him.

DAWN IN THE NULLA

So now I put myself humbly in charge of the shikaris, for I make no pretence to be a sportsman. They thereupon proceed to whisper together with profound earnestness and dramatic action. They point out the exact spot where, on the previous afternoon, a stag was seen. They pick up little tufts of his hair brushed off, as they say, in fighting. They show his footsteps in the soft soil and on patches of snow. And they are full of marvellous conjectures as to where he can have gone. But gone he has, and that was the main fact which no amount of whispering could get over.

So on we went along the mountain-side, and now through deep snow, for we were on a northward-facing slope of an outlying spur—and all slopes which face northward are wooded, while southward-facing slopes are bare. The explanation was evident. For on the latter slopes the sun's rays fell directly and almost at right angles, and in consequence fallen snow quickly disappears: while on the northern slopes the sun's rays only slant across the surface; the snow remains much longer; the moisture in the soil is retained; vegetation flourishes; trees grow up; they in their turn still further shade the snow, and with their roots retain the moisture. And so as a net result one side of a mountain is clothed in dense forest, and on the other there may not be a single tree. Thus it is that on the southern side of Kashmir, that is, on the northward-facing slopes of the Pir Panjal range, there is, as at Gulmarg, dense and continuous forest, while on the northern side of the valley, on the slope of the hill that consequently faces southward, there is no forest except on the slopes of those subsidiary spurs which face northward.

We followed the tracks of the stag through this patch of forest, mostly of hazels, the shikaris pointing out where the stag had nibbled off the young leaf-buds and bark which seem to form the staple food of the deer at this time of year. At last we came to another shikari who said he had seen the stag that very morning. But I suspect this was merely a form of politeness to reinspire my lagging hope, for though I went down and up and along the mountain-side, and spent the whole day there, I saw no stag. Once we heard a rustling among the leaves, and hope revived, but it was merely a troop of monkeys. A little later a boar shuffled out; and again, on a distant spur, disporting himself in the sunshine, we saw a bear; but no stag.