56 MARKHOR SHOOTING 



looking place. He came suddenly round a corner on to 

 a sheet of sloping rock, and kept turning and looking 

 about, showing all his grand points, as if in derision. He 

 had a splendid pair of horns, with two curves, wide- 

 spreading, and with a grand sweep. They were at least 

 fifty inches in length ; he looked a veritable monster, 

 with his great flowing beard, and shaggy coat hanging 

 down his sides, light in colour on the fore part, darker on 

 the hind quarters, quite different from the dirty-white 

 colour of the one I shot in the Garai. We saw only this 

 one, but Mirza Khan insisted that there were several 

 others, and that this was one of the flock we had been seek- 

 ing all day. While we had been toiling and sweating at 

 the back of the range looking for them, they were quietly 

 feeding about these cliffs, not half a mile from the camp, and 

 actually in sight of it ! When we made the first halt in 

 this morning's ascent and searched this hillside in this 

 very direction, they could not have been farther from us 

 than they were now ; they must then have been feeding 

 in some grassy ravine out of sight. It was now four 

 o'clock, and too late to do anything, for to get at the 

 markhor it would be necessary to go back and up the 

 gorge where the bears had bolted, then round the top of 

 the ridge to the edge of the precipice below the place 

 where we saw the markhor. This could not be done 

 before night set in. The grand old buck came down a 

 little way, fed for about five minutes, went up again and 

 disappeared round a projecting point, and we did not see 

 him again. I had the tents and the khidmatgar brought 

 up here, and made this the base of my operations, for the 

 shooting grounds were too far from the village to be 

 convenient. I was now in the centre of the valley, about 

 six miles from the village, and the same distance from the 

 line of watershed on the main range. I was on the tramp 



