A WALK TO FISCHBACHAU. 49 



years, all the red-deer have been destroyed. From forty- 

 five to fifty- two or fifty -three good stags were shot every 

 season, and now there are not half-a-dozen in the whole 

 forest range. Although the peasantry may occasionally 

 have had to complain of the superabundance of game in 

 the lowlands, there could be no excuse for this total 

 destruction of the chamois, which from its habits could 

 do no possible injury to the crops of the husbandman. 

 The higher mountains were their dwelling-place, and the 

 herbs they found on their green sides, with the young 

 sprouts of the latschen,* afforded them nourishment. 

 But the intoxication caused by the possession of a new 

 right blinded the peasantry even to their own profit and 

 advantage ; and rather than let a chase for a good 

 price, as is done with the moors in Scotland, they har- 

 ried the game, and, having depopulated the mountains, 

 find at last that what might have proved a constant 

 source of profit and pleasure is now thoroughly exhausted. 

 But excess characterizes every social revolution. It is, too, 

 the very spirit of all proscriptions that they be carried on 

 unrelentingly, and with a view to extermination j and the 

 red-deer and chamois became suddenly a proscribed race ; 

 a ban was upon them, and none escaped but those that 

 fled into the deepest recesses of the forest, or sought 

 an asylum among the inaccessible fastnesses of the 

 mountains. Their names stood first on the dread list 

 of the victims who were to fall j and so the people rose 



* Latschen — Pinus Pmnilio — is a sort of pine found on the moun- 

 tains, growing on their barren sides or out of the crevices of the 

 rocks. It does not at once grow upwards, but creeps along the 

 ground for some distance before its branches rise perpendicularly. Its 

 foliage is dense and bushy, and forms a good covert for the game. Tins 

 shrub might be called " The Hunter's Friend," for on its boughs he 

 may always rely, as they never break with the strongest pull. He must 

 only be careful not to bend them, for then they snap at once. 



