pened. So I covered the place with my rifle, and sent Anthony down to investigate. A glad shout came up, "Dead."

While he was being skinned the billy was put on to boil, and never did a mug of tea taste better, for we had had seven hours of walking, watch

ing, intense anxiety, and finally, some sprinting.

It being Christmas Day and a saddle-back in the bag, the rest of the day was to be, of course, observed as a holiday. And so back to camp, a nice easy four miles, all downhill, and with a good path all the way.

We now moved camp to the extreme south-west promontory of the Nilgiri plateau. Another march would have taken us out of the ibex ground and down into the country of elephant and bison. Indeed, it was evident that the former had taken a short-cut over the plateau in moving from one feeding - ground to another. They had crossed it in wet weather, and as the ground had now hardened and become densely grown with grass, we were continually stumbling in their huge footprints. It may be noted that in steep hilly country the manpath and the game-path will always be the same—that is, the line of country with the least amount of uphill and downhill in it. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that wild animals, having an unfailing eye for a country, make the path, and man uses it. The wild elephant is a sad gadabout and a most determined sight - seer. His tracks will often lead to the top of the highest and barest hills, and for no conceivable

purpose unless it be to see the view. He is, with all due respect to him, a great nuisance. You may not hurt him, for he is preserved; but he is perfectly free to do what he likes with you, until he commits himself too frequently, and he is then "proclaimed," and may be shot. How many murders he has to commit to become proclaimed, I do not know.

From this camp I saw from thirty to forty ibex, but although a saddle-back must have been about I could not distinguish him. This mattered the less, for in the Nilgiris an individual is only allowed to shoot one saddle-back in the year.

M- having now been recalled from leave, and there not being many days left of my own, I accompanied him back to the Emerald Valley, where we parted. As I had shot my one ibex, I determined to put in my last few days in sight-seeing, and particularly in visiting the famous Mukarti peak. So reducing my kit to the smallest possible dimen

comforting when far below me I caught sight of my camp fire and my little camp. Next day I went to the base of the Nilgiri peak, which is said never to have been scaled save by one individual (and he of very doubtful veracity), and well I I could believe it.

Viewed from here, I could not get away from the impression that the two peaks, Mukarti and Nilgiri, were two live things, challenged and challenger: the challenger, Nilgiri Peak, rearing up as if on the point of a spring over the rift at his adversary Mukarti; the latter, motionless and watchful, awaiting the onset with his two great ears pricked eternally over space. Room enough here for a world of legend and fairy tale, were the Toda man a little more alive to his opportunities. As it is, he uses Mukarti as the jumpingoff place (and a better jump it would be hard to find) for the souls of his dead brethren and their buffaloes, when they take their departure for the Toda underworld.

Measured roughly, the Indian Ocean is some sixty miles distant from here, looking westwards; and early in the afternoon I had turned my glass towards it. There was, however, nothing to be seen barring two or three solid-looking black things, inclining from the vertical, low down in what I took to be the western sky. Later, however, with the sun nearer the horizon, I turned my glass in this direction again,

and what I had taken to be part of the sky now proved to be the crinkled floor of the Indian Ocean, its far edge mingling with the sky and its near edge with the haze that quite hid the coast-line. The black things were sailing-craft heeling to the breeze. Through the glass I could make out others, and their rig and what sail they carried. A steamer was also making down the coast, her progress visible as that of the hour-hand of a clock-that is, one could see no movement, but only that it had moved and kept on doing so.

My companions, unlike those of stout Cortez on another peak gazing at another ocean, did not appear to be at any wild surmise, unless it were, as they dosed, how long it would be before they were back in camp.

Mukarti Peak, in order to keep himself from toppling into the plains, thrusts out a long and jagged flying-buttress right down into the forests far below. One side of this buttress is sheer precipice; the other, grass slopes as steep as grass slopes can be, and precipice and slope meet at the top in a veritable razoredge, although a very jagged one. I spent an exceedingly toilsome day in working this buttress, for there is no kind of walking more toilsome than on the sides of one's boots on a dry grass slope. I saw three or four different herds of ibex, all in quite unget-at-able places;

and by showing myself, I got them to perform the most astonishing feats of agility on the face of the cliff. Those Those who have seen the wild goats on the Mappin terraces in the Zoological Gardens walk across the face of their miniature cliff at the bidding of their keeper, can form some idea of it. Yet even these walls of apparently sheer rock do not afford the ibex safety from that curse of all Indian shooting-grounds, whether plain or mountain, the wild dog. These brutes have been seen making better time along a cliff-face in pursuit of ibex than the ibex themselves. I have not witnessed this myself, but I have heard the wild dog at work far below me, and seen the terrified ibex come up from below and take to the downs above the cliffs.

It was time to leave Mukarti and to turn my unwilling steps homewards. For two days I dawdled along a river-bank idly wetting a line with a view to carp and only pulling out trout, which were out of season

and had to be returned. There were excursions also after that very evasive fellow the Nilgiri snipe. snipe. And so into Ootacamund.

I have been in India a good many years, and have sampled nearly every variety of its sport, scenery, and climate, whether of mountain, foot-hill, plain, river-bed, or jungle. I have taken, with rifle, spear, rod, and gun, a modest toll of nearly every game animal that exists in the Great Peninsula. On mantelpiece and wall are mementos, great and small, of them all, ranging from jaw of mahseer and tusk of boar to buffalo and bison heads. Each has its memories. But pleasantest of them all is that afforded by the plain homely head of an old saddle-back and one of his forefeet. I like to think that those glassy goaty old eyes have seen, and that gamey foot has traversed, just the same scenes as I have

the green downs, the purling streams, and the black cliffs of the Blue Mountains.

X.