120 SPORT AND TRAVEL 



historic ancestors may have hunted the reindeer in 

 France during the Glacial Period. They were both 

 armed with long single-barrelled muzzle-loading guns 

 of Turkish make. They had open, honest-looking 

 faces, and were physically sturdy, well-built men, the 

 elder of middle height, and the younger somewhat 

 shorter. Unfortunately they were not quite as heavy 

 as for my comfort I could have wished them to have 

 been, as when toiling up steep snow slopes behind 

 them, placing my feet carefully in their tracks, I found 

 that I always sank much deeper than they did. 



On the day in question, we found the fresh tracks 

 of two deer, and followed them to near the head of 

 a deep rocky corrie within a short distance of the 

 summit of the Murad Dagh. In the snow it was 

 difficult to tell whether these animals were males 

 or females, but when we came in sight of them we 

 found they were both hinds. Having no fresh meat 

 in camp, I determined to try to shoot one, and had 

 no difficulty in getting up to them. Indeed, as 

 they were of no value, they seemed remarkably tame 

 and stupid, for after I had crept to within one hun- 

 dred yards of the one, and killed her with a shot 

 through the lungs, the other stood, broadside on, 

 looking stupidly at me for some time before she 

 dashed off through the snow. The one I killed went 

 rolling down a steep snow slope for several hundred 

 feet, cannoning against two rocks on the way, and 

 was only brought up by reaching the half-frozen 



