240 IN THE LAND OP THE BORA. 



rich grass and every description of wild flower, but 

 on the upper slopes, with their tangle of fallen fir 

 trees, bushes, and rocks, they make locomotion 

 very difficult and, in anything like a straight line, 

 impossible. 



In these upper hollows the snow was lying 

 everywhere, but it was nowhere marked by the 

 footprints of game. Indeed, the hill seemed to 

 be almost gameless, the dogs only finding a couple 

 of hares on the lower ground and a fox on the 

 upper. The wild desolation of the pine wood, with 

 its masses of rock and fallen trees, seemed ideal 

 bear ground; and indeed there are always bears 

 in the Crnagora, but on this day I saw nothing. 

 The silence was unbroken throughout my ramble, 

 save once when a great tree, some fifty yards 

 away, came down with an echoing crash. As I 

 have before said, the nature of the ground made 

 it impossible to keep a straight course, and I 

 could easily have lost my way had it not been 

 for the sun, which was shining brightly, and con- 

 sequently enabled me to direct my steps to the 

 barrack, which I reached after a five hours' walk. 

 Half a mile from home I passed the decaying 

 remains of a wolf hanging to a tree, and a few days 

 later I saw another lying by the wood-cutter's hut 

 before referred to. Both had fallen to the keeper's 

 rifle, and as one had contained four young ones, the 

 government reward was worth a fair sum to him. 



