A Day after Urial 57 



glasses. Mine were a pair of powerful prism 

 binoculars, and Gul Sher's the old-fashioned tele- 

 scopic binoculars ; so, ceteris paribus, I with the 

 better instrument should have picked up anything 

 there was to be seen first. Other things, however, 

 were not equal, and it was Gul Sher's grunt and 

 not mine which told the other that something 

 had been seen which deserved examination 

 through the telescope. They were lying, three 

 of them, and all rams, on one of a series of 

 steep ridges of hard clay about three - quarters 

 of a mile from us. Two of them certainly, with 

 black beards and ruffs, were old rams with good 

 heads. But between us lay a very deep and 

 precipitous ravine, which could not be crossed 

 except by dropping down to the road below us 

 or climbing high up ; and as it was then three 

 o'clock on a short February day, the stalk had 

 to be put off till the morrow. So the afternoon 

 was spent in watching them. 



Of course the talk was of urial. Gul Sher 

 recounted the tale about the herd which swam 

 the Indus near this very spot. To translate the 

 old chap's quaint idioms and descriptions into 

 bald English, or even worse, the Biblical phrase- 

 ology which writers of the East sometimes put 

 into the mouths of their dark heroes, I will not 

 attempt. The story, however, ran that in his 



