A WALK TO FISCHBACHAU. 47 



antlers in remembrance, for I dare say he will never 

 shoot another it will be his last." 



"It is hardly credible/' I observed, "that in so 

 short a time almost every head of game should have 

 been exterminated. It is very sad, for it would take 

 a long time to have all again as it once was." 



" No, it is not surprising when you think that the 

 game had never any rest. Day after day it was dis- 

 turbed, shot at, scared and driven from place to place. 

 The peasants did not get much, for if they wounded a 

 stag or chamois they had no good dog to follow it 

 with, and so it was generally lost. And all game 

 must have quiet, that is as indispensable as food. 

 A great part therefore went across to the Tyrol ; and 

 the gamekeepers too shot all they could, rather than 

 let the peasants get it." 



And then he told me how he used to go into the 

 mountains, and would sit for hours and watch the 

 chamois and the young kids as they disported them- 

 selves on the green slopes, or stood upon the rocks and 

 leaped from crag to crag ; but now, he said, he would 

 go up there no more, for all his pleasure in doing so 

 was gone, and his occupation rejoiced him no longer*. 



* In a letter received from the worthy forester since this was 

 written, he says : " Although late in the autumn, after you were 

 gone many chamois collected here again. I much doubt if we shall 

 see any next summer, for the poor creatures that are now looking 

 for their winter haunts are so scared and hunted about, that their 

 utter extermination must be the consequence. "No one can possibly 

 tell the pain all this causes me ; and I therefore never express what 

 I feel to any one but a hunter, and one who loves the chase, and of 

 M'hom I am persuaded beforehand that he will understand and sym- 

 pathize with what I suffer." 



