146 SPORT. 



points with which nature has so lavishly adorned 

 the palmated horns of these ungraceful, but venison- 

 furnishing animals. All my sporting instincts were 

 roused, and not these alone, but also my grosser 

 natural appetite for fat flesh, to which my larder 

 had long been a stranger, became powerfully ex- 

 cited, as I gloated through my telescope on his 

 deep broad side and round haunches ; two inches 

 of fat, no less, I prophesy, will cover these, and, 

 looking upwards again at the black, horrid, and 

 inhospitable rock, have no difficulty in at once 

 resigning the fame and honour of the possibly suc- 

 cessful ascent in favour of the mess of pottage 

 suddenly and unexpectedly tempting me below. 



Barren honour — the possible reward of imminent 

 risk of life — is over my head. But I am some- 

 what weary of wooing that rugged, frowning face 

 which ever seems to repel me, and of battling, 

 like Lucifer on a cloud, against being forced back- 

 ward over the few inches' width of its stony wrinkles, 

 on which I depend for security from a fall into 



