
Malingam Nullah, or sat expectant amid ever varying and always beautiful
glades and passes, watching the bird life, and storing up scenes and
memories which I know I shall never forget.
Alas! we have but a very few days yet before us in Kashmir, and it is
lamentable, for now the climate is simply perfect, the air clear and clean,
and without the haze of summer; the first crispness of coming autumn
making itself felt most distinctly in the early hours of morning ere
"Nor dim nor red, like God's own head,
The glorious sun uprist;"
and each dawn saw us up and out to watch these sunrises, whose splendour
cannot be expressed on paper.
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