78 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya 



Markhor are rather browsers than grazers, the 

 holly oak, which grows in most glens in Gilgit 

 and Chitral, being with them a very favourite 

 shrub. To get at the upper branches of these 

 trees females and kids often climb quite a height 

 from the ground, and apparently even big mar- 

 khor too ; for once through my spying-glass I saw 

 the branches of a tree violently agitated, and 

 looking closer, lo and behold ! a grey-bearded 

 markhor among the branches, that in this un- 

 dignified position was trying to break them down 

 with his massive horns. Attracted to the spot by 

 vultures, I once came across the dead body of a 

 female hanging suspended by a hind leg from a 

 forked bough some eight feet from the ground. 

 She had evidently ventured too far, and her foot 

 slipping, she had thus miserably perished. 



There is no more majestic-looking animal on 

 the hillside than a hoary old markhor with his 

 white beard not a tuft like ibex, but a mane 

 covering the neck and lower jaw almost sweep- 

 ing the ground. Pictures that I have seen never 

 make him shaggy enough. He looks and is the 

 king of wild goats. His head is the finest trophy 

 to be obtained in the Himalaya, the horns 

 varying much in size and shape; so that, added 

 to the fascination of perhaps the highest-class 

 stalking in the world, there is almost a curio- 



