of my absence, has been down to the village and eaten a few ponies, or
frightened them--I can't make out which.

CHAPTER VII

BACK TO SRINAGAR

Easter Day, _April_ 23.--We left the Erin district early in the morning
following the bara singh fiasco, and punted and poled up the river to join
the Smithsons in a last attack upon the duck. We found the bold Colonel,

"Rough with slaughter and red with fight,"

enjoying himself hugely among the jheels, and we prepared to join in the
fray; but our _chasse_ was put an end to by the discovery that the 14th,
and not the 15th, was the last legal day for shooting. So we packed away
our guns and towed up to Srinagar, which we reached on Sunday afternoon.

Our brief experience of camping and "shikar" had proved to my wife that
she was not cast in the heroic mould of a female Nimrod. Not being a shot
herself--as Charlotte is--she saw that, as far as she was concerned, a
shooting expedition with the Smithsons would entail a great deal of
solitary rumination in camp, while the rest of the party pursued the red
bear to his den, or chased the nimble markhor up and down the precipices.
The joys of reading, knitting, and washing the family clothes
might--probably would--pall after a time; and the physical exertion of
"walking with the guns" in Kashmir is decidedly more of an undertaking
than over a Perthshire grouse moor! Our original arrangement, before
coming out to join the Smithsons, was that the time should be spent in
camping, boating, "loafing," and shooting. Being perfectly ignorant of the
conditions of life out here, we were unaware of the fact that it is
practically impossible to combine serious shooting with any other form of
amusement. In Scotland one may stalk one day, fish the next, and golf the
third, but out here it is not so. The worshipper of Diana must be prepared
to sacrifice everything else at her shrine; he must go far afield, and be
prepared to live hard and work hard, and even then it may befall that his
trophies of the chase are none too plentiful. That will depend a good deal
on his shikari and his own knowledge, together with luck.

Walter had the good fortune to come upon two fine stags not far from his
camp almost as soon as he got there. He was within fifty yards of them as
they were moving slowly in deep snow, and he killed them both; the best of
these was a remarkably fine 10-pointer, length of horn 41 inches and span
38-1/2 inches. His wife spent