no SPORT IN THE HIGHLANDS OF KASHMIR chap. 



heads, and Abdulla agreed, but I could not form any 

 accurate idea of how long the horns were. The goats 

 were evidently prospecting about for suitable quarters 

 for the day, and it was most interesting watching their 

 cautious movements, and noticing the care with which 

 they examined all the ground above and around them as 

 they advanced. They looked very handsome, with their 

 black chin tufts and hoary beards and massive horns, and 

 I thought myself in great luck that I had sighted another 

 herd so soon. They were very slow in coming forward, 

 so I lay on the grass in the bright sunshine, quite 

 sheltered from view, and watched them at my ease. 



The surroundings were very fine. In front and right 

 below us was the Indus, looking quite narrow in the 

 distance, a dirty blue in colour except where masses of 

 rock broke it into foam. I could see it from a little 

 below the Great Bend to my left, all the way through 

 the valley beneath, to where it was joined by the Gilgit 

 river, from which point it flowed through a wide plain, 

 to where the green oasis of Bunji contrasted pleasantly 

 with the sands around. In front and beyond the Indus was 

 the Burme Range, where my camp had been a few days 

 before, the snow on its top receding daily further up 

 towards the wooded crest, beyond which the jagged 

 summits overlooking Astor glittered in the morning sun. 

 To the left, not yet veiled in the mists which often 

 obscured it during the afternoon, the magnificent peak 

 of Haramosh stood out in the pellucid air, brilliantly 

 white and dazzlingly near, against a background of the 

 deepest blue. To the right rose, straight above Bunji, 

 the enormous mass of Nanga Parbat, 26,629 feet above 



