MOUFFLON-STALKING IN CYPRUS 353 



quietly to the gun. This is rarely successful, how- 

 ever, unless one knows precisely where the game is, 

 and in this case, although there were four moufflon, 

 they went out over the opposite hill. Hussein was 

 very disgusted at his failure, as, according to him, 

 he had so recently shown so much sport. Possibly 

 the very fact of so much recent shooting accounted 

 for the difficulty I was experiencing in getting a 

 shot at a ram. Telling him I would give him 

 another trial later on, I sent him home. 



Sunday I made a day of rest, but on the 30th of 

 October I was off at eight o'clock, and worked right 

 round the high hills, Kourkoumi by name, to the west 

 of our camp. We climbed for seven hours in bad 

 ground (a mass of rolling stones on steep hillsides) 

 without seeing anything. At last, a little after three 

 o'clock, as we were working a ridge to the north of 

 the hill where the wind, directly behind us, gave us 

 a good chance in the glen to our left, I heard a snort- 

 ing whistle at the down- wind end, and, looking up, 

 caught sight of the curved horns and the hindquar- 

 ters of a moufflon ram disappearing over the ridge. 

 Half a minute later a second alarm note sounded a 

 little lower down, but this sheep I never even saw. 

 Five minutes afterwards the scolding of the jays on 

 the opposite hillside showed the line the fugitives 

 had taken, though we could not see them. Not even 

 a woodcock or a hazel-grouse is smarter at putting a 

 tree between himself and the gun than these sheep ; 

 and of all those I moved this week I never saw one 

 again after the first glimpse. They are also very 

 noiseless in getting over the stones — quite different 

 to a chamois. This end of the hill was in full view 

 of my camp, at a distance of perhaps a thousand 



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