MY ANEROID AT FAULT. 419 



metrical Survey of India, at Dehra Doon, before starting. 

 Few aneroids, however, if any, are to be much depended on 

 above 15,000 feet at most. Up to that height I found mine 

 wonderfully accurate at altitudes marked on the Survey 

 maps. Above this it played all kinds of jinks, making the 

 summit of the Niti pass, for instance, which is well under 

 17,000 feet, to be over 20,000 feet ; but on again descending 

 below 15,000 feet it resumed its normal good behaviour. 



The camping-place of Goting is a small flat of green turf, 

 almost surrounded with abrupt scarps of earth overhanging 

 the river. A solitary clump of birch - trees growing on a 

 slope hard by afforded a plentiful supply of fuel for our camp- 

 fire. Some of these gaunt old specimens, with their gnarled 

 and crooked limbs, must have weathered the storms of cen- 

 turies. One or two grey old giants I measured in this neigh- 

 bourhood were nearly 15 feet in girth. These were the last 

 trees we saw beyond Niti. Before the snow melts off the 

 neighbouring heights, the slopes about Goting are good for 

 several days' burr ell-shooting, and there, on a former visit, I 

 got the biggest horned ram of the kind I ever killed. As he 

 afforded me a capital day's sport, I shall here devote a page 

 or two to his memory. 



As I had no intention of crossing the pass that season, I 

 reached Niti much earlier in the year. The village then 

 looked tristful and forlorn in its emptiness. The snow still 

 lay in broad patches on the heights close above it, and the 

 burrell were all low down. As we left the village for Goting 

 in the grey of early morning, the only living sound that broke 

 the still frosty air was the wild whistling call of the " heoon- 

 wal " (snow-pheasants), as they sat on bare knolls among the 

 gorse bushes, their long-drawn mournful notes according well 

 with the lonesome scene around. They did not seem very 

 shy, but as they were generally in pairs I refrained from 

 going after them. The track to Goting was often, for long 

 distances, quite buried in snow. In some places where it 



