KALMUK HUNTERS. 231 



and in thirteen days' actual shooting I accounted for 

 fifteen ibex, among which were some magnificent heads. 

 Let me take a day or two's sport at random from the 

 pages of my diary. 



June 4. — Leaving camp early in the morning we 

 rode up the right bank of the river, spying the steep 

 mountain-sides above us as we went. Before long we 

 came to a turbulent mountain torrent which hurled 

 itself down a bed of rock, and, like the waters at 

 Lodore, came " dashing and flashing and splashing and 

 clashing" till it tumbled headlong into the channel of 

 the main stream. High up on a steep mountain-face 

 overhanging this turbulent torrent, sparsely covered 

 with low bushes, but plentifully with long slippery 

 grass, we saw a herd of ibex, and among them more 

 than one carrying horns, which appeared through the 

 glass to be of enormous size. Tying up the ponies, we 

 proceeded to climb up the rocky banks of the stream, 

 crouching along under cover of the low bushes with 

 which it was fringed. While thus engaged I made 

 more than one discovery : first, that the Kalmuk hunter, 

 unlike the stalker on a Scotch deer-forest or the shikari 

 of India or Kashmir, has no sort of idea of burdening 

 himself with your rifle ; and, second — a far more dis- 

 agreeable surprise— that nothing will induce him to go 

 hunting without his own rifle on his back, a fearful 

 weapon, with long forked attachment as rest, which, 

 as he crouched along in front of me, was continually 

 threatening to disgorge one of my eyes ! 



At length, after much patient crawling over rock and 

 boulder, we succeeded in putting a ridge between our- 

 selves and the herd, and were able to assume an up- 

 right position once more, and to take a breath before 

 starting on the steep ascent in front of us. Half an 

 hour's struggle up a steep mountain-side covered with 



