58 CHINESE TURKESTAN 



but, like all his tribe, he was very wide awake, and 

 we did not get a shot at him. 



Never before had we seen such an extent of 

 meadow-land, the grass on it being higher than one's 

 knee. The native flocks and herds make but little 

 impression on it, and it should be a wonderful cattle 

 country. Many parts of it are level enough to be 

 cut with a machine, and any quantity of hay could 

 be made for winter keep. 



The only two available Kalmak shikaris were 

 away with the other man, so we were really rather 

 stranded ; but all agreed that the best shooting- 

 grounds were to the east, and said that we ought to 

 reach them in two days. Native notions of distance 

 are rather vague, but, anyway, we decided to go 

 down the valley and trust to luck to get more news 

 and to pick up shikaris en route. 



We were pretty sure that the other sportsman 

 was Isidor Morse, an American, whom we had both 

 met before in Kashmir, as we knew that he was 

 somewhere in this part of the world. If so, he 

 must have been in the district some months, and 

 ought to know all about it, so we sent off a letter 

 by a Kalmak, with instructions to discover his 

 whereabouts and deliver it as soon as possible. 



Here it may be as well to say that the people 

 inhabiting the Tekkes are of three races Kalmaks, 

 Kirghiz, and Kazaks, the latter not to be con- 

 fused with the Russian Cossacks. Of these the 



