ON THE TRAIL 211 



over the hills to Archuen, and a very stiff walk it 

 was, the doctor and Purdom being quite done up 

 on their arrival that night. 



Lao- Wei and I, directly after their departure, 

 carried out the plan we had formulated the night 

 before. He thought it likely that the stag had 

 made for the adjoining valley, which went by the 

 name of Mirgo. It was a long tiring walk to the 

 top of the hill, but after two hours' steady going we 

 found tracks where he had crossed the ridge. Snow 

 still lay deep in the shadows, but the sun had 

 melted patches in the open, and at times the spoor 

 was difficult to follow. Still more difficult is it to 

 explain the geography of mountainous country in 

 such a manner that the reader is enabled to follow 

 a particular series of events. 



Our camp lay on the west side of the main 

 valley. From behind it ran a ridge which swept 

 round in a narrow horseshoe forming the corrie 

 where I had seen the nine-pointer. At the far end 

 of this corrie extended another ridge, descending on 

 the right into a large pine-covered basin where 

 hundreds of deer might have remained invisible, 

 and on the left into a series of rugged gullies. 

 These merged finally in a fork of the main valley, 

 the junction being a few hundred yards above our 

 camp. The ridge forming the southern end of the 

 large basin turned slightly to the north-west on 

 leaving it and formed the backbone of a number of 

 smaller corries and basins which emanated from the 

 Mirgo Valley. This lay parallel to the one in which 

 we were camped. We had left our ten-pointer at 

 the top of the ridge just above the big basin. His 

 tracks, with those of the hinds, plunged down into 



