5 1 4 Notes on Sport and Travel x 



Scorning to finish the day without drawing blood 

 from something besides ourselves, we determined to 

 commit slaughter on whatever came across us. We 

 soon heard the shrill signal-whistle of the marmot, 

 and, for want of better game, determined to bag at 

 least one of these exceedingly wide-awake gentle- 

 men. Creeping to the top of a neighbouring ridge, 

 we peeped cautiously over into a little valley floored 

 with a confused mass of mossy stones and straggling 

 alpen-rosen. Here several of these quaint little 

 beasts, half rat, half rabbit, were frisking in and out 

 of their burrows, cutting all sorts of what Joseph 

 called burzelbaiime {Anglic^, capers), little suspecting 

 that the all-destroying monster, man, had his eye 

 upon them. One fellow, the sentinel, took my par- 

 ticular fancy as he sat up on his nether end on a 

 large stone. There was an expression of unutter- 

 able self-conceit and conscious wide-awakefulness 

 about his blunt muzzle and exposed incisors that 

 was perfectly delicious. Him I determined to bring 

 to bag, and cautiously raising my carbine — crack ! 

 over he rolled, I have no doubt too astonished to 

 feel any pain, his friends tumbling madly head over 

 heels into their burrows, while the astonished echoes 

 repeated crack ! crack ! again and again in all sorts 

 of tones and modulations, till warned to silence by 

 the harsh rattle of an old mountain a mile off. We 

 bagged our friend, who looked every whit as con- 

 ceited in death as he did when alive, and recom- 

 menced our descent. On our way we shot a brace 



