1 1 6 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya 



arriving for hours afterwards. The tale they 

 told was that the body of the herd were first 

 making straight for our rock; but something had 

 turned them and they had gone right through the 

 line of beaters. Tracks of two snow-leopards had 

 been seen, and they were supposed to be the cause 

 of the fiasco. 



Now let us transfer ourselves to one of the 

 higher valleys, nearer the axis of this mighty belt 

 of mountain land, where the mysterious ibex in his 

 haunts of snow and ice forms the quarry of 

 humbler votaries. Here we are in the midst of 

 romance and legend. 



There is, even to materialistic Westerns, some- 

 thing almost supernatural about the ibex. When, 

 during the fearful winters of high regions, his 

 summer companions, markhor and urial, bear 

 and marmot, either seek lower or warmer levels, 

 or hibernate in comfortable underground dwell- 

 ings, the ibex remains alone among the snows 

 and drifting mists. What enables them to defy 

 the terrific elements and escape the constant 

 avalanches that thunder down the mountain- 

 sides in the spring-time? How do they exist? 

 The ordinary mortal will explain it by saying 

 that they crowd together under rock shelters 

 and subsist on grass-roots and juniper - sprays 

 while the winter is at its height, and that 



