302 CHAMOIS HUNTING. 



found my two companions and the other worthies of the 

 village.* 



Franz von Kobell has made the fancies and imagin- 

 ings of the hunter, while expecting game, the theme of 

 one of his poems. He has, with his accustomed truth- 

 fulness of delineation, pictured all the hopes and longings 

 which the chamois-hunter will cherish and dally with on 

 such occasions ; and he has given the end of these plea- 

 sant castles in the air, with a quiet humour and, as I 

 have often found by unwelcome experience, with comic 

 truth. And comic enough it often is, if we compare our 

 expectations at such times with the eventual reality. 

 Yet we always weave new fancies, and look at the rocks 

 and bushes and the cool ravine, and think and wish so 

 long, till at last we feel sure a chamois will spring down 

 yonder slope, or that a good stag must soon emerge from 

 the shades of the forest. And at such times all seems so 

 very plausible, and wears so comely an air of truth, that 

 at last good, honest, jog-trot, sober, unimaginative Com- 

 mon Sense yields to the pretty coquetry and winsome 

 ways of Fancy, and believes, and even sees, all that she 

 has been archly whispering in his ear. 



* I afterwards (Feb. 16, 1851) got a letter from ray friend Neuner, 

 containing news of the old chamois buck. He writes : — "The chamois 

 that remain with me the summer through have this winter gone over 

 into the chase of the Eschenlohe peasantry, and have, as I am told, been 

 considerably reduced in number ; so that with me, next summer, there 

 will be but poor sport, and the whole season's shooting will consist at 

 most of but a few head of game. The buck on the Fricker Reisen has 

 not changed his quarters ; he is still alive, and his haunt is in the very 

 same place where it used to be." 



