KREUTH. 109 



— a great advantage in certain difficult places j but his 

 limbs were firmly knit, and it was always a pleasure to 

 look at his sinewy legs as he stepped lightly along up the 

 mountain before me. A chamois-hunter has never any 

 superabundant flesh j he is spare of habit, and I have re- 

 marked, or perhaps only fancied I did so, that in his eye 

 is something peculiar, common to all of his class. It 

 has seemed to me that, animated as it is when on the 

 mountain, or under the influence of surprise or excite- 

 ment, at other times when meeting him by chance in 

 common daily intercourse its expression is wanting, as 

 though the feelings that gave it life were slumbering. If 

 there be anything in this beyond mere fancy, I can well 

 account for the circumstance. A chamois-hunter on the 

 plain is like a sailor on shore, — he is surrounded by un- 

 congenial objects, and these and the incidents that exist 

 and take place about him are to him matters of little 

 interest : they in no wise awaken his sympathy. As the 

 seaman is ill at ease on land and wants to be afloat 

 again, so the hunter is impatient to get back to his 

 mountains. There he is at home, — in all that surrounds 

 him he feels an interest. But the flat land and its occu- 

 pations are to him tame and tedious ; and so he saunters 

 along, and the sparkle of his eye is dimmed by listless- 

 ness. Let however but a sound be heard which calls his 

 attention, and at once the eye is dilated ; it is wide open 

 and prominent, the lids drawn far back, and the pupil is 

 seen in a large surrounding space of white. The habit 

 of attentive watching, of ever-constant vigilance, the fre- 

 quent presence of danger and the narrow escapes from 

 risk — all these cause the eye to acquire a certain fixed- 

 ness of look, as if it were guarding against surprise. 

 That this is not mere fancy on my part is proved by a 

 circumstance which occurred to me while writing this. 



