380 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTERS. 



migrating, but they generally do so in large numbers, keeping 

 near the water ; there was none in this region. How the 

 creature got there, and how it lived, will always be a positive 

 mystery to me. The impression made by this combination 

 of singular circumstances — the fact of its being there at all — 

 then of my seeing it, just at the crisis when I thought I was 

 dying — its crouching so close to me as to make it a matter 

 of impossibility almost for me to fail of killing it, even in my 

 feeble condition, — all together, it can never fade from my 

 memory. 



