6 SHORT STALKS 



Foiled ill our first attempt to reach our destination by 

 water, we now proposed to enter the hill country from a 

 certain point on the railway, whence the map indicated a 

 road of some sort in the direction we desired. Fortune, 

 for the moment, seemed to favour us, as we found a fellow- 

 traveller who knew the country we proposed to traverse. 

 He warned us of mcdviventi, but my com^Danions were a 

 sufficient bodyguard, so we telegraphed inquiries for a 

 vehicle. When we reached the station from which we 

 hoped to start, a message met us that this road was 

 blocked with snow-drifts, and that there were no means of 

 entering the mountains that way. We could only bow to 

 the perversity of fate, which doomed us to spend our 

 precious days in wandering round the charmed circle of 

 our land of jiromise, while we gazed wistfully at the leaden 

 clouds which covered the Paradise. There was nothing 

 for it but to re-enter the train and continue the journey 

 to Cagiiari at the southern extremity of the island. We 

 now descended to the great plain of Oristano — chocolate- 

 coloured and dank — and traversed it from end to end. It 

 is a pestilential hotbed which has helped to give the island 

 a bad name for two thousand years. Miles away the 

 mountains rose with sudden steepness from the plain, as 

 they do on the Italian littoral. AVe passed several stagni, 

 or brackish lagoons, covered with wild fowl, which would 

 have stirred our sporting instincts if we had not been 

 thinking of higher game, and cursing the fate which ke^^t 

 us at arm's length. The natives pop at them all day and 

 sometimes kill them, for they brought ducks for sale to 

 the carriage windows, along with fresh-gathered oranges. 



The next morning saw us again on board the train — 



