Across the Roof of the World. 



evening, but saw nothing as the Kazaks had but recently left 

 the ground I tried. There was a storm of rain late in the after- 

 noon, not an unusual phenomenon in the Thian Shan. 



The following morning I went over the ground t<j the east 

 of camp and saw a number of roe, but the long grass and hemlock 

 made shikar somewhat difficult. I distinguished myself by 

 missing two bucks badly, rather a discreditable performance, 

 so returned to camp and spent the rest of the morning after 

 breakfast in a search for the buck wounded the day before, 

 but though all hands were out we failed to locate him. 



During the morning Rahim arrived from Kulja bringing 

 letters and supplies, the latter very welcome as we had run out 

 of nearly everything and were living on reduced rations. 

 Amongst my letters was one from a brother, then wandering 

 somewhere in the wilds of British Columbia, like myself far 

 from the madding crowd. Rahim went back to Kulja the next 

 day, taking letters for the post and with orders to bring out fresh 

 supplies in a fortnight to the Agiass Valley where I then expected 

 to be. 



I started off at 4 o'clock on the morning of the 26th with 

 Nurah to try the ground north of camp, keeping along the 

 dividing ridge between two narrow valleys. This ridge trended 

 away to the forests, higher up on the edge of which we soon 

 sighted roe. The country below the ridge in question was 

 undulating grass land, and on a little hillock we spotted a buck 

 at his early morning graze. We were able to move round in his 

 direction under cover of the rounded knolls and creeping on to 

 one of them I saw the buck still feeding and quite undisturbed, 

 so tried a shot which knocked him over in the long grass. I 

 thought he was done for, but when we arrived near him he 

 suddenly dashed off, but collapsed after having gone 60 or 70 

 yards. We followed in great haste, but he cleared off again and 

 we lost sight of him in the dense grass. This was very 

 annoying as I felt sure I had hit liim in a vital spot, but 

 Nurah said they had tremendous vitality and took a lot of 



21S 



