THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
opportunity for anyone who prefers to try new localities and to take his 
chance of a successful bag instead of going over old ground. 
The littoral of Asia Minor is, on nearly all sides, composed of highlands, 
— sometimes only rolling hill country, but at others rising to snow-capped 
mountain ranges. Beyond this surrounding barrier the interior is for 
the most part a high and more or less barren plateau. The mountains 
themselves are less well clothed with trees on their inland slopes, the 
country becomes pasture -land in place of cultivated. This compara- 
tively arid region has its own peculiar fauna, amongst which is an exceed- 
ingly beautiful little wild sheep (or mouflon), Gmelin’s, or the red race 
of the small sheep of Western Asia. Travelling from the west by rail from 
Smyrna or Scutari, as the traveller is sure to do, unless he comes up from 
Mersina or Adana and crosses the Taurus Mountains, he will come into 
the westernmost haunts of the mouflon in the neighbourhood of Konia. 
To the north and east is the plateau basin of inner Anatolia, a wide, gently 
rolling plain, broken here and there by smaller isolated ridges, or rising 
occasionally into rounded “ downs.” A featureless region, described on 
maps as a salt desert, and although in summer its dusty surface is very 
nearly desert, yet this gives a wrong impression, for the whole of it is 
fine grazing land and the abode of innumerable shepherds and their flocks. 
The plain of Axylon, as the western portion is named, descends at an easy 
incline to the salt lake of Tuz Kul, which is the lowest portion of the basin. 
Roughly, the plateau may be said to average 3,300 feet in altitude, with 
hills rising to 800 and 1 ,000 feet above it. Surrounding it on the south and 
east is the Cilician Taurus and the Anti -Taurus. In the north-east is a 
conspicuous landmark, the volcano of Erjias or Argaeus, which rises to 
close on 13,000 feet above the sea and is to be seen over an immense area. 
Northwards the plateau merges imperceptibly into the hill country of 
Angora. 
There is a large area of country here which one would consider suitable 
for wild sheep, yet their range is very circumscribed. In 1913, in company 
with Mr G. Fenwick-Owen, I traversed the north-eastern portion of 
the plateau between the Anti Taurus, Kaizariyeh and Angora. We never 
found traces of mouflon, nor could even find natives who knew of them 
by name. The two points at which previous hunters have started out to 
find them are Konia and Eregli, stations on the railway which will even- 
tually connect Anatolia with Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf. Konia 
was once the centre of a large area of country inhabited by mouflon, for 
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