72 CHINESE TURKESTAN 



The Kirghiz now began to come out he couldn't 

 walk, never did walk, it was much trouble, he would 

 get tired, etc. ; but after being loaded with contumely 

 and curses he concluded to come, so we started 

 down the hill. 



On the road down we came upon a roe deer, a 

 very good buck, but not what we wanted, and we had 

 to make a considerable detour to avoid disturbing 

 it. This could not be helped, as it never would 

 have done to drive it down the hill in front of us, 

 but the time lost was of importance, as it was now 

 getting late. 



The stags kept on calling, but in a perfunctory 

 manner, which in the light of after- experience 

 seems to be their usual habit, each beast calling 

 perhaps once in half an hour or so if well on the 

 job. As the ground is very broken, and he generally 

 moves between times, it will be easily understood 

 that it is very difficult to locate a stag in heavy 

 forest, and they very rarely come out during day- 

 light. To make a long story short, I saw one stag 

 on the way down as we crept along, keeping just 

 inside the wood, but he was quite a little fellow ; on 

 the way back again I saw another just outside the 

 cover, but he was between two and three hundred 

 yards off, and it was by then so dark that it was as 

 much as I could do to make out that it was a stag 

 at all, so I did not shoot. Afterwards of course the 

 Kirghiz swore that it was a very big one, that if he 



