100 HUNTING CAMPS. 



After this, very pleased with our good fortune, we 

 went off to our lunch, which we took in the shelter of a 

 small drogue, filling our kettles from a shallow upland 

 pond, blown into a thousand ripples by the wind. 

 During the meal a heavy cloud drifted up, and snow 

 began to fall thickly. For a while the sky to windward 

 remained bleak and drab-coloured, but presently a golden 

 belt of light, growing momentarily broader, showed on 

 the horizon, and the cloud passed away, leaving us once 

 again in cold, blue weather. 



After lunch we returned to where the stag was lying, 

 and Jack and I had just opened our knives to take off 

 the head and neck-skin, when I spied a number of deer 

 across a low valley to the north, moving along the hill- 

 side fronting us. We had a good look at them, and 

 counted a score or more of does, and no less than four 

 stags, all seemingly with good heads. 



We followed them at once. The approach, owing to 

 the position of the does, was awkward, but a good deal 

 comes to him who waits, and finally we succeeded in 

 crossing the valley unperceived and crawled in among 

 some boulders about two hundred yards from the four 

 stags, all of which were lying down. We had hardly 

 arrived there before five does and a young stag came up 

 over the shoulder of the barren and passed along within 

 twenty yards of where we lay. This party, however, 

 after giving us an agony of apprehension lest they 

 should lie down between us and the large stags, fed 

 gradually away from us until they disappeared. 



We now carefully examined each of the four stags. 

 All carried good heads, the best displaying, as far as I 

 could judge, upwards of thirty points. Meantime, a 

 fifth stag that had hitherto remained hidden, having 



