236 CHAMOIS HUNTING. 



kirchen, I started for Farchant. I soon found the fores- 

 ter, and we talked over the chances of seeing chamois, 

 and where it was best to go. " You would/' he said, 

 ' ' be more likely to get a shot on this side than on the 

 Oester Berg. I was there the other day, and saw cha- 

 mois : two bucks are there for certain, but if we shall 

 meet them it is of course impossible to say." Then came 

 the old tale, falling sorrowfully enough on a hunter's 

 ear, that a year or two ago, had I been there, I might 

 have had sport in plenty, but now all the best mountains 

 were quite depopulated. This is a theme which at once 

 causes a dark look to pass over the face of a forester. 

 Angry feelings and hatred rise with a sudden gush with- 

 in him, as he thinks of the times when those mountains 

 and forests were his pride, and remembers that the stag 

 and the chamois which he watched so lovingly have been 

 since then swept away by bands of lawless marauders. I 

 may safely assert that, in the breast of no set of men 

 have the late revolutionary changes caused such dark 

 and bitter feelings as in those of the foresters and game- 

 keepers : for not only did they see that which it had been 

 their pride to guard, at once, partly by law and partly in 

 defiance of the laws, given over to plunder, but they 

 found themselves with hardly a shadow of protection, 

 while defending the little which the new order of things 

 had left them. At first indeed it seemed as though mat- 

 ters were arranged to protect the thief, rather than him 

 whose property had been stolen. For the new game- 

 laws were partial; they were carried out too with a 

 miserable inertness ; moreover the authorities were them- 

 selves often possessed by the same spirit, subversive of 

 order, or were influenced by fear ; so that the poacher, 

 though caught in the fact, had but to bear himself with 

 effrontery and bravely lie, in order to escape scot free. 



