Here the bear was seen at 7 A.M. by a Gujar, who gave the fullest particulars to Ahmed Bot (my shikari) in a series of yells from a hill-top as we came up the valley.  We arrived on the scene about seven, just in time to be too late, apparently.  It is now 3 P.M., and the bear is supposed to be asleep, and I am possessing my soul in patience until it shall be Bruin’s pleasure to awake and sally forth for his afternoon tea.

There is certainly no bear now, so I pass the time in sleeping, eating, smoking, writing, and observing the manners and customs of a family of monkeys who are disporting themselves in a deep glen to the left.  Beyond this ravine rises a high spur, beautifully wooded, the principal trees being deodar, blue pine (Excelsa) and yew.  This is sloped at the invariable and disgusting angle of 45 degrees.  Beyond it rise further wooded slopes, with snow gleaming through the deep green, and above all is the changing sky, where the clear blue gives way to a billowy expanse of white rolling clouds or dark rain-laden masses, which pour into the upper clefts of the ravine, and blot out the serried ranks of the pines, until a thorough drenching seems inevitable—­when lo! a glint of blue through the gloomy background, and soon again,

  “With never a stain, the pavilion of Heaven is bare.”

The immediate foreground, as I said before, slopes sharply from my very feet, where a clump of wild sage and jasmin (the leaves just breaking) grows over a charming little bunch of sweet violets.  Lower down I can see the lilac flowers of a self-heal, and the bottom of the little gorge is clothed with a bush like a hazel, only with large, soft whitish flowers.

My solitude has just been enlivened by the appearance of a cheerful party of lovely birds.  They are very busy among the “hazels,” flying from bush to bush with restless activity, and wasting no time in idleness.  They are about the size of large finches—­slender in shape, with longish tails.  They are divided into two perfectly distinct kinds, probably male and female.  The former have the back, head, and wings black; the latter barred with scarlet, the breast and underparts also scarlet.  The others—­which I assume to be the females—­replace the black with ashy olive, the wings being barred with yellow, the underparts yellowish.  The very familiar note of the cuckoo, somewhere up in the jungle, reminds me of an English spring.

4 P.M.—­I knew it!  I knew that if the wind held down the nullah I should be dragged up that horrible ridge opposite.  Hardly had I written the above when I was hunted from my lair, and rushed down 200 steep feet, and then up some 500 or 600 on the other side of the stream, through an abattis of clinging undergrowth that made a severe toil of what could never have been a pleasure.  There can be no doubt but that a pith helmet—­a really shady, broad one—­is a most infernal machine under which to force one’s way through brushwood.