98 CHAMOIS HUNTING. 



places remote from where the chamois was to be found. 

 I conceive too that even later, and where men dwelt who 

 followed the chase, there still hung about the chamois- 

 hunter's life somewhat of mystery. We can well imagine 

 that he was looked upon as one familiar with places 

 where ordinary men would fear to venture, — accustomed 

 to have Death stalking beside him as a companion, and 

 to meet him face to face. His departure for the moun- 

 tain — an unknown region hidden in cloud, and mist, and 

 mystery, — his absence for whole days together, his start- 

 ling accounts of the wildness, the silence and the soli- 

 tude, and then occasionally the going forth of one alone 

 who never returned, — all this gave a dim and dread uncer- 

 tainty to the pursuit ; and where uncertainty is, imagi- 

 nation will be busy at her work. His very countenance 

 — his widely-opened eye, always on the watch — even this 

 must have awakened strange surmises of sights more 

 fearful than he had yet hinted of. 



But that much ignorance on the subject should have 

 continued to the present day is still more remarkable, 

 since the home of the chamois — Bavaria, the Tyrol, 

 Switzerland, Styria — are not remote lands, but lie in 

 the very heart of Europe. Had it been otherwise, this 

 haze and indistinctness might have been accounted for 

 by distance, which effaces outlines, and invests objects 

 with tints, and shapes, and proportions that are not their 

 own. 



One author of recent date acknowledges that little is 

 known of the habits of these animals, and accounts for 

 it by the circumstance of the "chamois-hunter being 

 generally a rude, uncultivated being; and that, as to 

 naturalists, they have seldom had an opportunity of ob- 

 serving this animal in its solitary and dangerous haunts." 

 The writer of this ' New and Perfect Art of Venery ' re- 



