IN THE LAND OF THE BORA. 2G1 



starting is equal to twice as much climbing and 

 walking as he who has started before dawn, half 

 rested and not half fed. On this occasion it was 

 nearer nine than eight before I started, and ere 

 long I had left some thousand feet of forest below 

 me, my objective being the Long Ridge, an 

 excellent spying-point with this wind. 



Just before I reached the last climb, my 

 dachshund Eex (a mute dog is, of course, only 

 admissible at this sort of w T ork), whom I had 

 pushed up the rocks in front of me, flushed a 

 bird, which rose heavily into a small fir and there 

 remained, uttering a continual guck ! guck ! of 

 alarm. It was a hen capercailzie, and, being 

 sacred by virtue of her sex, she of course re- 

 mained some minutes within twenty yards whilst 

 I examined her with the glass. At last I moved 

 forward, and then only did she take wing, showing 

 the characteristic semicircular tail, and I heard 

 her alight in a tall tree some fifty yards below. I 

 stopped to let the dog try round in the hopes of 

 seeing something of her young, but in vain. 



Meanwhile I had gradually been becoming 

 aware of a very annoying fact, namely, that the 

 wind had chopped completely round, leaving me 

 in the unpleasant position of being near the 

 southern end of my ground with a southerly 

 breeze, and consequently with the certainty that 

 when I began work my wind must go on before 



