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steppe, the sholahs or belts of jungle from the lower vallies creep 

 " up the narrow water-courses, terminating, according to the nature 

 " of the ground, either in a point abruptly or spreading out broadly 

 " under a mass of rock, forming the head or termination of the 

 " gully. These are the spots the ibex favor. We will suppose 

 " we have seen a saddle-back from the upper ridge, at his early feed. 

 " Our first point is to make out whether he be alone gr in company. 

 " We can discern no others, so we quietly watch the movements 

 " of the buck. He tries our patience painfully, for we cannot 

 " descend the face of the mountain in front of him with any hopes 

 " of success. We must wait till he takes up his resting place for 

 "the day. Ouf vigil continues for more than an hour, when at 

 " last selecting an isolated black rock, our friend disposes himself 

 " comfortably, ruminating and basking in the great solitude he loves 

 ' so well. Now then ; we proceed with the stalk. We carefully 

 " descend the spur of the mountain, to reach a knoll covered with 

 " long grass and about one hundred and fifty yards from where the 

 " buck lies. We succeed in doing so, and then arises the question 

 " shall we approach round by the right or by the left of the mound ? 

 " The track to the left looks most used. We select it, and cau- 

 " tiously drag ourselves along through the yielding grass ; it so 

 " happens that to our left-hand there is a small water-course with 

 u a narrow strip of jungle leading to a broad sheet of rock, over 

 " which the stream trickles down to the continuation of the sholah 

 " below ; several boulders of various sizes are scattered here and 

 " there on this slab or sheet of rock. Just as we clear the point of 

 " the sholah, horror of horrors I ! we spy the form of a doe ibex 

 " lying stretched on the rock, and her kid some ten paces nearer to 

 " us, basking at full length in the warm rays of the sun. At the 

 ? same instant, the mother catches sight of the movement in the 

 " grass. She is about sixty paces from us. We crouch and watch, 

 " After a few moments the doe gets up, but not as if much alarmed, 

 " only somewhat suspicious. She stretches herself, looks hard at 

 '< us, and at last walks towards the kid. The mode of communica- 

 ' tion is on this occasion very clearly demonstrated, for she gives 

 " her child a smartish butt, a posteriori, causing it to spring nim- 

 ' bly OQ its feet. They both pause for a second or so, broadside 



