X Chamois- Hunting 501 



mountains, and toiled anew through the pine forest, 

 now no longer dark and gloomy, but fleckered with 

 gleams of yellow morning light and sparkling with a 

 thousand dew-diamonds. 



Up, up, still up, across the little sparkling runlets, 

 tumbling head over heels in their hurry to see what 

 sort of a world the valley below might be ! Up 

 over masses of rock, ankle-deep in rich brown moss, 

 bejewelled with strawberries and cowberries, gar- 

 landed with raspberries twisting and straggling out 

 of their crevices, covered with rich ripe fruit ! Up 

 over bits of open turf, green as emeralds, set in pure 

 white gravel sparkling like a thousand diamonds ! 

 Up through tangled masses of fallen pines, their bleach- 

 ing stumps standing out like the masts of great 

 wrecks, — terrible marks of the course of the avalanche 

 wind ! Up through one short bit more of pine 

 wood, over the split-fir fence and into the little 

 mountain-meadow smiling in the level sunlight, with 

 its bright stream tinkling merrily through it, its 

 scattered boulders and wooden sennhutt, with the 

 cows and goats clustered round it standing ready to 

 be milked ; one of the latter, by-the-bye, instantly 

 charges me, and has to be repelled by my alpenstock, 

 bayonet-fashion ; while all around the sweet breath 

 of the cows mingles deliciously with the aromatic 

 fragrance of the pine forest, and the rich scent of 

 the black orchis and wild thyme ! 



Seat yourself on that wooden milking-stool by 

 the door, — beware ! it has but one leg, and is * kittle 



