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CHAPTER VI. 



HITHERTO my Himalayan experiences had been confined to 

 the middle and lower ranges, and I had regarded those aerial 

 piles and peaks of eternal snow as a sort of distant dream- 

 land, which I hoped some day to find a substantial reality ; 

 and for those who are not cragsmen born, so to speak, it 

 may perhaps be as well to get accustomed and inured to 

 mountain-climbing where it is comparatively easy and safe, 

 before attempting to hunt among the dizzy heights and dan- 

 gerous snow-slopes of the higher Himalayas. 



It was the beginning of April when I purposed visiting 

 the Chipla mountain, a gigantic rocky buttress, as it were, 

 of the great frozen wall it seemed to support, and a favourite 

 haunt of the " tahr." This member of the wild-goat family 

 Hemitragus jemlaicus of natural history is plentifully 

 distributed over the precipitous rocky slopes just below the 

 snow-line, and is occasionally found on some of the higher 

 parts of the middle ranges, where, however, it appears not 

 to attain the same size as it does in the higher regions below 

 the snowy range. I have never seen a more truly wild- 

 looking animal in the Himalayas than an old buck tahr, 

 with his long frill-like mane and shaggy coat of dark-grey- 

 ish brown, short sturdy legs, and almost black face. His 

 horns are from twelve to fourteen inches long, and about 

 nine inches in circumference at the base, broad and flat, with 

 their rough anterior edges rising in a line with the forehead 

 till they abruptly curve backward to a very fine point. 



