A LONG AND TRYING STALK. 339 



reposing on an open slope near the head of it. We were 

 rather puzzled as to our mode of procedure, for the morning 

 was still boisterous after a stormy night of rain, and the wind 

 was blowing in fitful gusts that veered constantly to different 

 points of the compass. There was good cover for a stalk, at 

 any rate for as far as we could see, along the boulder-strewn 

 bed of a shallow stream running down from the direction in 

 which the rams were lying, so I resolved to take advantage 

 of it as much as possible and afterwards be guided by circum- 

 stances. Against this scheme Changter strongly protested, his 

 idea being that we should make a wide circuit behind a spur 

 to our left, in order to get above the animals. But I was 

 obstinate ; perhaps, too, a little lazy at the idea of a repeti- 

 tion of the long wearisome grind upward of the previous 

 morning, and foolishly refused to take his sage advice sug- 

 gested by long experience of the extremely shy and wary 

 habits of the Ovis Ammon. Besides, I should myself have 

 remembered that all mountain animals are more watchful of 

 the ground below than of that above them. 



The difficulties he had foretold commenced before we had 

 gone half a mile, when we were detected by a flock of ewes 

 that were feeding on a slope to our right. As they were at 

 a considerable distance, we contrived to pass by without dis- 

 turbing them more than to cause them to slowly move higher 

 up the slope. After a long and tedious scramble among loose 

 stones and boulders, we at length got within a few hundred 

 yards of the point we first of all wanted to reach, when the 

 Tartar herdsman that accompanied us who, at any rate, pos- 

 sessed a very sharp pair of eyes descried a large flock of 

 rams moving down in our direction along a slope at the head 

 of the valley. They were at least a mile off, and were, I sup- 

 posed, the same I had made out with the glass from below, 

 although there were now many more than I had at first seen. 

 To avail ourselves of the cover of a big block of stone close 

 at hand was the work of a few seconds. From this we could, 



