142 THE WILD SHEEP OF WESTERN KANSU 



One morning, early, the doctor daslied into the 

 tent and said that the hunters had found a lierd 

 quite close to camp. We scrambled into some 

 clothes and rushed off, to find a small ram and 

 some ewes, pretty nearly invisible, amid a cluster 

 of rocks. T missed the ram, which I took to 

 be two hundred yards off, but was nearer three ; 

 and after an unnecessary expenditure of good 

 ammunition, secured an animal for the pot. 



In spite of, or perhaps because of, the usual 

 bad weather, there were one or two days which 

 will always stand out in my memory. One in 

 particular I recall. Lao-A¥ei and I lay on the 

 summit of a hill in the warm sunshine. The sky 

 was like a frozen sapphire ; against it the grey 

 rocks stood rugged and menacing, a few corners 

 and irregular ledges carpeted with grass, a few, 

 wider or deeper, giving foothold to stunted 

 rhododendrons, whilst the splintered pines below 

 us emphasised the harshness of the scene. Stone 

 slides, narrow and cruel, ran steeply down the 

 mountain meadows to the woods below. These, 

 sprinkled now with autumn gold, showed birches, 

 willows, and aspens amid the firs. Similar ridges 

 to that on which we lay rose across the Aalley, 

 down which trickled the clear green waters of a 

 snow-fed stream. The northern slopes and those 

 unsuspected ridges facing in the same direction 

 were dark with trees ; the southern slopes were 

 grass-covered, with outcroppings of rock which 

 thrust sharp grey points towards the heavens, here 

 in a tremendous serrated peak a couple of thousand 

 feet high, there in a few tiny pin-pricks which 

 scarcely served to break a passage to the air. 



