NO MAN'S LAND 153 



grows again without ill effect. We saw only rarely a 

 pony with shoes, though they seemed to get very little 

 idle time. Gunt ponies will go in India without shoes, 

 except in the rains, when the horn gets too soft. 



One usually camps in a valley where there is some 

 grass, and the ponies and yaks know how to find out the 

 good places, and will stray away if the camp is not well 

 chosen. But the yak drivers are careful to find a good 

 place, as the straying involves a tiresome search, and 

 watch their charges well at night, tethering one or two 

 if necessary. We only lost our animals once in the night, 

 and they had not strayed far. We hunted a country 

 known as the Lai pahar, the ' red hills,' from the colour 

 of the soil, which is Indian red, approaching to deep 

 crimson in places and vermilion in others, where we had 

 several stalks after Ovis Ammon and burrhel, with no 

 great success, as the ground was too open to get near 

 enough to such wary beasts. We came, after several 

 camps, into a most peculiar country. The soil here was 

 composed of alluvial sand and gravel, and there appeared 

 in front of us an almost level plateau ; but to get across 

 it entailed climbing down into an endless succession of 

 deep nullahs, all trending towards the Sutlej, which ran 

 to the north-east, while our course was south-west, and 

 either clambering up again, only to perform the same 

 operation incessantly, or following the nullahs, which led 

 down in the wrong direction. Their depth was only a 

 few yards at the higher levels, where thousands of vein- 

 like affluent trickles had cut into the soil, converging to 

 one another and joining two or three into one deeper 

 ravine, which went on winding and getting ever deeper 

 as the side-streams joined in, until the depth of each 

 nullah would be 100, increasing to 500 feet, with sides 

 so steep it was hard to climb up them. Not that there 



