was 57 years old, and had received them on her
marriage, I perceived these could be of no Russian
manufacture, but representative of Kalmuk art half a
century ago. I therefore pressed her to sell me one,
which she did, and it is now in the ethnological
department of the British Museum.
Comparatively little is known in detail of the Kalmuk
camping-grounds at the eastern end of the Ili valley.
A KALMUK WOMAN, WITH NATIVE EARRING.
The most renowned of Russian travellers who have
passed that way out of the valley into Mongolia is
Colonel Prejevalsky. In 1876 he started from Kuldja,
made his way along the Ili, and its upper arm, the
Kungess, until he reached its tributary, the Tsagma.
This brought him by the Narat pass to the Yuldus
plateau, described by the Kalmuks as “ an admirable,
cool, and productive country, fit for gentlemen and
cattle to inhabit.” From this place Prejevalsky pushed
his way to Lob Mor, but not before he had shot
some fine specimens of the Central Asian species of
mountain sheep.
I saw at the Kuldja consulate, as also at Tashkend,
specimens of the skull and horns of this remarkable
animal, which is bigger than a donkey.*
The animal’s horn is more than four times the
length of the skull. All round the neck there is a
pure white mane, and the light greyish brown of the
sides shades off into white towards the belly, the legs
being brown. It inhabits high hilly plains, and runs
OVIS POLII, OR THIAN-SHAN SHEEP.
with great speed. The Cossacks say that the wild
sheep, in jumping from one rock down to another,
alight on their horns-—a statement that Dr. Severtsoff
thinks improbable, though, since the head and horns of
one he shot weighed upwards of 70 lbs., he seems to
* When Marco Polo, 600 years ago, told of the enormous sheep he had
seen on the mountains, his words were regarded as “ travellers’ tale s,”
but subsequent explorers have proved the traveller right, and the largest
variety is now named after him, Ovis Polii. Dr. Severtsoff gives its
length as 6 ft. g in. from nose to tail ; height at shoulder, 3 ft. 10 in. ;
length of horn, 4 ft. 9 in. ; distance between tips of horns, 3 ft. 6 in. ;
length of skull, 1 ft. 2 in .