THE NILGIRI IBEX 



delight my men returned. We then set off at 

 once to try to stalk the ibex. To reach the place, 

 we had to pass over ridges of grass hills lying 

 at the foot of a high mountain which terminated 

 on our side in a precipice ; and it was on a sloping 

 spur at right angles to this, and far below it, that 

 I had seen the game. At last we reached the 

 ridge on which, as I thought, I had carefully 

 marked the ibex, but on looking cautiously over 

 it I could see nothing of him. One or more 

 similar spurs running parallel to this one then 

 came into view, and I wondered whether I had 

 made a mistake and had seen him on a further 

 one. 



We crossed the intervening valley, and I looked 

 over the next ridge in vain, and then proceeded 

 towards a steep precipice on the edge of the sheer 

 height above the deep gorge. It was very strange, 

 and I could not imagine where on earth the ibex 

 had got to, when all of a sudden, as if he had 

 dropped from the clouds, there stood the noble 

 buck, on the very edge of the precipice, and only, 

 as I estimated, about 250 or 300 yards off. I 

 instantly lay flat, and made my shikarrie do the 

 same (I had left the other man behind in a valley 

 to wait for us), and, not daring to move hand or 

 foot, intently watched the game. His curved horns 

 looked splendid through my glasses, and he ap- 

 peared to be just the colour of an ordinary Mysore 

 black buck (in Mysore black buck do not usually 

 attain the jet-black hue of the same animal in the 

 north-west) with the exception of wanting the very 



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