74 SPORT AND TRAVEL 



expected to see goats on the move at this time of day, 

 but as it was winter and quite cold in the shade, I 

 thought they might reasonably be expected to He out 

 and sun themselves on the bare rocks. After having 

 carefully scanned the broken ground below, I turned 

 the glasses to some buttresses of rock some distance to 

 our left, similar to the one upon which my guide and I 

 were seated, and on about the same level ; and the first 

 thing I saw was a Turkish peasant with a long gun 

 squatted on a rock at the edge of a precipitous cliff, 

 evidently on the look-out for wild goats. Soon I 

 made out another figure, also armed with a long- 

 barrelled gun, seated on the edge of the cliff about 

 one hundred yards beyond the first, and realised that 

 a party of villagers were on the same quest as myself, 

 the guns being posted in advantageous positions, 

 whilst a party of beaters were probably endeavouring 

 to drive game towards them. As a hunt was in 

 progress, Mustapha conveyed to me by signs his 

 opinion that we had better remain where we were for 

 a time, and see if fortune would not send something 

 our way; so seating myself on a rock close to the 

 edge of the cliff and keeping a keen look-out all 

 around me, I remained perfectly quiet. 



Placed as I was, on the edge of a cliff some thirteen 

 or fourteen hundred feet above the plain below, I 

 commanded a magnificent panoramic view over a 

 vast extent of country. At the foot of the Maimun 

 Dagh lay the shallow salt lake of which I have already 



