6 CHAMOIS HUNTING. 



hunted down and exterminated, and their haunts, 

 once so full of life, become silent and lonely. 



I think it would be quite impossible for me to 

 describe the sensations, the exquisite delight of that 

 delicious time. The freshness of the morning, the 

 deep stillness of the woods at noon, the green and 

 golden pageantry as the sunbeams pierced through 

 a thousand crevices in the leafy roof, the breathless 

 expectation when a light foot-fall told me the forest 

 king was approaching everything, in short, that 

 belonged to the hunter's life was full of pleasurable 

 sensations. But soon even these delights were to 

 give way to others still more exciting. Our party 

 during the shooting season was usually joined by 

 two gentlemen, who went regularly to the mountains 

 to hunt chamois. Often of an evening, after a day in 

 the forest, and while we all were sitting over our coffee 

 after dinner, they would relate some adventure that 

 had befallen them while watching for a strong buck 

 high up among the snowy fastnesses of Berchtes- 

 gaden, or tell of the merry life they led on the 

 less formidable mountains and in the Senn Htitten* 

 of Baierisch Zell; while on another occasion our 

 very blood would almost curdle, as we listened and 

 heard how one of them had crept along the narrow 

 ridge of a precipice near the Ober See, to fetch a 

 chamois he had shot ; and how, had his foot slipped 



* Senn Hutte, the same as " Chalet." The hut inhabited by the 

 herdsmen and the dairy -maids during their summer sojourn on the 

 mountain. 



