VICISSITUDES OF MOUNTAIN SPORT. 171 



We now for the first time in our lives experi- 

 enced the difficulties of hunting in the mountains. I 

 can confidently affirm that a man should have an 

 iron constitution and a robust frame for such work. 

 The dangers are often imminent, the hardships such 

 as are unknown to the native of a plain country. 

 You must climb over almost precipitous crags, stop- 

 ping every ten minutes to recover your breath, and 

 cling to narrow and sometimes treacherous ledges, 

 now feeling your way along the brink of a deep 

 gorge, now clambering over the loose detritus ap- 

 propriately termed in Siberia * the devil's stones.' A 

 false footstep, a stone giving way under you, and 

 you may be precipitated down some deep abyss, and 

 your career as a sportsman brought to a sudden 

 and untimely end. 



Sport in these mountains hardly repays the 

 trouble, and depends a good deal more on luck than 

 skill. How often your quarry, bird or beast, escapes 

 you, giving time only for a snap shot as it vanishes 

 in the thick wood, scales the rocks, or, if a bird, dis- 

 appears behind the projecting crags of yonder cliff. 



The animals, too, are very wary and difficult to 

 stalk ; they generally see or scent you before you 

 have caught sight of them. One occasionally gets 

 up under your feet, but the forest is so dense that 

 before you see it, it has disappeared like a flash 

 behind a rock, and you hear nothing but the sound 

 of its hoofs and the noise of rolling stones disturbed 

 in its flight. Even when a fair shot presents itself, 

 your hand is so unsteady from hard climbing that 



