The Father of all Sheep 223 



long enough to raise false hopes, in a most tan- 

 talising manner. When my patience had become 

 thin, I screwed up the Lyman sight of my rifle 

 to 300 yards and took a shot, and luckily knocked 

 him over, with a bullet through the base of the 

 neck. We went on a long way over sterile, sandy 

 valleys, till, after gradually climbing to a con- 

 siderable height, we saw the dark-blue lake lying 

 far below us, in a shallow basin of rocks and sand. 

 Beyond, ridge after ridge of ochre-coloured hills 

 stretched away to an immense distance. 



We spotted the ammon soon after, and, leaving 

 the ponies, went on by ourselves. After half an 

 hour's walking we got to the end of a long pro- 

 montory of sand and stones, from which we 

 looked down into a valley 1000 feet below us, 

 where the ammon were feeding. After we had 

 waited some time, they moved to the other side 

 of the valley, where they would be in a stalk- 

 able position ; so taking my rifle I essayed an 

 approach, while my wife, perched up aloft with 

 her glasses, as in a box in a theatre, viewed the 

 whole scene laid out before her. With this critical 

 spectator I was more than usually careful, tested 

 the shifting zephyrs at frequent intervals, some- 

 times crawled, sometimes walked, till a restless 

 ram had moved out of sight, and finally had the 

 satisfaction of surveying the herd not eighty yards 



