MORE NYAN 183 



frontier Tibetans of the villages a few miles to the right 

 of the lake. For some reason or another, Laclakhis are 

 always nervous about going any distance beyond this 

 imaginary line, though the people on the other side are 

 closely related to them, and are the same in manners, customs, 

 and language. In this ugly stony valley, where the steep 

 hillsides were not more than a couple of hundred yards 

 from each other, there was no sign of the presence of 

 human beings, and I was sure it was rarely visited except 

 by nyans, who seemed to make it a place of refuge when 

 hunted away from better grazing grounds. After making 

 camp, a yak was taken back, and the ovis brought down. 

 The horns measured thirty-two inches, and were massive 

 at the base. They were below the average, but when I 

 first beheld the animal I imagined him to be of enormous 

 size. The two yakmen and my sporting boy had some 

 difficulty in breaking him up, but they rewarded them- 

 selves afterwards by fids of meat warmed at the fire, and 

 eaten with every sign of satisfaction. In the evening eight 

 nyan were discovered grazing on the slopes above the 

 camp on the right, less than half a mile away, but I left 

 them undisturbed for next morning. 



I was up at five, and ascended the slope with the boy 

 only, on the tracks of the four rams we had hunted the 

 previous day. We reached the crest of the range without 

 seeing anything. I Jut after a long search the boy descried 

 the flock of last evening, feeding in the bottom of the 

 main valley, between the tent and the lake. We had to 

 wait their further movements, as in our respective positions 

 it was not possible to get within a mile of them without 

 being detected ; but as the sun grew warmer, they moved 

 up the slope on our side — a piece of luck for which I was 

 thankful. We lay and watched them quietly; they came 

 along very slowly, snatching a mouthful of grass at each step, 



