244 CHAMOIS HUNTING. 



We did not speak in a whisper, for the waters were 

 filling the solitude with a voice louder than ours. 



" There is nothing here," I said, after looking for a 

 minute up and down the ravine ; when, just as I had 

 spoken, from beneath a projecting part of the bank forth 

 bounded a chamois, scared at hearing a sound suddenly 

 jarring and breaking in upon the monotonous din that 

 surrounded his loneliness. He leaped upon a high stone, 

 quite unable to make out what sound it was that had 

 intruded on the solitude. His fine ear had caught an 

 unfamiliar tone ; the loud equal hum that was in the 

 air, and in the ground, and rolling on with the water, 

 was suddenly interrupted ; but what it was the creature 

 did not know. He stared and listened again, terrified 

 as men are when the cause of alarm is unseen. He 

 presently observed us, and springing down from his 

 eminence, turned toward the steep on the opposite side. 

 There he stood and gazed again, not more than fifty 

 yards from me ; but as it was only a yearling I let him 

 pass. On he bounded, then looked back, and leisurely 

 passed up among the trees to other haunts on the moun- 

 tain-top, where his own footsteps pattering on the rock 

 would be the only sound rising through the heavy si- 

 lence. 



On our way upwards we had already passed such a 

 lick, almost hidden among the trees, — a dark and shady 

 spot, but nothing was there. Further on was another. 

 It was in the same gulley we had seen before, and close 

 to a waterfall, caused by the accumulated trunks and 

 branches of trees, stones, and fragments of rock that 

 had here formed an embankment. We crept through 

 the underwood, and as we came nearer I advanced alone. 

 Kneeling among the moss, I could look down into the 

 haunt of the chamois. On one side rose a green hillock, 



