402 CHAMOIS HUNTING. 



one was. At last one of them comes, bringing a hare for 

 its offspring. The next day a lamb was brought, ano- 

 ther time the greater part of a chamois kid, and once 

 only a ptarmigan. Thus the old birds continued, now 

 one and now the other, for several days to feed the pri- 

 soner, without it being possible for Wrack to surprise 

 them ; for wheeling high in the air, they always scan 

 well every spot before approaching the earth, and the 

 least change from its usual appearance, or any new ob- 

 ject, makes them distrustful. 



The young bird was always aware of the parents' ap- 

 proach, so Wrack related, long before he was able to 

 discern the vulture in the air; and at such times would 

 grow restless, scream, and flap its wings, as impatient of 

 their coming. 



One morning however Wrack was there before them, 

 and from his hiding-place of piled-up stones, shot the 

 old vulture just as it alighted on the mountain. It mea- 

 sured seven feet from wing to wing. 



The Hinter Au Thai is, so these men told me, one of 

 the most difficult places in the Tyrol. I looked down 

 upon it and its declivities of rock, from the top of the 

 Gleirsch Joch. Everywhere here, they said, are smooth, 

 steep slopes of bare stone, so that you can hardly get on 

 otherwise than on hands and knees. To walk on them 

 is next to impossible. 



Another valley near Achensee, where I had been two 

 years before, is very beautiful. The rocks on its sides, 

 however, are broken and crumbling and pointed; and 

 there in the midst of them you might fancy yourself in 

 an extinct Etna or Vesuvius. Even the hunter who was 

 with me there could not help exclaiming, as we looked 

 over the brink into such a chasm, " Es ist grausig !" But 

 I mention this Fallthurn Thai, because it was here I 



