it found exposed to its rays, and blistering our hands and legs. The
guides helped us out by building up a most ricketty-looking shanty
with sticks and pieces of their garments and our own, and under this
apology for shelter, with our feet almost in the snow, we passed the
day, until it was cool enough again to look for game. In the evening
we came suddenly upon a kustura, a sort of half goat, half sheep,
with long teeth like a wolf. He was, however, in such thick cover,
that we were unable to get a shot at him.

Our camp, we found, moved, according to order, some three miles higher
up, to facilitate the shooting on that side: it was still, however,
among the firs and nightingales.

JUNE 23. -- Up again before sunrise, and off to the tops of the
mountains in search of game. The pull-up took us about an hour and a
half, and on reaching the summit, we found ourselves above the pass
of the Peer Punjal, the rocky and snow-covered ranges of mountain
around us gradually trending off on all sides, and losing themselves in
pine-covered slopes, till they finally blended with the blue outlines
of the ranges of Pills we had crossed on our route from Bimber. While
taking a sharp look around us for a herd of some twenty animals which
we had seen the day previously, we suddenly found ourselves close
to a party of five markore, but they scampered off so fast over rock
and snowdrift, that they gave us no opportunity of getting a shot.

Following them up, we came, while clinging to an overhanging ledge of
rock, upon one solitary gentleman standing about 150 yards below. We
both fired together, but the pace we had come, and the ground we had
crossed, had unsteadied our aim, and though my second bullet parted
the wool on his back, it was not written that our first markore