TIBETAN PIGEONS. 339 



Tibetan solitudes is apt to get tired of his own society 

 alone, and after a long spell of it, begins to fully realise 

 the fact of his being naturally as gregarious in his habits 

 as the wild animals he hunts there. Your native followers 

 are capital fellows in their way ; but, from the difference of 

 their ideas and their mode of life, they cannot be your boon 

 companions. You are in the same relative position to them 

 as a burrell would be among a herd of tahr. No ; nature 

 never intended that white men and black should amalgamate 

 a whit more than the burrell and the tahr, when she gave 

 them each a skin of a different colour, whatever may be 

 argued to the contrary. I therefore decided to remain here 

 for a day, and asked my compatriot over to breakfast next 

 morning. He had just come over the Niti pass, and had so 

 far found no big rams ; but as he was accompanied by an 

 excellent Bhotia shikaree, and was en route for the Lai 

 Dak a, his work was still before* him. After hearing from 

 him how the busy world had been wagging during the past 

 two months, and giving him in return all the information I 

 thought might be useful of this quiet and remote corner of 

 it, not forgetting to describe the whereabouts of the big 

 wounded ram, I wished him good luck as he continued his 

 way towards the Dukka hills. 



In the evening I took a murderous advantage of a large 

 nock of blue Tibetan pigeons that came and settled to feed 

 near the camp. A raking pot-shot on the ground, followed 

 up with the second barrel as they rose, floored a baker's 

 dozen of them, which, with eight I had secured the previous 

 evening in the same ignoble manner, kept me in pigeon-pies 

 for a week or more. The adage, " it never rains but it pours," 

 was exemplified when again I was aroused from my slumbers 

 by a messenger with yet another note. This one had been 

 sent by an officer of the great Trigonometrical Survey of 

 India, who with his party had arrived at our last camping- 

 place, after crossing the Untadhura pass from the province 

 of Kumaon. He was on his way, he told me, to fix his 



