246 AFTER WILD SHEEP IN THE ALTAI 



horses refused to advance ; so, dismounting, I sent 

 them to the head of the valley, where, at the bottom 

 of an immense amphitheatre of high mountains, lay 

 a larger lake, the shore of which was to be our 

 rendezvous for the evening. An hour's scramble 

 brought us, Taba and myself, to the top of the com- 

 manding ridge, from which a broad, stony tableland, 

 gradually sloping away from us, extended for three 

 or four miles. Here we sat down to spy. Presently, 

 with the aid of my Zeiss glass, I made out a sus- 

 picious-looking brown speck, then another, then a 

 third, till I could count forty of them some two 

 miles below us. Sure enough these were sheep at 

 last, and very probably belonged to the herd Little- 

 dale had seen the day before. On more careful 

 inspection we found them to be all rams, lying on 

 the plateau in open ground. We could not, from that 

 distance, make out the size of their horns, but de- 

 cided to approach them nearer, under shelter of the 

 crags. The wind was blowing steadily in our faces 

 from the west, which was decidedly in our favour, 

 but the question arose whether we should find any 

 possible way of hiding ourselves on the flat table- 

 land, over which we should have to crawl for at least 

 six or seven hundred yards. We advanced under 

 shelter of the rocks in very broken ground, having now 



