16 CHAMOIS HUNTING. 



songs, quite as full of happiness in its way as the carol- 

 ling of the lark. Occasionally the chamois-hunter de- 

 scends to their dwelling, to cook a warm meal or to pass 

 the night under shelter of their roof. From him they 

 get the latest news of what is going on in the vale ; they 

 give him a hearty welcome, and the evening is passed 

 merrily, and concluded, may be, with a dance ; for the 

 Jager is sure to find favour with the sex, and no young 

 knight-errant was ever better received by the fair dames 

 of a castle where he craved hospitality, than the trim 

 and merry young hunter by the Sennerinn on the moun- 

 tain. 



But to return to the high-road. There was no boat 

 to be had at the moment to take me across the lake to 

 the little village of Egern ; so, putting my portmanteau 

 on the cart of a young peasant who was just driving by, 

 with rifle in hand up I jumped, and in less than a quar- 

 ter of an hour we were at Rottach, five minutes' walk 

 from the place of my destination. A little urchin offered 

 to " radeln "* (trundle) my things to the inn ; so help- 

 ing the little fellow to put the luggage on his barrow, off 

 we set together. But he soon stopped to rest, and when 

 he saw me waiting for him, he told me ' ' to go on : there 

 was no need whatever for me to stay, he would be sure 

 and come ;" and as I saw he wished to have the glory 



* The sight of the green fields and hedgerows is not more pleasant 

 to him who has been " long in populous cities pent," than is to my ear 

 the sound of a genuine provincialism, uttered in a broad dialect, giving 

 earnest as it does of being really beyond the influence of the town. Once 

 in Somersetshire I remember a peasant pointing out to me a place in the 

 distance, and telling me it was near where yonder "housen" were; 

 giving the word " house " its old Saxon plural. That one word seemed 

 at once to remove me from the haunts of over- civilization, and I felt 

 sure I had really got into the country. It was the same with the 

 " radeln " of my little peasant-boy, and I welcomed it accordingly. 



