THE TYROL. — SCHARNITZ. 393 



kindly care ; for lie considered this a duty that devolved 

 on hini, as for weeks together in the summer-time this 

 hut was his home. He had accumulated here all sorts of 

 useful articles, — pots and pans and pipkins ; and at hand 

 in a cellar was a store of potatoes, some carrots, and 

 even celery. It was a Robinson Crusoe sort of house- 

 hold, and Wrack himself was as uncouth in appear- 

 ance as the poor solitary could have been. But he took 

 thought of everything for my comfort, made a bed for 

 me with scrupulous care, and covered me over to ensure 

 my being warm enough, as tenderly as if I had been a 

 child. Yet he was a wild-looking fellow. Indeed his 

 very birth and infancy seemed belonging to a savage 

 state. He was born in a cavern below the rocks, 

 close to the foaming stream we had passed in the morn- 

 ing; and this place, reached by a ladder, was his abode 

 winter and summer for the first years of his existence. 

 Here, like the young goats, he had scrambled over the 

 rocks; and not having broken his neck or rolled over 

 into the stream, learned in time to pass along a pre- 

 cipice as fearlessly as over a bridge. He had lived in 

 the woods and grown up among the wild animals, and I 

 can well believe they were not afraid of him, but looked 

 on him as one of themselves. War was raging at his 

 birth ; foreign soldiery were pillaging and ravaging his 

 native village, so his parents fled from Scharnitz and 

 found an asylum in the cave, since called by his name. 



Wrack's last service that night was to bring me a 

 draught of ice-cold water, and I soon fell asleep despite 

 the incessant tumbling and noise of the torrent close to 

 our dwelling. 



At daylight next morning we started for the valley 

 leading to the Solstein, a mountain somewhat more than 

 9000 feet high. It is rounded in form, and of bare 



