GURLA MANDHATA 125 



over a high ridge and disappear from view among clouds 

 and snow-fields. The weather at times was less agreeable, 

 snow and sleet falling ; the nights were cold, and the 

 distances we had to travel, often tramping in snow, made 

 us so weary that we were almost worn out, and despaired 

 of securing a specimen and replenishing our exhausted 

 larder. There were no inhabitants of these desolate 

 valleys, where grass was scarce, and that only in hollow 

 places. 



There was ridge succeeding ridge, and sloping valleys 

 intervening, all so like one another that it was hard to 

 distinguish one's locality. The compass had often to be 

 consulted if the great summit of Gurla Mandhata was 

 lost to view, and our shikaris were often in doubt as to 

 our direction, though first-class mountaineers and good 

 trackers. On one occasion we had sighted the big herd 

 in the top of a wide valley, and the shikaris determined 

 to try and drive them to the guns ; so we made a grand 

 detour, leaving three men below, and after going round 

 by another valley — a distance which took several hours 

 to compass — we arrived at what seemed to be the only 

 pass by which the herd could leave the valley, and placed 

 ourselves behind rocks. Presently, by arrangement pre- 

 viously made, the three men showed themselves in the 

 valley below, and the herd, becoming alarmed, ran to- 

 gether, and began to face towards us. The wind was 

 blowing, as it usually does by day, up the valley from them 

 to us, and our chances of a good beef-steak looked rosier. 

 Alas for the uncertainty of affairs ! The wits of these 

 heavy, big, stupid-looking, lumbering beasts proved 

 sharper than ours ; for they sent on an old cow up the 

 ridge, and she by some instinct scented danger, and re- 

 treated, with her great black bush of a tail in the air, down 

 again, and away went the whole herd full gallop straight 



