ARRIVAL AT THE HUNTING GROUNDS 131 



The mutton disposed of, inwardly and outwardly, 

 we sounded the Yuzbashi on the game question. It 

 was quite hopeless. He never went after tiir, he said. 

 Nobody in his village did. There was no good fat on 

 a tiir, and of what use were the horns ? We were so 

 flabbergasted, we had no answer ready for him. 



Ah, well ! There are men at home — but, of course, 

 they are of the Uninitiated — who can look at the 

 brownish head of a Caucasian ibex with its massive 

 cylindrical horns sweeping royally outwards and 

 backwards, somewhat like those of the bharal, with- 

 out seeing anything but — a brownish head hanging 

 on the wall. Others there are — and these are the 

 Understanding ones — to whom the sight of the scimitar 

 curves means the lifting of the arras which divides 

 the workaday world from a dream country of little 

 ledges, gained by tortuous ways, high as eagles' eyries 

 among the cloud banks, where black chasms narrow to 

 nothingness below. ■* 



Another glance at the exquisite head and . . . Grey 

 rocky walls rise to the sky, and about the lofty summits 

 snow-clouds circle like the crowns of throned kings. , . . 

 Two snow-partridges cower low on a pinnacled shelf as 

 a lammergeyer, brushing the face of the cloven preci- 

 pice in majestic flight, returns greeting to them. . . . 

 Little brownish dots spring nimbly from point to 

 point, in tricky darts, light as thistle-down. . . . They 

 come nearer, nearer yet. . . . From the distant valley 

 a silver mist of rain sweeps upward like a spectral 

 host. . . . Hold it back, kind Fate, until, until . . . 

 The moving dots again. . . . The sun strikes the 



