14 SHORT STALKS 



saw any wild animal — an .inconvenient practice during 

 a stalk. The worst thing he did was to break up one of 

 my mouflon heads and take it out for his luncheon. After 

 this we chiefly used him to fetch supplies from the 

 nearest town, at a distance of seventeen miles ; and he 

 and his horse seldom failed to perform the double journey 

 in the day, and to return laden with huge demijohns of 

 wine and sacks of bread. 



On the first evening our anticipations were raised to 

 the highest pitch by the accounts which the carabinieri 

 gave of the mouflon i, or " mufli " as they familiarly styled 

 them, which they saw daily from the road — an account 

 which we thought too good to be true, but which our own 

 experience afterwards confirmed. And now arose a tre- 

 mendous controversy as to how they ought to be hunted. 

 One writer says, "These animals are almost impossible to 

 get except by driving them, and this is a very uncertain 

 proceeding." With the last part of this statement I agree. 

 As to the first I believed there was a better way. I had 

 come to stalk them, and stalk I would. The Sards on the 

 other hand vehemently maintained that their method had 

 always been pursued ; that it was to fly in the face of 

 Providence to try any other, and that none but a pestilent 

 radical would suoo-est such a thino-. Willino- to humour 

 them I stooped to conquer. ( Jn the first day we would 

 go all together, and the Sards were to show us how to 

 hunt mouflon, but I secretly determined not to let pass a 

 fair chance of a stalk. 



We started before daylight. Indeed, if I may make a 

 harmless boast, I saw every sunrise during the five weeks 

 I remained in the island — that is to say, when there was 



