CROSSING THE INDUS.

coolies from Tolti and loaded up fresh men from Parcutta. After walking steadily for an hour, I came in sight of the next village, rather glad at the idea of getting a pony, for it was very hot in the middle of the day. To my disgust there was not an animal to be had, and there was nothing for it but to continue on foot, which I did, reaching the serai at Gol shortly before 6 P.M. with the feeling that I had done a fair day's work, having walked close on thirty miles during the day, a good deal of which was very irksome, being through the soft dry sand on the banks of the Indus.

In the evening Bellew and I had our last dinner together, for from here our paths lay in different directions, he going on to Skardu, on his way to Haramosh, while I crossed the Indus for Shigar, on my way to the Basha nullah. I slept soundly and well after my long march, and did not leave Gol till 8 A.M. I trudged along steadily for a little over two hours, when I reached the point where I was to cross the Indus. The method of crossing was peculiar. About twenty sheep and goat-skins having been inflated, were tied together, and then lashed to a light frame of sticks. Seated on this rickety conveyance, I was punted across the river, and then watched my baggage and servants follow. After the third crossing the skins became decidedly flat, whereupon a couple of Baltis applied their mouths to them and blew them out again. I then went on till midday before resting for lunch. At one o'clock I started again, and now left the Indus for good, branching off across the mountains northwards. A tramp of about eighteen miles in all brought me to the flourishing village of Shigar, situated on the river of the same name. The village, for Baltistan, is large, the largest,

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in fact, that I had seen, and I had not been in the place long before the rajah arrived to pay his compliments, and after having made me an offering of a dish of dried apricots, informed me that he was about to play a game of polo. This I watched with much interest. The ground was long and very narrow, and at one end were seated a group of musicians armed with tom-toms and other heathen instruments, who made day hideous with fearful and awful noises whenever a goal was hit. It is immaterial apparently how many players there are on either side, the game waxing fast and furious, with no intervals such as we are accustomed to in polo as we play it, till a certain number of goals have been scored by one side or the other.

From here my way lay up the Shigar river, which flows through a large valley, wider and more open than the valley of the Indus which I had just left, with a fairly flat sandy and stony bottom, from which rise on either side great jagged mountains with brilliant snowclad peaks. Here and there in the valley appeared tiny oases in the form of small villages, surrounded by willows, poplars, and apricot-trees. A few clouds rested on the highest peaks, but overhead the sun shone powerfully from a cloudless sky. After walking for a couple of hours, I sat down and examined the ground with the telescope, for I was now in the land of the ibex, but made out no beasts, so went on again till one o'clock, when I sat down on the banks of the Shigar for lunch. At 2 P.M. I started again and walked on till four, when I came to a small village and pitched the tents for the night. At eight the next morning I continued my march up the Shigar, halting at midday to examine the ground near by, this time with more success. I was moving the glass slowly over the ground when something caught my eye, and fixing the

telescope on it, I realised that I was at last gazing on the first living ibex I had ever seen. There was a male among the seven or eight I made out, and to my inexperienced eye he appeared to be a magnificent creature; but Mohammed pronounced him too small to stop for.

Soon after this I reached the point where the Basha and Braldo rivers unite to form the Shigar. Leaving

the Braldo on my right, I marched up the right bank of the Basha, and within a mile or so of the joining of the waters came to a small village called Chutran or Garm Pani. The place derives its name of Garm Pani (hot water) from the fact that it boasts the possession of a hot spring, which bubbles up at the foot of the mountains, and I found a pleasant spot to camp in under the shade of a clump of trees, within a hundred yards or so of the spring.

Such was the mouth of the valley of the Basha, and I was at last in the heart of the ibex country, -a strange wild land whose frowning precipices and eternal snows caused one to pause and wonder; a land crowned with towering fastnesses, impregnable strongholds known to the ibex and eagle alone.

PLAN OF CAMPAIGN.

CHAPTER III.

43.

IBEX-STALKING.

News of ibex-An unsuccessful stalk-Sunrise on the mountains-Another stalk and a wounded ibex-Bad weather-The post-Poor luck with ibex-Wounded ibex secured-A hard day--More bad weather—A run after a chitah-Murder of an Indian surveyor-A good day's sport -Doko-A rough night in the open-Bad weather again—A disappointing stalk-An early start-Trials of ibex-stalking.

I HAD now been marching for seventeen consecutive days, during which time I had covered a distance of upwards of 250 miles over mountain-tracks of all sorts, including no tracks at all (!), and I spent Good Friday enjoying the rest of a lazy idle day in an ideal climate, amid scenery of the most majestic type. I revelled, too, in bathing in the clear water of the hot spring, which was just so hot that one had to be careful not to plunge in too suddenly (!), in spite of the fact that but a few hundred yards above the spring itself the mountain was deep in snow.

I was prepared for a considerable stay in the valley of the Basha in the event of big ibex proving difficult to get at, as seemed probable, and my plan of campaign was to operate on the mountains on each side of the river, moving my camp slowly up the valley in a northern direction, whenever it seemed advisable to try fresh ground. Many were the hard and unsuccessful days