Anthony himself, garbed in clothes that no scarecrow would be seen in on a rainy week-day, looks scarcely a promising companion for the chase. He has a tartan eye Stewart tartan

(dress, not hunting)—and looks a very decayed sort of fellow. I own I took him with misgivings. Yet, none better offering and several worse, he became mine for better or for worse, to hold and to have, for the daily stipend of one shilling and fourpence, a blanket, and "what bukshish master liking giving." Part and parcel of Anthony was his his gun-bearer, John Anthony, an unpromising-looking youth with the legs of a Watteau shepherdess. Yet both turned out good steady fellows, with moderate eyesight and a good knowledge of the country. I might have gone farther and fared worse. Shikari Anthony had been in the wars, for, early in our acquaintance, he showed me a horribly-mauled shoulder, that had once formed a nice mouthful for a tiger. Luckily it had been a case of just one scrunch and away. Anthony's command of the language was not great, but I gathered that it was the old tale-not a very common one, I hope-of a wounded tiger and of a so-called sportsman sending the shikari into covert "just to move him."

The three of us forgathered on a glorious December morn

ing. It had rained almost continually for nearly three months, and sky and earth had been washed into a crystal clearness. There were only two blots on the landscape. They were my two frowzy Anthonys. We were bound over the hills and far awayor, to be more exact, to the forest bungalow of Avalanche which nestles under the Kundahs, some twelve miles distant from Ootacamund. From here we were to push off into the Kundahs themselves. Our objective was chiefly what is wrongly called the Nilgiri ibex, but also air, exercise, and whatever other shootable mammals came our way.

As he is known as Nilgiri ibex, I will call him so, but except that both are wild goat, he is no relation whatever to the true ibex, and bears no resemblance to him. He has a Himalayan connection called the tahr. the tahr. Nor is he peculiar to the Nilgiris, being found generally throughout the hillranges of Southern India. The shootable male is termed a saddle-back, for he carries a whitish saddle-like stain on his back. The unshootable male is called a brown buck. Scientifically the Nilgiri ibex is Hemitragus hylocrius. With the exception of an Abyssinian ibex, he is the only goat living south of the north temperate zone. At least, so says the gazetteer.

A string of pack-ponies had clattered off about an hour before we did, and they carried supplies for man and beast for ten days. The Kundahs at this time of year are totally devoid of man or habitation. There is plenty of grass to eat, but nothing more, and everything has to be carried with you.

Now twelve miles and the whole of a glorious day to do it in, and that day the first of a long-delayed holiday, is but a step. The Kundahs, standing out sharp and clear, kept beckoning us. Distant mountains long looked at and much longed for are full of infinite charms and possibilities.

At the ninth mile I halted and ate a little ambrosia, which on a less happy day would probably have only been sandwiches. I drank from what appeared to be a clear spring of water, but to-day it proved to be nectar. What the gods would have termed tobacco had they known of it, I do not know, but certainly something better sounding than tobacco. After a pipe of this, smoked under a bower of double pink roses, and a little drowsy pretence at reading, we fared onwards, and crossed one of my several Tweeds, called the Emerald river, and looked at the trout lying under the bridge, unconscious of the years of endeavour which had ended in

placing them there and in other Nilgiri streams.

Late in the afternoon we crossed the Avalanche stream; and here M, who had been travelling several days to reach these delectable hills, came bumping along in a motor and joined me.

Avalanche Forest bungalow, standing retired within a glade, received us with tea on the table, a roaring log-fire on the hearth, and frescoes of trout and some antlers on its wooden walls.

There was yet daylight, there were also some very snipeylooking bogs close-handy, and there were guns. So for an hour we tramped the bogs, and found them sparsely tenanted by a strong silent variety of snipe, fond of zooming, without a squawk, out of the bog, and side-slipping into the nearest shola, or wooded ravine. Had our luck been in, or had there been more daylight, we might have seen woodcock.

As the fluted cliffs that overhang the bungalow frowned us good night, and the last jungle cock of many round us ceased crowing, we had just shot enough for dinner. And a sleepy dinner it was. We burbled a few plans for next day, and fell asleep by the fire till bedtime. The next thing that happened was being called by candle-light next morning.

Yes, on the whole, the early rise and the long climb in the dark were worth it. I knew this as after mounting from 7000 feet to 9000 feet I rested under the lee of a rock, and watched the dawn come and felt the first warmth of the sun. Only so does one capture the first fine careless rapture of the day. Nothing in the twenty-four hours quite equals it, not even the end of the day when the cooling earth gives out her goodliest scents, and the shadows creep out of the dimples in the hills and spread abroad, and the insect world sets up its thousand quiet voices in the thicket. That, too, is rapture, but it lacks the carelessness of dawn.

Above us were a few hundred feet more of steep grass slope breaking at the summit into rocks and cliff. Below

us the green spurs of the Kundahs reached their long fingers steeply down to the plateau. Between each pair of spurs a shola or wooded ravine, of close-set trees showing every tint of green, with a splash here and there of white dog-rose and crimson rhododendron. These woods of the Kundahs are so neatly and closely packed that, viewed from above, they can only be described as "pin-cushiony." For some cause, which is a puzzle to every one who notices things, the edges of these shola woods are so trimmed and

even as to suggest plantations. There are no stragglers or outlying trees. The woods seem to have marched forward and to have halted on the word, and then aligned themselves. Within the heart of every shola is a brook rising close below the crest of the hill. The trees on those windswept rainy slopes are closecropped, gnarled, and hairy with the long growths of mosses, lichens, ferns, and orchids. There is a great charm about these woods, and they form most excellent covert for game.

Any one who wanders on the Kundahs will at least hope to see a tiger. For the sholas which afford these beasts the very sort of covert that they love, are often during winter too dense and too cold to give ideal lying; and Mr Stripes prefers sometimes the open sunny hillside, although it lacks the privacy which he also loves. Therefore, tiger have been sighted by day lying or moving on these open hillsides, and occasionally have been shot.

From our vantage-point high up the slopes we had an unrivalled view over any amount of country; and while three pairs of eyes, aided by binoculars and telescope, swept the landscape, a young stag, unaware of our presence as we were of his, browsed within fifty yards of us.

At last we became mutually

awarded to really good pigshooters. I felt also that my name sufficiently mutilated, I hoped, as to be unrecognisable-would go down to other sportsmen as "This master shooting pig too very far." I now discovered that I was to fade out of the picture; that the day, so far as I was concerned, was to end, and that the Anthonys were to spend the rest of it in cutting up and transporting the meat. I was unable to fall in with this programme, and bade my followers cover up the dead with branches, and have them sent for next day.

Toward sundown we were at the cliffs to which we had looked up the evening before from the snipe-bog. A thousand feet below us the smoke from the Avalanche bungalow chimneys curled up invitingly and suggested an immediate descent and tea. But to go blundering downhill just at the hour when one should be sitting quiet and watching for game moving from covert would have been bad work. So Anthony was told to boil the water and make tea. By the time we had drunk that and I had smoked a pipe, we should have seen out the daylight.

I

Opposite me the unresponsive face of the cliff caught the levelling rays of the sun. hoped we might see an ibex here. To the left, below us, the ground sank steeply in long grassy spurs and sholas, to where the young Avalanche river wound over the plateau. Very staggy ground this. Indeed, a sambur grunted in covert while we watched. Away to the right were the green downs with the blue shadows. in their hollows spreading and deepening, while here and there amongst them a stream flashed us good night.

Then the sun went down, and so did we; and Anthony, who was lost in a reverie of pork on the morrow, blundered into a barking-deer or muntjac

animal with the worst bark and the least bite in the world. He had just emerged from covert for his timid evening graze. He and my rifle went off suddenly together, and we picked him up dead just inside covert.

I found M- - back when I arrived at the bungalow. He had seen a good stag, but as he said he had come up for air, exercise, and scenery, and had had plenty of each, he was quite content with his day.

series. These are the result of

unsuccessful endeavours to bring trout ova to the Nilgiris.