68 THE HOME OF THE TAKIN 



menacing. Their component parts seemed small 

 and insignificant until the glass revealed colossal 

 granite boulders of every shape and size. Some, 

 and these apparently the most solidly balanced, 

 were so nicely poised that it needed but a touch 

 to send them crashing and roaring into the stream 

 below. Interspersed among these shdes, sprawl- 

 ing over the hill-side in fantastic elongations and 

 splashes, were patches of bush, the same stunted 

 larches whose average height did not exceed eight 

 feet, and flowering shrubs. These only partially 

 revealed the rocks beneath, and served not only 

 to conceal the game, but by their very nature 

 gave them timely warning of any invasion of their 

 solitude. The basin sloped steeply to rocky 

 canyons and ravines, the lower ledges smothered 

 in a mass of dwarf bamboos. A thin streak of 

 blue sky beyond a far distant ridge silhouetted 

 the low roof and grey walls of a temple 12,000 

 feet above sea level, to which even then the first 

 pilgrims were flocking. As the mists cleared the 

 low, ridged valley from which we had come loomed 

 grey through its folds, the saddle we had crossed, 

 and the wide river-bed leading to the plain beyond. 

 Far into the haze stretched range upon range of 

 hills, all save the topmost peaks looking like 

 nothing so much as the presentment of mountains 

 on a large topographical map. 



Such is the country of the takin. In the next 

 chapter I shall give an account of the habits of 

 this rare and little known animal. 



