UP THE MOUNTAIN. 275 



able shelter, just high enough to stand upright in, and 

 round some stones placed together on the ground were 

 the remains of a wood fire. A bed of dried leaves 

 and hay was in one corner, and after stirring and 

 poking it about to see if nothing was hidden there, 

 we left the place. When a poacher has rested or 

 passed the night in a hut, he will often leave behind 

 some marks of his sojourn ; and an experienced eye 

 will at once discover that the fragments of a meal, the 

 scrap of paper in which something was wrapped, or 

 the footsteps round the fire or leading to the hut, were 

 not the traces of its legitimate inhabitants. Among 

 the leaves, too, something or other will be occasionally 

 concealed, to be fetched away at a convenient oppor- 

 tunity. Neuner said it was herdsmen who had been 

 there, and that the fire was of their making. We saw 

 a roebuck grazing among the latschen, but he saw us 

 too, and soon darted from our sight. 



We were now near the sky-line ; a few steps more 

 and we should be on the crest of the mountain. On 

 nearing this boundary of my vision the line which 

 seems to encircle and form the limits of a world the 

 same sensations were always quick within me. What 

 was beyond? On what should I look down? On 

 cloud, and vast space, and undefined emptiness ; or 

 would wild rocks be there, and dizzy precipices ; or 

 should I be surprised by overlooking a new portion of 

 this earth of ours, that my eyes had not yet rested 

 on ? Should I see a wide plain, with distant cities, and 

 roads, and tortuous rivers, and thus, with a single step, 



T 2 



