176 SPORT AND TRAVEL 



He was, too, the only member of the outfit who had 

 not been ill at one time or another: Kadera had 

 suffered from severe boils, Salia from rheumatism, 

 Thomas from colds, the coolies from fever; but 

 Sidka seemed always well, always keen and always 

 cheery, a characteristic of which only those who 

 have camped in the wilds know the true value. 

 . The coolies finally arrived, and we started on once 

 more, headed now for the sharpu or urial country, 

 of which I was anxious to secure one or two speci- 

 mens before proceeding to the black bear country 

 in the Valley of Kashmir itself. I had not supposed 

 that the climbing could become much worse than it 

 had been before, but in this I was mistaken. The 

 trail ran along the faces of cliffs, so narrow in some 

 places that it seemed impossible to stick on, some- 

 times down in the bottom of a ravine, then up again 

 to the crest of a mountain, whence the great ranges 

 of half Baltistan stretched out before us, and whence 

 we could look over even into Tibet. One gets ac- 

 customed to dizzy places, as to all things, with prac- 

 tice, but when one is clinging to the perpendicular 

 face of a precipice, practically with one's teeth and 

 nails, trying to find where to move next, while out of 

 the corner of his eye he sees beneath him a straight 

 drop of some two thousand feet, and at the same 

 time is morally certain that the three-inch ledge to 



