244 IN FOREST AND ON HILL 



exhilarating than the novel sense of adventure when 

 you are plunging into a wilderness of mountain and 

 valley untrodden for the time being by any feet but 

 your own ? There is a glimpse of the savage life 

 brought in contact with advanced civilisation ; for 

 happily you have slept in luxurious quarters, and look 

 forward to returning to them to recruit from your 

 fatigues. Except perhaps the hooking and playing of 

 your first salmon, while you remember the slightness 

 of the line by which you were holding the sixteen- 

 pounder, there is nothing to equal the excitement of 

 your first vision of the red deer in his native wilds, 

 with the hope that it may be given you to make him 

 your own. What matters all you may go through 

 in the meantime ? You are not shivering off a bleak 

 storm-beaten coast in a biting snow-drift. The season 

 is summer, the weather is glorious, and prolonged 

 immersion in the mountain stream comes refreshingly, 

 rather than otherwise, to your fevered pulses. Far 

 from you be the apprehension of aches and rheumatism : 

 for once you will have lived, even if you are doomed 

 to be crippled. Should the climbing be stiff, you find 

 yourself following your leader by the shortest cut, up 

 the rugged steps of some rocky staircase that would set 

 your head swimming in your more sober moments, 

 when the croak of the raven that you have startled 

 might sound ominous. And then in the final crawl on 

 the rock or the bank of heather that should be screen- 

 ing the antlers from your straining eyes, how mar- 

 vellously lithe and supple you make yourself as you 





