MOUNTAIN GAME 137 



At dawn we rose, and cooked and ale the 

 two remaining grouse. Then we turned our 

 faces upwards, and passed a day of severe 

 toil in climbing over the crags. Mountain- 

 eering is very hard work ; and when we got 

 high among the peaks, where snow filled the 

 rifts, the thinness of the air forced me to stop 

 for breath every few hundred yards of the 

 ascent. We found much sign of white goats, 

 but in spite of steady work and incessant care- 

 ful scanning of the rocks, we did not see our 

 quarry until early in the afternoon. 



We had clambered up one side of a steep 

 saddle of naked rock, some of the scarped 

 ledges being difficult, and indeed dangerous, 

 of ascent. From the top of the saddle a 

 careful scrutiny of the neighboring peaks 

 failed to reveal any game, and we began to go 

 down the other side. The mountain fell 

 away in a succession of low cliffs, and we had 

 to move with the utmost caution. In letting 

 ourselves down from ledge to ledge one would 

 hold the guns until the other go safe footing, 

 and then pass them down to him. In many 

 places we had to work our way along the 

 cracks in the faces of the frost-riven rocks. 

 At last, just as we reached a little smooth 

 shoulder, my companion said, pointing down 

 beneath us, " Look at the white goat I " 



A moment or two passed before I got my 

 eyes on it. We were looking down into a 

 basin-like valley, surrounded by high mount- 

 ain chains. At one end of the basin was a 

 low pass, where the ridge was cut up with the 

 zigzag trails made by the countless herds of 

 game which had travelled it for many genera- 



