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3i6 ADVENTURES IN TIBET.
soon showed his grey coat again, chmbing up out of the
hollow. Bang ! three shots rang out simultaneously as
though they were one. Off went the bear at a wild trot
up the slope above the camp. The horses were ready,
and after him went the Cossacks. A fresh salvo awoke
the echoes of the mountains, and down came the big brute,
rolling like a ball down the steep declivity.
After I had perpetuated him on a photographic plate
in an attitude as near life as possible, we set about preparing
the skeleton. In his stomach we found a variety of herbs
and a marmot which he had just swallowed. He had
consumed his victim, skin and all, and had adopted a
cunning device to make him slip down. After flaying
the marmot to its toe-ends, he had swallowed the body
and the legs, and then, roUing the skin into a ball with
the hair inside, had gulped it down at a single gulp.
On the other side of the range we found a small lake,
and beside it made Camp No. XVIII., at an altitude of
15,530 feet. The surviving asses were now in such a
pitiable condition that it was impossible to take them any
further. I therefore dismissed Dovlet, paying him well,
and he set off for the north, accompanied by his five ass-
drivers and three of my men whom I no longer needed,
especially as they were not good for very much.
Immediately in front of us we now had our old enemy
the Arka-tagh, and our next serious business was to climb
over it. The glen by which we elected to make the assault
was hard at the bottom, with a thin sprinkling of grass.
Grass ? Yes ! But do not imagine it was anything like
a soft green carpet of meadow ; it was the reverse of that.
The separate blades were about an inch high and of a
yellow colour and as hard as thorns ;
’ that’s what is meant
by grass in Northern Tibet. If you happen to sit down
on it you make the very greatest haste to get up again
without being told to do so. And yet that was the only
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