WILD GOATS. 113 



huntsman soon cut a way to our quany, and laid 

 him at my feet. This enormous cat weighed four- 

 teen pounds. On another occasion, my favourite 

 dog Black, having hunted a wikl cat up a tree, 

 where he Avas leaping from branch to branch, I had 

 the satisfaction of shooting him as he was leaping 

 from tree to tree, and of dropping him from a height 

 of fifty feet, right before my friends, who had 

 assembled to witness my skill, and into the very 

 jaws of the dogs. 



WILD GOATS. 



AscendixCt the Arkansas river, which has given 

 its name to one of the largest territories of the 

 United States, the traveller arrives at the foot of 

 the Masserne mountains, rocky precipices which 

 are, in fact, a spur of the chain of the Rocky 

 Mountains — the steppes of the New World. This 

 desert, whose soil is onl}" trodden by a few tribes of 

 Indians and an immense quantity of game, is covered, 

 during eight months of the j'ear, by a spotless carpet 

 of snow. 



There were plenty of bears upon the hills, and 

 grouse abounded among the cotton plants and the 

 dwarf oaks which grew abundantly among the fissures 



TOL. I. I 



