THE NEAR EAST 
I have seen freshly killed bucks with moderate horns brought into the 
village. They inhabit every little hill, and apparently they are distri- 
buted at intervals over the whole stretch of desert between Palmyra and 
the Euphrates. 
The chief difficulty is the arrangement for guides, and the stipulation 
that they do not hunt. They will not go in small numbers, for the desert 
is always uncertain, and unfriendly Arabs may be met with. They also 
dislike being parted from their arms. The employment of an influential 
and tactful dragoman is the only way of coming to an agreement on such 
occasions. 
I have records of ibex horns from this locality, obviously “ picked up ” 
heads brought in by natives, which measure 43 £ inches and 42 £ inches, 
and Rowland Ward notes a head from Damascus which was 45 £ inches. 
I do not think such heads are to be procured now, at any rate not south 
of Palmyra, but it would be folly to conjecture what might not be pro- 
curable in the untried ranges to the north. 
To reach the home of the Sinaitic ibex one must take train on the Hedjaz 
railway and drop off at Ziza or Ma’an or some such wayside station to the 
east of the Dead Sea. Should the hunter have landed at Jaffa and found 
his way to Jerusalem, his caravan will take a trifle longer in crossing the 
deep -cut trough of the Jordan Valley and in bringing him into the rugged 
declivities of the plateau of Moab, where the ibex find a very safe and 
rarely -disturbed retreat. It is difficult to give an adequate description of 
the very peculiar environment that the ibex here frequent. The eastern 
side of the Dead Sea is composed of precipitous cliffs, with deep -cut valleys 
breaking through them. For some distance the cliffs rise straight out of 
the water, and there is no approach to the plateau above. In other places 
the country is so steep that one cannot climb down from the plateau to 
the shore below. Although the highest part of these hills of Moab is only 
3,400 feet above the level of the ocean, there is another 1,300 feet of rugged, 
broken hill-country to add to this, for the actual floor of the depression 
is sunk this amount below the level of the Mediterranean. This escarp- 
ment of 4,700 feet contains some of the most extraordinary rock 
formations in the world and is remarkable for many reasons. 
Through it the streams which come from the plateau of Moab have cut 
deep trenches, which are a favourite retreat for the ibex in localities where 
there are no natives. But in other districts the ibex has left the higher 
and more rugged country to the Arab shepherds and retreated down to 
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