380 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTERS. 



migrating, but they generally do so in large numbers, keeping 

 near the water ; there was none in this region. How the 

 creature got there, and how it lived, will always be a positive 

 mystery to me. The impression made by this combination 

 of singular circumstances the fact of its being there at all 

 then of my seeing it, just at the crisis when I thought I was 

 dying its crouching so close to me as to make it a matter 

 of impossibility almost for me to fail of killing it, even in my 

 feeble condition, all together, it can never fade from iny 

 memory. 



