FOOTNOTES:
[460] Ziring or zaring, i.e., not half-starved or crushed in spirit.
[461] The Rev. H. B. Tristram writing on the ornithology of North Africa (Ibis 1859) mentions “eagles, kites and sand-grouse” as quarry flown at by the Arab Shaikhs. [Elsewhere the same writer says that the Lanner and Barbary falcon are flown at sand-grouse. No Indian falconer, however, has succeeded with the latter quarry: it is too fast, and the hawk and quarry soon disappear from view. The sand-grouse will not let the hawk get above it when the hawk is “waiting on.” Mr. Tristram does not mention what device or artifice the Arabs adopt.] The author of the Land and the Book (W. M. Thomson, D.D.) says of trained falcons, in chapter xxv, “they will even bring down the largest eagle in the same way....”
[462] Chark͟h-i āshiyānī.
[463] Qara-qūsh.
[464] Vide, however, page 44.
[465] Vide page 126, note [544].
[466] Kachal charkas (or karkas), lit. “the scald-headed vulture.” The young of this species is brown and not white.
[467] Parānīdan, “to cause to fly.” The author always uses this word for showing a train to a hawk and then letting it fly. In the preliminary lesson or lessons, one or two flight-feathers would probably be tied together to make the train fly as slowly as possible, and a creance would be fastened to a leg. Vide note [414], page 97.
[468] Vide chapter XII.
[469] Qullāb or “hook” (for Ar. kullāb); the “talons” of old falconers.
[470] The “stalke” of old authors.
[471] After the first flight the hawk would be given only a beakful or two of meat.
[472] From the back she would get little more than a taste of warm blood.
[473] Dast-par. It must be recollected that sakers are not easily spoilt by being given numerous trains, as are peregrines.
[474] On page 168, chap. LII, it is stated that there are three feathers in each wing so named, and that it is the Kurds who call these feathers yār māliq. Vide also chap. LX.
[475] Ishtihā dādan.
[476] The Egyptian vulture is frequently found sitting on the ground and will let a horseman or footman approach within a few feet. It rises slowly, and as it does not shift from the stoop it is at once taken. It does not seem to have any means of defence—except its odour.
[477] Of course on other flesh.
[478] On page 31 the būq-k͟hura is described as an eagle always found on marshes and reed beds. It eats frogs, dead fish, etc., and occasionally a wounded duck.
[479] This should be done stealthily at the time the chicken is substituted, or after the hawk has been re-hooded; for the hawk must be induced to believe that it has eaten the quarry it captured. With a thoroughly-made hawk no great stealth need be observed.
[480] Rihā kardan, “to release.” The author uses this word to signify setting free a train secretly while the hawk is still hooded. Vide note [467], page 111.
[481] The “train” should not be allowed to get ragged. It should each time be given a longer start. If it settles on the ground, it should be allowed to look about it till it regains heart and takes wing of its own accord. It is also well to go to a different spot each time.
[482] Apparently the black eagle described on page 31.
[483] Māhūr, any up and down ground.
[484] Sīna-yi qara-qūsh rā bi-bād bi-dih, “give the eagle’s breast to the wind”; the author’s meaning is not quite clear. Presumably the eagle would be sitting with its breast to the wind.
[485] From behind.
[486] The distance is probably exaggerated.
[487] Pidar-sag, a common term of abuse: used in much the same way that b——y is by Thomas Atkins.
[488] T̤uʿma-zada mī-shavad: does this simply mean indigestion or does it mean that the hawk will cast her gorge?
CHAPTER XXXIV
EYESS SAKER AND GAZELLE[491]
The system of training the nestling chark͟h[492] to gazelle differs from that previously described for the passage saker.[493]
In the beginning of the Autumn you must, with your eyess, take a large number of hubara bustard so that she may become adroit and lose her rawness. As your hawk is a nestling and hence without any experience whatever, you must, after getting her to kill one or two domestic fowls, enter her by a train of a live hubara.[494]
You must first seel the hubara’s eyes, so that it may not puff itself up and drive away the young hawk,[495] which might thereafter conceive a permanent dread of this quarry. “Seel” the eyes of the train and let it run[496] for about forty paces, and then cast off your chark͟h. She will approach it stealthily[497] and seize it. As soon as she seizes it, give her a small quantity of meat; remove her and rehood her.
In the evening slightly loosen the thread with which the hubara’s eyes are seeled, so that it can just see out of the top of its eyes.[498] When the chark͟h flies towards the hubara, the latter, spying her out of the tops of its eyes, will puff itself out for the attack; but when the hawk arrives close and drops to the ground, she will no longer be visible, and the hubara will therefore not charge her. When the hawk seizes the hubara, again give her a small quantity of meat.
On the next day unseel half of the hubara’s eyes, so that at one time it may puff itself out ready for attack, and at another lose sight of its enemy. Let the hubara get some distance, and then unhood the hawk and let her go. As soon as she binds to the hubara, cut its throat and feed up the hawk.
On the next day give another “train” of hubara, but this time with unseeled eyes. Let it get a long distance off before you unhood your hawk. Kill it, and feed up the hawk on its flesh.
Although it is no feat for a falconer to take hubara[499] (for any inferior hawk will kill this quarry), still in the training of the eyess saker that is destined for gazelle, it has a special place, as will be mentioned later. This remark, however, does not apply to the netted passage falcon,[500] which has killed hubara for itself in a wild state.
From the wild falcon,[501] an hubara, however stout and strong, cannot possibly escape[502]; for what is the flight of an hubara compared to that of the wild saker? Until the wild saker overtakes the hubara, she will never relinquish the chase.
XVIII
YOUNG PASSAGE SAKER (LIGHT VARIETY) ON HUBARA
If, however, you fly a trained passage falcon at an hubara, it is quite a different matter; for the falcon will not be in the same high condition she was in when wild, and so, if the quarry breaks away from her[503] and rises high, she will not be able to overtake it quickly: neither will she be so thin that she will give up all desire and hope of killing, and remain tamely seated on the ground. She will certainly commence a stern-chase[504] and soon be lost to view. God knows where she will overtake the hubara, whether two farsak͟h off or three.[505] Now in the first place you should not fly a passage saker at hubara.[506] If, however, you must do so, tie together four of the flight-feathers of one wing so that it shall fly clumsily, hugging the ground. The hubara will certainly stand up to do battle and the hawk will also certainly bind to it on the ground.[507] If the hubara takes to flight, the hawk will follow only for a few yards, and seeing itself utterly outpaced will give up and sit on the ground.
The nature of the eyess, however, is different. I have had many that would take two or three eagles in a day, that would take crane and gazelle, and were yet afraid of hubara. The reason of this was that I omitted to seel the eyes of an hubara given as a “train”: the hubara puffed itself up on seeing the chark͟h coming towards it and got ready for the attack; the chark͟h hesitated and sat on the ground; and the hubara seeing its hesitation became like a spitting[508] cat, charged and put the chark͟h to flight. God the All-knowing, has bestowed on the hubara as a weapon of defence a peculiar kind of “mutes;”[509] and although these are nothing in reality yet they have a certain awe.
XIX
YOUNG PASSAGE SAKER (DARK VARIETY) ON HUBARA
When the timid lamb-natured hubára’s enraged,
She becomes, in attack, like a lion uncaged.
If an eyess chark͟h has once been frightened on the ground and driven off by an hubara, nothing will ever induce her to take this quarry on the ground. But a skilful falconer may cast off the chark͟h so expertly that she takes the quarry in the air within a few yards’ distance.[510]
In short, as soon as your hawk is so thoroughly entered to hubara that she will take six or seven in a day, you must go out and fly her at as many hubara as you can, but do not feed her: even though you fly her thirty times[511] with success, do not feed her. Go on flying her till she is utterly disgusted and will not attempt even to follow the quarry. As soon as you see this, bring up a gazelle fawn with meat tied on its head, as previously described in the chapter on training the passage saker. As soon as the chark͟h binds to the gazelle’s head, kill a fowl or a white pigeon, and feed her up so that she may learn the pleasure to be derived from taking a gazelle.
You must proceed with the training of the eyess as you did with the passage saker, but there are two or three points of difference. First: if the passage hawk binds at the first or second entering, she must be fed up; but the eyess must not be fed up, otherwise she will contract a habit and will always have to be fed up. Second: if the eyess follows the gazelle and works well but the greyhounds go wrong, she will certainly, when worn out, sit down;[512] you must then and there lure her and feed her up. Third: if the eyess works hard several times but is disappointed, and so no longer follows gazelle with her former zest, you must cure her as follows. Go and take two or three hubara with her, one a day, and feed her up on them. On the third or fourth day fly her at all the hubara you can without feeding her, till she is worn out or disgusted. Then, as on the first day, fly her at the gazelle’s head, feeding her up. After that let her rest for a day or two. Next, take into the open country a gazelle fawn that is quick and active, and secretly release it at a distance. After it set a dog, or a young greyhound too slow to overtake it. When the gazelle fawn gets to some distance, gallop after it and slip the greyhounds as you do when hawking wild gazelle,[513] and cast off the chark͟h. When the gazelle is taken, feed up the hawk as before, that she may learn the advantage to be derived from taking this quarry and return to a liking for it. The object of entering a chark͟h to hubara is as has been stated.
XX
HUBARA SUNNING ITSELF
You may think to yourself, “I will fly my eyess at hare as has been described for the passage hawk!”[514] Now, my pupil, on no account must you do this; fly her not at hare, for this is error. First, the nature of the passage hawk is noble, while the nature of the eyess is ignoble. If, after the disappointment that your eyess has experienced at gazelle, you fly her at hare with success, you must of necessity feed her up; and as the gazelle and the hare are both ground-game[515] and akin, your hawk will say to herself, “Why should I not henceforth fly only the easier quarry? No stamped bond have I given to the Court to wrestle[516] with that other kind of jackass!”[517] The hubara, on the contrary, is not ground-game,[518] nor has the eyess in a wild state preyed on it as has the passage hawk. By taking one or two hubara, the eyess recovers her keenness and pluck, but, on the third or fourth day, when she is overflown at hubara and unrewarded, she gets disgusted with that particular quarry; being then flown at a gazelle’s head and rewarded, she re-transfers her attention to that quarry, and by being afterwards given an easy bagged fawn, her affection for the quarry is cemented.
The system of training the chark͟h and the bālābān to gazelle is this that has been described, and it is the system of the falconers of Baghdad and of the Nomad Arabs, who are masters of this particular sport. But the people of Turkistan and Khurasan and Buzhnurd,[519] being unskilled, have a different system, and that, too, for the eyess only; for they are quite unable to train the passage saker to take even one gazelle.
Another System of Training the “Chark͟h” to Gazelle.—Their system is this. First they dig a dry canal about three or four ells[520] deep, and four hundred or five hundred paces long. At the end, a recess or chamber is constructed, sufficiently large to contain a gazelle that is brought and confined there. A rope is tied to the gazelle’s leg, and the gazelle is, step by step, driven and beaten so that it flees to take refuge in this chamber at the farther end. This treatment is continued till the beginning of Autumn, when the people commence giving “trains”[521] to their eyess sakers.
The gazelle’s head is protected from the hawk’s claws[522] by a piece of leather that has two holes to admit the horns, and on this leather the meat is securely fastened. The gazelle, released in the canal at the required distance from the chamber according to the progress the young hawk has made, is obliged to run straight and take refuge in its accustomed retreat. If, during the run, the chark͟h binds to the meat on its head, the rope is pulled and the chark͟h fed up on the “train’s” head. One gazelle can act as a “train”[523] for twenty chark͟h.
As soon as these people have in this manner completed the training and have killed the gazelle under the hawk, they, owing to their lack of understanding, cast off four or five chark͟h at a wild gazelle, and slip five or six greyhounds. God knows whether they ever kill anything. If they do, it is not skill; if they do not, it is utter bungling.
If the hawks take the quarry no credit is due;
Their failure we must as incompetence view.
If you look at the methods of sport of these Turks
In everything bungling and botchery lurks.
Now the system of the falconers of Bag͟hdād, Chaʿb[524] and Muʿammara[525] (in which places this ancient flight with the eyess or passage saker was first “invented”) is wholly distinct and apart from that of the Turkistānīs and K͟hurāsānīs; for the former, even at a herd of two hundred gazelle, fly only a single bālābān succoured by a couple of greyhounds[526]; but so well trained and intelligent are the hounds that even if a thousand gazelles come in front of them, they will seize only that one at which the hawk is stooping.
The skill of these latter people, however, is confined to training chark͟h and bālābān to gazelle, hubara, and hare, and they practise no other flight. Skill is shown by practising every form of sport.[527]