76 HAUNTS OF THE TAHR. 



tahr. For a mile or two our way led through forest, and 

 over ground that was rough and uneven owing to huge frag- 

 ments of rock that had been detached by some bygone con- 

 vulsion of nature from the heights above, and which now lay 

 jammed together where they had here found a resting-place 

 below. Such travelling was tiresome for our laden men, 

 though they made nothing of the difficulty. At length we 

 emerged on to a rocky ridge which ran up the left side of a 

 vast amphitheatre. From the naked crags and snow-streaked 

 summits that almost encircled it, deep rifts, gullies, and 

 broad landslips of stones and debris ran down its precipitous 

 sides, until they terminated in a wilderness of partially 

 wooded, rocky ravines far away below. Some idea of the 

 proportions of this huge natural amphitheatre may be formed 

 when I say that as we clambered along we might have been 

 compared to ants creeping over the ruined walls of the Col- 

 osseum at Rome. Here and there amidst this chaos were 

 steep, verdant slopes on which several small herds of tahr 

 were quietly browsing or reposing, looking in the distance 

 like little brown dots. Altogether it was a wonderfully wild 

 scene to gaze upon, though I had only one eye for viewing it, 

 the injured one being bandaged up for the time. 



As we picked our way along the ridge, I was much amused 

 with the behaviour of a big sturdy inhabitant of the plateau, 

 who, notwithstanding his load, which was not a light one, was 

 skipping nimbly about from rock to rock in his anxious 

 endeavours to point out the tahr. Fortunately the animals 

 were so far distant below us, that there was little chance of 

 their observing his excited movements. On examining the 

 animals with the telescope, I could discern no great old black 

 fellows among them, only tehrny or young bucks. Some of 

 the latter, however, showed fair heads. 



We soon reached a spot on the ridge where the afore- 

 mentioned stalwart individual, who had constituted himself our 

 guide, had informed me that we should find a sort of cave, under 



