MOUFFLON-STALKING IN CYPRUS 349 



river never ceases to flow here. The experiences of 

 our first night at Dodeka Anemi were repeated 

 here. Again the night was showery ; and at two 

 in the morning I was awakened by the gallop of a 

 frightened moufflon which had come unexpectedly on 

 our camp. 



Next morning Jerome and I made a later start, 

 and, pursuing his usual tactics of stalking up to every 

 gully, he brought me up in not much more than an 

 hour to a small herd of moufflon not more than sixty 

 or seventy yards away. It did not take me long, 

 however, to convince myself that it consisted of 

 three ewes only, at which I never fire — indeed 

 it is illegal in Cyprus. Unloading my rifle, I 

 contented myself with watching them for a short 

 time. The Cyprian moufflon is said to be the smallest 

 of all wild sheep, and the female, which has no horns, 

 is not at all dissimilar to a roe, but the colour is 

 warmer — a reddish grey (exactly the colour of the 

 ground they live on) with a whitish disc on the back 

 ribs, which latter peculiarity they share with the 

 true moufflon. 



After this we had a good deal of walking — weary 

 work on these hillsides where the whole ground con- 

 sists of slippery, loose shale and pine-needles. It 

 was not till after our frugal lunch — in fact at two 

 o'clock — that my eye caught something abnormal on 

 a spur far below. Turning my Zeiss glass on to the 

 object, I at once called my man's attention by a sharp 

 hiss, and we both dropped like setters. It was a 

 splendid moufflon ram ; and at last I was face to face 

 with the animal I had come so far to seek — literally 

 face to face — for he was staring hard at our re- 

 cumbent forms, whose stillness, however, lulled him 



