1038 
THROUGH ASIA 
impossible to wear it out. The price for the skin of a 
full-grown yak bull is about 17^. c)d. But the skin of a 
cow or calf is much cheaper, and is divided into only two 
portions, for the sole reason that one donkey could not 
carry the whole skin. 
The Taghliks look upon yak-hunting as a dangerous 
pursuit, and they are quite right in doing so, and also in 
hunting in company ; for if the brute charges, the native 
hunter’s position, with such a clumsy weapon as that he 
use.s, and the little probability there is of his being able to 
escape, is anything but an enviable one. If he does have 
the misfortune to be struck by that thundering mass of 
solid flesh, with the sharp horns that it drives before it, 
his fate is irrevocably sealed. 
So far extends my experience of this royal monarch 
of the desolate wilds of Tibet — an animal which excites 
our admiration not only in virtue of its imposing appear- 
ance, but also because it alone of living creatures is able 
to defy the loftiest altitudes, the bitterest cold, the most 
violent snowstorms and hailstorms which occur in any part 
of the earth. To all these things the wild yak is in- 
different. He seems rather to enjoy it when the hail pelts 
down upon his back ; and when the snows envelop him in 
their blinding whirl, he goes on quietly grazing as though 
nothing were the matter. The only extremity of climate 
which .seems to disturb his equanimity is the summer 
sunshine. When it gets too warm for him, he takes a 
bath in the nearest stream, and climbs up the mountains 
to the cool expanses of the snowfields and the curving 
hollows of the glaciers, where he finds an especial pleasure 
in rolling himself and lying down to rest in the powdery 
snows of the n&ods. 
