A SUMMER IN HIGH ASIA. 



however, visible from the camp that day, but Salia, 

 who had gone up the valley to prospect, returned in 

 the evening and reported having viewed two lots 

 of ibex of fifteen and forty, with some good heads 

 amongst them. Accordingly the following morning 

 I took the small tent and food for two or three 

 days, and started for higher ground. Soon after 

 leaving the camp the valley turns to the north-west, 

 and after a scramble of some miles over loose 

 boulders, we camped in the middle of quite a wood 

 of bik and birch-trees, the most fertile wild spot that 

 I discovered in the whole of my wanderings in 

 Baltistan. From the crags above us on the north 

 side, several magnificent cascades fell into beds of 

 snow ; the southern range was precipitous and stony, 

 while the end of the valley was closed by huge 



glaciers comingdown 

 from the snowy 

 range above, a view 

 which had probably 

 never been gazed on 

 by the eye of white 

 man, which made it 

 the more impressive. 

 Whilst we were 

 watching in the 

 evening Iwaspleased 

 to be the first to de- 

 scry three bucks with enormous heads appear on the 

 top of a sheer precipice opposite the camp on the 



78 



WE CAMPED IN THE MIDDLE 

 OF QUITE A WOOD." 



