Wood says that
these horns supply shoes for the Kirghiz horses, and also a good
substitute for stirrup-irons. "We saw numbers of horns strewed about in
every direction, the spoils of the Kirghiz hunter. Some of these were of
an astonishingly large size, and belonged to an animal of a species
between a goat and a sheep, inhabiting the steppes of Pamir. The ends of
the horns projecting above the snow often indicated the direction of the
road; and wherever they were heaped in large quantities and disposed in a
semicircle, there our escort recognised the site of a Kirghiz summer
encampment.... We came in sight of a rough-looking building, decked out
with the horns of the wild sheep, and all but buried amongst the snow. It
was a Kirghiz burying-ground." (Pp. 223, 229, 231)
[With reference to Wood's remark that the horns of the Ovis Poli supply
shoes for the Kirghiz horses, Mr. Rockhill writes to me that a Paris
newspaper of 24th November, 1894, observes: "Horn shoes made of the horn
of sheep are successfully used in Lyons. They are especially adapted to
horses employed in towns, where the pavements are often slippery. Horses
thus shod can be driven, it is said, at the most rapid pace over the worst
pavement without slipping."
(Cf. Rockhill, Rubruck, p. 69; Chasses et Explorations dans la Region
des Pamirs, par le Vte. Ed. de Poncins, Paris, 1897, 8vo. - H. C.).]
[Illustration: Ovis Poli, the Great Sheep of Pamir. (After Severtsof.)
"El hi a grant montitude de monton sauvages qe sunt grandisme, car out lee
cornes bien six paumes"....]
In 1867 this great sheep was shot by M. Severtsof, on the Plateau of
Aksai, in the western Thian Shan. He reports these animals to go in great
herds, and to be very difficult to kill. However, he brought back two
specimens. The Narin River is stated to be the northern limit of the
species.[5] Severtsof also states that the enemies of the Ovis Poli are
the wolves, [and Colonel Gordon says that the leopards and wolves prey
almost entirely upon them. (On the Ovis Poli, see Captain Deasy, In
Tibet, p. 361.) - H. C.]
Colonel Gordon, the head of the exploring party detached by Sir Douglas
Forsyth, brought away a head of Ovis Poli, which quite bears out the
account by its eponymus of horns "good 6 palms in length," say 60 inches.
This head, as I learn from a letter of Colonel Gordon's to a friend, has
one horn perfect which measures 65-1/2 inches on the curves; the other,
broken at the tip measures 64 inches; the straight line between the tips
is 55 inches.
