242 A SHOOTING TRIP TO KAMCHATKA 



the perpendicular cliffs, and a nice grassy boulder just 

 above the place where they lay would have afforded 

 me an easy shot. But the question was how to get 

 there. The wind being favourable — straight uphill — 

 and midges becoming intolerable, I put an end to our 

 council of war by starting up the ridge towards the 

 gloomy higher rocks, intending to find a gully down 

 which we might descend. 



The General was most sceptical as to the result of 

 this enterprise. Having safely reached the summit of 

 the divide and carefully located our quarry, we pro- 

 ceeded to look for a more practicable ravine, and for 

 an hour could not find a single gully which we could 

 venture to descend ; there were nothing but sheer 

 precipices, or vertical snow-shoots, on which a bird 

 could scarcely alight. At last the General discovered 

 a narrow gorge, clown which we unhesitatingly started, 

 little knowing what awaited us below. Words are 

 powerless to describe the places which we had to 

 negotiate during the most acrobatic bit of mountain- 

 eering I have ever performed. The descent, one foot 

 against the cliff and the other against a wall of ice, 

 with a dark, fathomless crevasse gaping between, and 

 not the smallest ledge for a foothold within reach, was 

 no common trial. We alighted in this manner on the 

 top of a perpendicular snow-slide, where the General 



