548 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol, XIII, 
had been all right we should have had a capital chance of a successful stalk, 
Unfortunately, the sky, which had looked so favourable when we started, 
had clouded over, and a gale blew, now in our faces, now on our backs, The 
sooner we got further away the better, I thought, and ordered a retreat. 
When we had gone about half a mile, I sent Rakhmat up a ridge which 
commanded the nulla, and he brought back the information that the poli 
were now down on the grass, After waiting for an hour or so in the vain 
hope that the wind would settle, it began to snow, and I returned to camp, 
The next day the poli were on the same ground, but the wind was so unsetti- 
ed that I resisted the temptation to goatter them, The following day, 
however, it was fine and the poli in the same place, I trieda stalk which 
would have been successful but for the old ram, whose white face I suddenly 
discovered staring at us overa rock as we were covering the last couple 
of hundred yards. We gave the poli another three days’ leave and then went 
after them again, This time we only found eight, two of the flock, the 
second biggest and another, being missing. We again made a mess of the 
stalk, being defeated by the old ram, and the flock bolted up into the snow 
perilously near the crest-line, over which we were much afraid they would 
go. After standing there for a long time, however, they lay down, and 
we returned to camp, finding on our way with the telescope the two missing 
rams high up a branch nulla. 
Early in the morning we rode up again to the poli ground and carefully 
searched the usual places, finding nothing. We then went off to the place 
where we had last seen the rams ;not a trace of them could we find though 
Rakhmat and I examined every yard of the ground with the glasses. The 
flock was not there, and I now set to work to examine the snows above to 
see from the tracks if they had left that part of the country or not. As I 
feared, there was a great road leading up to a pass, and it seemed now 
certain that the poli had crossed in the night. Very sick, we sat down and 
held a consultation, I was quite determined to find the big ram again ; the 
only question was, What was the best way to get the camp there? The 
Kirghis at first said he did not know what country was on the other side, 
but when I announced my intentions of following the tracks over the hill- 
tops, and seeing for myself, he said he thought he knew of a pass on which 
we could take the baggage. After breakfast, Rakhmat proposed that we 
should look up the other two rams, which would probably be somewhere 
about where we bad last seen them, This I agreed to do, though I felt 
that I should not be a bit consoled for the loss of the big head, even if I 
accounted for the pair of them. We now advanced cautiously up the branch 
nulla where we had last seen them. The lower half we drew blank, as we 
had expected, as the ground had been visible from below with the telescope. 
On going higher up still, we found nothing, and it looked as if we had come 
to the end of the grazing ground. Only a few hundred yards further 
