54 JOURNAL, BOMB A Y NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol X. 



no signs of resting, so it was useless to wait any longer, and although 

 the wind was in the wrong direction, I tried a long turn up the valley 

 to stalk them. When after about two hours' hard work on the stones 

 and ice I came to the proper place, the arkars had got scent of me and 

 were not to be seen anywhere. Shortly after, however, I saw them, in 

 single file, going up the mountain along a snow ridge, the big ones first 

 and two young ones behind. They were going at a long canter, stop- 

 ping from time to tune as if to regain breath, and I lost them, always 

 going up as if to climb the Kaufman peak itself. They were certainly 

 over 18j000 feet. I could plainly see from the ground that they often 

 came to this spot ; in many places were big forms where they had laid 

 down, after scratching the ground, and some big heads lying about 

 attested that for years certainly this place had been a favourite one. 



On the morrow I went to look for arkars in the next nullah. My 

 camp was to be pitched on the Kara djilga river, which flows into the 

 great Kara Kul, and I went between this river and the Transalai chain. 

 I saw many this day. The first was a young one which went off at once 

 as soon as he saw our ponies and crossed a high ridge at about 15,500 

 feet. Following him we could see from the top about six arkars in a 

 flat valley very far off, and soon after, and nearer to us, a good herd 

 of about thirty. They were in a very bad place to stalk, but seeing they 

 were going up slowly, feeding along a little rivulet where there was 

 some grass, I decided to wait for them to come nearer, or to see where 

 they would go for the middle of the day. I could not see if there 

 were any good heads amongst them, but I wanted food for my camp, 

 so I thought it was not a day to be very particular about good or bad 

 heads, so I made up my mind to shoot what I could. After a very 

 long wait I got above them and could see some young ones standing 

 and walking about in the middle of the herd, while all the big ones 

 were lying down. It was impossible to get nearer, so, although it 

 was about 400 yards off, I decided to shoot. One big one was lying 

 on the ground like a dead beast with its four legs stretched out, 

 I shot at him but missed, and off they all went at a terrific pace down- 

 hill. They had hardly disappeared when two of them came back to 

 the top of a little hill, as if they wanted to have a good look all round, 

 but they went down again and followed the herd. Soon after I saw 

 the herd in the middle of the plain below, all in single file. From 



