AFTER A WOUNDED RAM. 441 



egregious misses of the previous day might possibly have been 

 due to my indulging too freely in tobacco. After watching 

 the wounded ram for a long time, it being impossible to 

 approach him where he lay, we at length saw him rise 

 and hobble onward, stopping now and again, until he reached 

 the Lai Daka, where with the glass I could see he once more 

 lay down on an open slope. It had now grown too late to 

 follow him that afternoon, so we proceeded to gralloch the 

 dead beasts. On the arrival of the jooboos, I sat down and 

 thoroughly enjoyed a smoke whilst they were being packed 

 with the spoils. On our return to camp, a dram of whisky 

 was served out to all hands for celebrating this red-letter day 

 among the big sheep. I weighed one of the rams with a 

 portable machine I had brought with me a Yankee " notion," 

 which was " calculated " to weigh correctly up to 360 Ib. The 

 figures were as follows : Weight, " clean," 350 Ib. odd, or about 

 18 stone. Of this, the head alone (as cut off for stuffing) was 

 upwards of 50 Ib., and perhaps 2 stone might be added for 

 the gralloch, making a total of, say, 20 stone. Not a bad 

 weight for a sheep ! The horns were good average specimens 

 of their kind. The larger pair would have measured quite 

 3 feet round the curve had not the tips been slightly broken. 

 The other pair were a few inches shorter, but equally thick 

 (18 inches) and their tips uninjured. 



The following day we were not long in again finding the 

 wounded ram, on a slope of the Lai Daka above the Ship- 

 chillum stream, and with the spy-glass I could distinctly 

 see his blood-stained haunch. He was slowly moving up- 

 wards, but ere long he lay down on an exposed ridge high up on 

 the range, from whence he evidently kept a sharp look-out on 

 all sides, as we noticed that his head was being continually 

 turned suspiciously about. It was necessary to use the ut- 

 most caution in approaching him, for any wounded wild animal 

 is always hard to get near when not quite disabled, let alone an 

 Ovis Ammon. After making a round of quite two miles, we 



