158 SPORT IN THE HIGHLANDS OF KASHMIR chap. 



convenient spot and carefully examined the opposite 

 hillside : our own side of the nala was too much wooded 

 to be worth searching. Nothing was seen in the morn- 

 ing, so we had breakfast in a pretty pine wood, and I 

 spent the middle of the day at chess problems and 

 letters. The evening also was fruitless as far as game 

 went, and about dusk we returned to the camp, which 

 had meantime come up part of the way towards us, 

 and was, we found, pitched in a fine grove of cedars 

 and pines. 



Next morning (i8th) we were up early as usual, and 

 after again directing the camp to follow us, went further 

 up the nala along by the edge of the glacier, searching 

 the opposite side. We saw two herds of ibex, but they 

 were in positions which effectually forbade approach, so 

 there was nothing for it but to have patience till evening. 



We therefore sat down in a birch wood at the edge 

 of the glacier, where, only for the flies, we should have 

 passed a pleasant day. I do not know whether flies 

 are peculiar to this valley or not, but we were curiously 

 troubled by them all the time we were there. I could 

 understand their being in considerable numbers near 

 goatherds' huts and goat-pens, and by the filthy houses 

 of the Baltis, but why they should have been so 

 numerous close to the snow and ice of the Jutyal 

 glacier, and far from any villages, I could not make out. 



In the afternoon we crossed the glacier, a very 

 troublesome and tedious business, as the ice was badly 

 fissured with crevasses and entirely covered with 

 boulders and gravel, and must have been nearly two 

 miles wide where we went over. Examining the 



