Page:Mongolia, the Tangut country, and the solitudes of northern Tibet vol 2 (1876).djvu/266

242 the feast and are circling high up among the clouds; but you cannot look up, and therefore cannot see them from your cave. Another good hour passes. At length your patience is rewarded. A rustling of heavy wings is heard, and the snow-vulture perches on a rock beside the carrion. You are trembling with excitement, fearful of making the slightest noise by which you would frighten the wary bird away. In a little while he flies down to the ground, and, after sitting still for a few minutes, walks towards the prey, swaying his great body from side to side and hopping occasionally. In a moment the whole crew of feasters retires to make room for the giant, one solitary crow perhaps remaining on the opposite side of the carcase, but his behaviour is now more deferential. Greedily the hungry vulture begins swallowing the entrails or the meat; in another minute, however, a shot is heard and he falls lifeless on the spot.

But if you defer your fire other vultures are sure to appear, and after the first one has cautiously descended the others alight directly on the meat, and sometimes a dozen or more will collect round a large carcase, and you may if you are fortunate secure two with one bullet.

The heavy snowfall in the alpine zone obliged us to remove our camp in the second week of May, and descend to the middle forest belt. From this my companion and a Cossack started for the temple of Chertinton, to fetch the boxes containing our collections which we had left behind with some other