108 BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 



express bullet. That was shot No. 1. Turning him over, I showed the 

 sceptical shikari the other bullet hole, right through the lower part 

 of his back. A good stalk well ended, and pointing the moral that 

 if the wind is unfavourable one should wait till the clouds roll by. 

 The camera did not get down till 7 o'clock, when I photographed 

 the old fellow, using full aperture and giving 45" exposure, but the 

 negative even with that proved to have been under-exposed. By 

 the way, let me warn photographers in these altitudes that double 

 or treble Indian exposures may, and, indeed, often must, be given 

 with ordinary plates. 



May 2?irf. — Right down to the bottom of the valley there is snow ; 

 here at the tent-door it is a foot deep, and the weight on the canvas 

 (I am in a tiny single fly-tent, six feet by four, and four high — weight 

 25 lbs.) was so great that I had several times to thump the roof to 

 make the snow slide down. The ridge beside which I am camped 

 is composed of masses of shattered and sharp-pointed rocks ; 

 when masked under a layer of snow, climbing across them is far 

 from pleasant, or indeed safe. As the weather seemed more 

 promising, we set out along this "path," however, and with 

 difficulty getting down to a broad shelf to the S.- \V., saw below us 

 eight male markhor, with but one moderately big one, say 30". We 

 also saw the " Dost,"' but he was on his usual inaccessible beat, and 

 after spending four hours in trying to get up to him, we had 

 to leave him in peace. Then we worked down a spur, ending in a 

 sheer precipice not far above the river. From above, one could 

 not see the face of the cliff; it was too steep and rugged ; but beyond 

 it, on a large boulder below, a female markhor was standing sentinel, 

 and I concluded that the herd of eight males must be near. Climb- 

 ing down to the left we got on a ledge of rocks that gave us a view 

 of the face of the cliff : and there five of the animals were lying on 

 small ledges here and there in the very middle of the precipice — a 

 place that no four-footed creature but a wild goat could have possibly 

 approached. The wind had been rather unsteady all day, and 

 soon a female gave her note of alarm. The five males on the cliff 

 began moving down, and I was aiming at the biggest, fellow, that 

 was highest up, when Nibra said, " not at that : fire at the second 

 one." As he had been looking through the binocular, I thought 

 I had probably mistaken the big one, and so I fired (180 yards) at 

 the second markhor as I was bid. Over he went, right down the 

 cliff, a fearful depth to fall, quite 400 feet sheer drop. Mamdu by 



