CHAPTER XII. The Ovis Poli of the Pamir

THE OVIS POLI OF THE PAMIR

BY ST. GEORGE LITTLEDALE

The great Pamir, or ‘roof of the world,’ forms the nucleus of the whole Central Asiatic highland system, and consists of a vast plateau formation some 30,000 square miles in extent, with a mean elevation of at least 15,000 ft.

This, shortly, is what modern geographers have to say of the home of Ovis Poli:

The plain is called Pamier, and you ride across it for twelve days together--finding nothing but a desert without habitations or any green thing, so that travellers are obliged to carry with them whatever they have need of; North-east, you travel forty days over mountains and wilderness, and you find no green thing. The people are savage idolaters, clothing themselves in the skins of beasts; they are in truth an evil race. There are numbers of wild beasts--among others wild sheep of great size, whose horns are a good six palms in length. From these horns shepherds make great bowls to eat from, and they use the horns also to make folds for their cattle at night.

So Marco Polo wrote of the Pamir six hundred years ago, and six centuries earlier still some Chinese pilgrims, in describing it, said that ‘it was midway between heaven and earth: the snowdrifts never cease winter or summer: the whole tract is but a dreary waste without a trace of human kind.’

These descriptions are nearly as true to-day as they were when they were first written, and this Pamir is the home of the grandest of all the sheep tribe, the great Ovis Poli.

Until very recently the Pamir was considered one of the most inaccessible places in Asia; but the Transcaspian Railway, opened in May, 1888, from the Caspian to Samarkand, has completely altered this state of affairs, though the Russian Government looks with disfavour on English travellers wishing to use the line so cheaply and expeditiously constructed for purely military and strategical purposes.

Had it not been for the untiring efforts of Sir Robert Morier, our Ambassador at St. Petersburg, continued for several months, I should never have allayed the natural suspicions of the Russian officials in the Asiatic and War Department, and obtained the necessary permission to travel by that route. I entirely owe the success of our expedition to his efforts, and I can never sufficiently thank him for the trouble taken.

But had I known as much about Russian Central Asia before as I do now, I should not have waited for the railway, but have crossed the steppes to Khokand, and thence south to the Pamir, years ago. There are three routes by which it is possible to reach the Pamir: the first from Ladak over the Kara Korum to Shahdula, and then west, either from Yarkand or from a point before you reach that city. For this route a passport would be necessary from the Chinese Government, which, though much easier to obtain now than it was formerly, is still by no means easy to get, nor, having got it, is there any certainty that there would not be obstacles thrown in the path of anyone wishing to visit the Pamir from the Chinese side.

The second is the Gilgit, Yassim, Chitral, and Badakshan route, but the political difficulties at present put this out of the question.

The third is by the Transcaspian Railway.

I have made two visits to the Pamir, the first in 1888, the second in 1890, and Mrs. Littledale accompanied me upon both occasions. In 1888 I did not know anything about the country or the chances of sport, beyond the mere fact that the Pamir was the habitat of the Poli sheep; but as to which particular district I ought to visit, or what special outfit I ought to take with me, I could obtain no information either in England or Russia. However, I had the good fortune to meet the Rev. Dr. H. Lansdell, who gave me valuable advice as to the route to Khokand.

From the Russian officials we received the greatest civility on all sides; whatever antagonism there may be between the two countries politically, it begins and ends with politics; for socially at the present day there is no nation more popular in Russia than the English, nor do I know any country wherein a man, furnished with proper letters of introduction, will be made to feel more at home than in Russia.

Saturday, August 5, 1888, found Mrs. Littledale and myself camped in a valley, flat as a billiard-table, about two miles wide, which was one vast river-bed of soft shingle, cut up into countless channels, which varied day by day, almost minute by minute, one or two hours of sunshine bringing down a flood like a mill race, which cut new channels and left old ones dry, making that which was a difficult ford in the morning almost dry by night, and moving the main stream maybe half a mile away.

The place was an idyll of desolation; not a shrub, nor a bird, nor a living soul in sight, while the few blades of grass, here and there apparent among the débris fallen from the cliffs above, had a half-hearted air, as if they knew that they were out of place. The mountains on either side were forbidding to a degree. Down their rugged sides dashed torrents from the glaciers above. The head of the valley was blocked by some grand snowpeaks, which reared their proud summits to a height of 20,000 ft. and more. There they stood (and stand) unnamed, unmeasured, and unknown, waiting for some one to conquer their virgin snows.

It had been no easy task to persuade our Kara Kirghiz hunters to come to this place at all. They asked why I wanted to go? They said that there was no grass there, that the horses would die of starvation; and did I think that the ‘Gulcha’ (the Kirghiz name for Poli rams) would stay in a place where there was nothing to eat! For generations their fathers had been hunters, and did I, a stranger, know better than they?

However, I pointed out to them that we had everywhere found skulls of fine old rams from ten to fifteen years old, and yet we had hitherto seen no ram over five years old in the flesh. How did they account for that? In reply they said that no Kirghiz had ever seen one of the big ones alive. ‘Then,’ said I, ‘come with me and I will try to show them to you,’ for I felt perfectly certain that the Poli were not different in their habits from the Ammon and the Bighorn, and that it was only a question of time before we found the old rams in some secluded spot, away from the females; and the event showed that I was right.

We left camp one morning about 4.30 A.M., and rode up the main valley for an hour or so. This brought us to the mouth of a side valley, up which we turned, keeping to the east side of it, so as to be in shadow. The elder Kirghiz, Dewanna by name, soon detected something about two miles away on some high undulating ground across the valley. Dewanna was using binoculars, and though I tried to use my telescope, my fingers were so numbed with cold that it was quite impossible to hold it steady. After some little scrutiny we all decided that the beasts were arkar--i.e. female Poli--and continued on our course for about another mile, when some extremely likely-looking ground made us pause again to take a good look ahead. By this time some little warmth had come back into my fingers, and I was able to use my Ross’s telescope again. After carefully spying over the ground and finding nothing, I turned the glass on to our old friends the arkar. The moment the glass was still, one look was sufficient. Down went the telescope, and I crept forward dragging my pony out of sight, whilst the Kirghiz, divining that I had seen something, promptly followed my example. And what a sight that glass revealed! Twenty-six old Poli rams in a band, and the smallest of them larger than anything I had yet seen! Lucky for us that we had kept under the shadow of the rocks, as but for that we had been in full view of the rams for a quarter of an hour, in spite of which they were still quietly feeding, unconscious of the deadly peril to which they were exposed.

Men who are not sportsmen can hardly realise what my feelings were when I discovered that at last I had in front of me so many splendid specimens of an animal which for years had been the dream of every British sportsman in the East. Years ago, when in Kashmir, my wife and I had discussed every possible and impossible means of getting at the noble beast, but the more we talked with those most likely to know, the more we were convinced of the hopelessness of any attempt in the then state of affairs, and we had to content ourselves with the thought that when in the Gilgit country we had been within sixty or seventy miles as the crow flies from the inaccessible Pamir.

I may remark here, in passing, that to the Russians Karelin and Severtzoff is due the honour of having brought to Europe the first entire specimens of Poli. I believe the members of the Yarkand Expedition can claim ‘first blood’ amongst Englishmen.

As I looked at those old rams, some browsing, some lying down, my thoughts wandered back a dozen years to when on the slopes of that stupendous Nanga Parbat in Astor on a misty morning in May, three ibex (the smallest 38 ins.) bit the dust. Again my imagination jumped forward to an autumn in the ‘Frosty Caucasus’ when three right royal red deer stags fell in almost as many seconds. On occasions like these one’s thoughts are always rose-coloured. It is only the red-letter days which come forward. Pushed into the background are the long trying stalks, when perhaps for an hour you have stood up to your knees in an icy stream, not daring to move, for movement meant instant detection: forgotten, too, is that last critical moment when, as your head rose higher and higher above the rock which had been your objective point for hours, your hopes sank lower and lower until the hideous truth became plain to you that the head which you had almost counted as your own had gone never to gladden your eyes again; or it may be that there was even worse luck to forget, when wind, or light, or a tired man’s laboured breathing had to account for a .500 Express bullet driven by six drachms of powder just over a big beast’s back!

The rams we had sighted were on the other side of the valley, the bottom of which was about a mile and a half wide, quite flat and without any cover. To get at them we must either retrace our steps for about two miles, when we could cross unseen, or go forward about a mile. The Kirghiz were both in favour of going forward, whilst I wished to go back, and it was very much against my will that I let them have their own way. The rams were on the lee side of the hill and near the top, which is always a most difficult position; in fact, if the game is within one hundred or one hundred and fifty yards of the top, and the hill is pyramidical in shape (which this hill was not), I think ‘it passes the wit of man’ to approach them, for from whichever side you try you will find them either with the true wind or the shifting eddy to leeward of you. Try one side or the other, it is a position of nearly absolute safety for the rams.

By keeping behind the moraine of an old glacier a shoulder of the hill at length shut our quarry out of view, and we were able to cross the valley. In the middle of this there was a rapid stream across which the younger Kirghiz (having stripped) carried Dewanna, coming back afterwards for me. Unluckily, when nearly over, my carrier slipped and all but came down, wetting me to the knees in a stream cold as only ice water fresh from a glacier can be. After a stiff climb of about an hour, we reached the top of a small ridge from which we expected to view the rams; but though we ‘spied’ every yard carefully, we could see nothing of them. All the while I knew that we were stalking on wrong principles, and when at last, after a most careful climb, we found that we had run into an eddy of wind, and that the sheep had vanished, it caused me no surprise.

For several hours after this we walked on slowly, spying every yard as we went, for tracking on this stony ground was hopeless. On reaching a spot where the hill broke off sharply, we lay down and examined the ground, which was very much broken up into little valleys filled with great boulders, the lee side of any one of which was a likely place for the rams.

When the Kirghiz first joined us I told the interpreter to explain to them the use of a field-glass. Then they all laughed at the idea of finding game with such things; now they were always wanting to borrow them.

For about half an hour we lay spying both with binoculars and telescope, and Dewanna had just risen to his feet saying that there was nothing, when I saw by the younger Kirghiz’s manner that he had seen something. I was only just in time to drag Dewanna down, when over a brow below us came a fine Poli, followed by two others, all beasts with good heads. After a few minutes, the three lay close down together near the bottom of a small ravine, and we had a good look at them through a telescope. They were magnificent fellows, possibly out of the big lot which we had seen in the morning.

Of course the Kirghiz wanted to ‘drive’ the rams, and of course I promptly vetoed the proposition. Why is it, I wonder, that all over the world the natives are so desperately keen about driving? I could easily account for it if the general knowledge of stalking were as limited as that of the Kirghiz, who spoilt several of my earlier stalks by showing themselves behind me whilst I was ‘worming’ my way up to game, and who seemed quite ignorant of the fatal results of showing oneself upon a skyline. But it is not only the Kirghiz, for in the Caucasus two men whom I employed, perfect masters of the stalker’s art--quite as good as the best of the Kashmir Shikaris (who I consider are at the top of the tree)--were always tempting me to ‘drive.’ I am glad to say that the only time I was weak enough to yield to their solicitations the drive ended in a fiasco. Taking the younger Kirghiz with me to carry the rifle, and leaving Dewanna to watch and to signal to us the direction of any movement on the part of the rams, I took the precaution to pick up a good supply of small stones to pelt my man with whenever I found him going too fast ahead of me. The fellow had most wonderfully quick sight, so I used to send him on in front, and on previous occasions his excitement had so far carried him away that I had to be perpetually running after him to stop him; and as at that altitude (upwards of 16,000 ft. above sea level) I found that I could not shoot unless I had been walking with the greatest circumspection, it was necessary to recall him now and again by this simple and easy system of telegraphy.

Keeping well out of sight along the ridge, we found a little watercourse down which we could descend without being seen, and having carefully searched every inch of ground to make sure that there was no other Poli in our path who might spoil our stalk, we crept down to within three hundred yards of where we had last seen our three rams. Here the Kirghiz took off his sandals, while I took the Henry double Express out of its cover, made sure that all was ready, and then handed it back to him, as every extra pound to carry adds to the difficulty of keeping your breath.

I was shod in tennis shoes, with red rubber soles three-quarters of an inch thick, to my mind the very perfection of foot-gear for stalking, as they are perfectly noiseless, will outwear two ordinary leather soles among the rocks, and are only dangerous on snow or ice.

Softly as mice we crept up the slope of a little ridge on the further side of which we had last seen the Poli. Our man on the hill made no sign, so that all was right so far. A little short of the top, I took the rifle and crept up the last few yards alone. Peeping over the top, I could just see the tip of a horn behind a rock about one hundred yards below. Taking off my cap to place my rifle upon it, for if fired resting on a rock without a pad the jar would send the bullet wide, I cocked the weapon and lay there waiting.

The wind was right and the moment they moved they were at my mercy. Whilst waiting I sent the Kirghiz about ten yards to my right to see if he could make out in which position the big one was lying, as from my point of view they were half hidden, and it was difficult to say for certain which was the big head.

Suddenly up they jumped and stood for one moment looking up the hill. The big one was end on, facing me, but I had had a good rest, my heart had ceased to beat wildly and my hand was steady, so squeezing the trigger gradually and firmly, the report of the rifle was followed by the loud smack which tells an old hand all he wants to know. Not wasting a look on the big one, I shifted the sights on to one of the others and fired just as he bounded off. Another smack told that that bullet, too, had found its billet, but the beast made off with its companions. On dashing frantically down the hill and up the other side of a small ravine, I saw one Poli standing and looking about him two hundred and fifty yards off. Lying down I tried to take a careful aim, but I found the rifle was pointing ten feet over his back one second and the next twenty feet below him. This was no good, so I lay quiet in the hope that he might be so unsophisticated as to stay there until my poor panting frame recovered its steadiness; but alas! in a few seconds he was off.

However, I was satisfied that he was unhurt, and the wounded one probably lay between us and him, so that I at once took up the search for the beast, the man on the hill coming in now very handily, directing us by a prearranged code of signals.

Presently this man (Dewanna) got very excited and kept signalling ‘below, below.’ As we were then at the bottom of the valley we were at a loss to know how to go any lower, when out from behind a large boulder came the Poli, very sick indeed; but to make sure I gave him another barrel and rushed up to gloat over my latest prize, measuring 59 ins. along the left and 58½ ins. along the right horn.

I then started up hill back to where the first one lay. On getting up to him I was rather disappointed, as I had thought that he was bigger than his comrade, and I pulled out the tape and began to measure: ‘sixty, sixty-one, two, two and a half’--thank goodness, at last I had got a trophy that would hold its own in any company, and one that will still be a comfort, a joy, and a thing of beauty when old Time has so stiffened my joints as to make this most glorious and exciting of all sports only a memory for me.

Having skinned our beasts and packed their heads upon one pony, the younger Kirghiz, careless of the possibility of a fall and consequent impalement, twisted himself somehow in among the twisted horns on the pony’s back, and so, he riding and we on foot, we turned towards camp, warned by the waning glories of the sky, the dark shadows stealthily creeping across the snows, and the little rills frozen into silence, that the Night King was coming, and that it was well to hurry. As we reached camp our interpreter met us, and I think everyone echoed his ‘Vraiment, c’est assez grand!’ as my first big head was scrutinised.

In 1888 we had wandered about until we found the valley in which the above took place, and then having discovered a good hunting ground sat down to work, with the satisfactory result of fifteen rams bagged, all but four being over 50 ins. and several the right side of 60 ins.

In 1890 we decided to try the Southern Pamir, as all the natives agreed that the further south you went the bigger the heads became. But a visit to the Southern Pamir meant much more elaborate preparation than heretofore, and our modest little caravan of twelve horses all told in 1888 swelled to the considerable number of forty in 1890; for it was not only necessary to take food for ourselves and our men, but also for the animals, and for each horse carrying a load of baggage we had to have an extra horse carrying barley to feed him. Besides this we took four or five horseloads of firewood, for there are long stretches of the Pamir that are absolutely devoid of vegetation of any kind--places where even the travellers ‘stand by’ for fuel, ‘Boortsa eurotia,’ is not to be found. Without boortsa life on the high timberless plateaux of Central Asia is indeed hard, for that insignificant-looking plant affords splendid fuel. Green or dry it makes a blazing fire, and though it wants constant attention and soon burns out, where there is no dry dung it is a perfect god-send.

We had made up our minds not to return by Turkestan if we could get across the Hindu Kush, and down into India; but as our chance of getting through was very uncertain, we were obliged to secure our retreat by establishing depôts along the return route, of barley, flour, firewood, &c., all of which entailed extra transport.

We found our tent, though it was lined and had a double fly, so cold and so troublesome to keep upright during the furious gales which even in summer sweep over the Pamir, that on our second expedition we took with us a couple of Kirghiz yourts in addition to this tent, and although the yourts are not fastened to the ground in any way, yet, owing to their being dome-shaped, they never showed the slightest tendency to blow over. Once inside our yourt, a stormy evening had no fears for us, nor had we ever to rush out in scanty garments on a bitter night to refasten some yielding tent-peg.

On the Abchur Pamir there were immense quantities of Poli horns, most of them of very large size, one head which I measured being 69 ins., though even this was beaten by one which was shown to me at Simla by Sir Frederick Roberts, who kindly allowed me to photograph it. The head was given to Sir Frederick Roberts by the Maharajah of Kashmir, and is as far as I know the biggest head on record--length, 75 ins.; tip to tip, 54½ ins.; circumference round the base, 16 ins.

Let me recall one day out of my 1890 expedition, as another sample of Poli shooting I have done. We had camped at the end of June by Victoria Lake, which was still three parts frozen, and after a short and fruitless hunt had recrossed to the Alichur Pamir. The weather was changeable and the wind shifty, but our sport had been fair. One stormy evening I spied three rams a long way off. Before we reached them, a flurry of snow hid them from us, and when the snow cleared we could not see them. We decided that they must have gone over the hill for shelter, but on looking for them they unfortunately got our wind, and bolting out from some rocks dashed across an open piece of ground. I put the 200 yards sight up and fired at the centre one, which was a monster, towering above its two companions, and altogether by far the biggest sheep I had ever seen--its horns, I should fancy, certainly measuring something over 70 ins. I saw the dust fly beyond just over its back, and had no time for a second shot before the sheep disappeared in a dip of the ground. I felt low at missing such a grand fellow, but it was a running shot at quite two hundred yards, and a hit would have been more or less of a fluke.

As they were a very long time coming up the other side of the ravine, we went to see what had kept them, and found that the two smaller sheep were waiting for the big fellow, who was lagging wearily behind. As soon as they had got over the ridge we followed them and found their track, which was very bloody. My bullet, instead of going over my beast, must have gone through him without expanding, and it was not long before we found him lying down on a snow bank which was streaked with his blood. Here I could have stalked and finished him, but for the excitement of one of the Kirghiz, who showed himself and made the beast get up again. After this he kept lying down at intervals, travelling a shorter distance and resting longer each time.

The vitality of Ovis Poli is something extraordinary. Here was a beast shot through the lungs, as was proved by the frothy blood which poured from his wounds, and yet he went eight hundred or a thousand feet up a snow slope. Having allowed him to get out of sight we followed him, but just as we reached the top of the slope a heavy storm coming on obliterated everything in six inches of fresh snow. As soon as the storm was over, numbed and cold though I was, I tried to follow by kicking the new snow away with my feet till I found blood, but eventually I lost the ram and had to leave him. It was a terrible disappointment, for I fear I shall never look upon his like again. My attention had now to be turned to my Kirghiz companion, who had been taken violently sick and lay there unable to move. I had no brandy to give him, and not even a coat to wrap him up in, for we had left our sheepskins at the bottom of the hill. However, I rubbed his hands vigorously, and after a time he recovered sufficiently to descend leaning upon my shoulder. I believe it was nothing but the height which affected him, and, extraordinary as it may seem, two other Kirghiz who regularly spent four or five months in every year on the great Alai, as their forefathers had done before them, had been completely knocked up a few weeks before this by the two or three thousand feet additional elevation at which they found themselves with me, and had been compelled to leave the Pamir. They are a careless happy-go-lucky race, these Kirghiz, easy to offend as children, but as ready to ‘make it up,’ and quite harmless if well handled. On life they set but little store; but the words of one old chief as he handled my rifle are still in my ears. ‘Ah,’ he said, with a sigh, ‘and even the man who made that gun must die.’