330 THE PANGONG LAKE. 



end will soon follow. To reach his ground from Tuklakar he 

 had to cross the Yurla Mandrata range, at a height of 20,000 

 feet. One day he had sent his men back to camp with some 

 game he had shot, and whilst alone he discovered four big 

 rams feeding among some rocks, and stalked them success- 

 fully. Their heads only were visible as they stood for a 

 moment to look at him. He aimed at what appeared to him 

 to be the largest ram, and rolled it over dead. The other 

 three ran off, but one of them almost immediately fell dead 

 also. The bullet had gone through the head of one of them 

 and into the neck of the other. He cut the bullet out of the 

 neck afterwards. Four large male antelopes also fell to his 

 rifle during his short visit to this remote region. Several 

 herds of wild yaks were seen in the same neighbourhood, 

 principally cows ; but as Colonel Smyth had in former years 

 shot as many wild yaks as he wanted, he devoted himself 

 more to the Hodgsonian antelopes, of which up to that time 

 he had not killed a specimen. 



Although I am a poor authority compared with others who 

 have described the pursuit of these gigantic wild sheep, my 

 success moreover, on this occasion, being small as regards 

 trophies, yet I venture to hope that my humble quota of 

 experience may assist in giving some idea of the real wild 

 sport attending it. 



On the 10th of July we left Lookoong for Chooshul, a 

 fair-sized Tartar hamlet near some borax-mines, about eight 

 miles southward of the Pangong tso, along the side of which 

 the greater part of our three days' journey to it lay. Not a 

 living thing was there to be seen, nor was there a sound to 

 break the dead silence around this watery waste save the 

 monotonous plash of the wavelets breaking along the sandy 

 shore. From the unmistakable evidences about its margin, 

 the water of this lake must be steadily receding ; and Changter 

 informed me that a long low rock which appears above water 

 near its northern end was, within his recollection, quite in- 



