NOTES ON A TRIP AFTER THE OVIS P0L1. 71 



ridden ahead when we had got within sight of his encampment, he 

 was ready to receive me on my arrival, and solemnly shaking me by 

 the hand, as if he had not already seen me, led my yak up to the 

 doorway of the tent, and ushered me in with much ceremony. 

 A Kirghiz shikari, Begonde, who had been ordered for me, arrived 

 nest day, and recommended my first trying the Kuktaruk nullah, the 

 extreme west of the Taghdnmbash, and I settled to do so, and showed 

 him a Poli head that Dowut had in his care, which had been shot 

 by a sportsman a short time previously, and told him I did not want 

 to shoot any smaller than that, and he scouted the idea of his ever 

 wishing me to do such a thing. The horns were massive, and just 

 about 60 inches in length, as far as I could judge, sewn up in 

 skin as they were, and that was the measurement I had fixed on 

 beforehand as the lowest limit of a shootable head, so took the oppor- 

 tunity of showing Begonde what I wanted. It was 2 marches to 

 the Kuktaruk, and on the way we saw numerous Poli heads, and 

 whenever we came across what looked a good pair of horns, Rahima and 

 I dismounted, and ran the tape over them, and then set the head up on 

 a rock, looking the way we were going, so as to study the horns 

 from a distance through the glasses, and we soon felt very confident 

 about our being able to judge the head of a live ram. The valley 

 we marched up was alive with marmots, and Stoob had great sport 

 after them, the fact of his not meeting with any success as regards 

 catching any not seeming to damp his ardour at all, either for chasing 

 them or for trying to dig them out when they had got safely down 

 their burrows. On June 29th, Rahima, Begonde, a local Kirghiz, 

 and I started off in the dark up the Kuktaruk, each of us riding a 

 yak, and just at daybreak the Kirghiz spotted some Poli, and 

 quickly dismounting, we left our yak and crawled up to within 150 

 yards of the sheep and soon had the glasses on them. The band 

 consisted of 16 rams, and Rahima and I both put the biggest at 55, 

 but the Kirghiz declared that several were over 60, which was absurd, 

 for the best pair of horns only grew outwards for about a couple of 

 inches after completing the circle, while instead of coming close into 

 the jaws, they were very wide of them, which is nearly always the 

 case in an immature head, so I absolutely refused to take a shot. As 

 these were the first Poli I had ever seen, I lay and watched them for 

 some time through the telescope, glad of the opportunity to study their 

 make, and shape. The rams of this grand sheep are rather long in the 



