IN THE LAND OF THE BORA. 361 



to leave the track. I commenced the climb of the 

 ridge between the main and side glens — a some- 

 what arduous one, and rendered no easier by the 

 fact that the drag seemed pretty strong here, 

 making the bitch decidedly troublesome to lead. 

 However, up I went, and passed the covert limit 

 to enter that of the pines. By this time I was 

 warm enough, in spite of a cool wind from the 

 southward, and was glad to unbutton my coat, and 

 to pocket my neckhandkerchief. At last the climb 

 was done, and I reached what German sportsmen 

 call the ivechsel. We have no word for the regular, 

 though often invisible, path four-footed game 

 follows ; * albeit the fact of there being such a 

 thing must have been known to old-time English- 

 men, for Horace alludes to it, and I dare say 

 Xenophon too. (If they had only, in our school- 

 days, let us construe the hunting part of his works, 

 I dare say I should have made more progress there- 

 with than I ever did with those wearisome " Ten 

 Thousand.") 



" Now go, Dinah, and see if you can find one of 

 those brown-coated little gentlemen, lying where 

 the covert is thickest, and peacefully working his 

 little white lower jaw backwards and forwards 



• On Exmoor, the places where the red deer pass, especially 

 through the close high beech hedges, are locally known as 

 " deer racks." These, however, are visible enough, though to 

 the uninitiated they appear very small for the size of the 

 animal that makes them. 



