56 SHORT STALKS 



1 hate carrying my rifle, and never do so if I can help 

 it ; luit the exception is when my hunter is otherwise well 

 loaded with the results of a successful stalk. Then it feels 

 as light as a feather. The Iccf-fohren no longer rufiies, 

 and you step airily over the mauvais pas, which you 

 distinctly funked in the morning. In a hurried shot like 

 the above I do not pretend to be always able to distinguish 

 the bucks. I am guilty of the death of many a geiss. 

 In the above case my second beast was only half grown, 

 but his cutlets served with cream — make a note of it — 

 were enouoh to make one devote oneself to shootino- nothino- 

 but kids. 



Along the broken gorge of the Spcil there is a mule- 

 path, but the difficulties of the ground compel it to cross 

 and recross the torrent, if I remember rightly, no less than 

 six times in four miles. These bridges are an important 

 aid to chamois hunting, as it is necessary to survey the 

 flank of the valley which it is designed to hunt from a 

 spying-point on the opposite side. This route is supposed 

 to be practicable for the roughest kind of hcrg-Lvagen, but 

 on one occasion, when we were driven by bad weather to 

 escape by some means, and had loaded our possessions on 

 such a vehicle, we went very near to losing the whole of 

 them, and the horse into the bargain. The actual torrent 

 bed is so deep and narrow in places, that a moderate spate 

 will raise the surface of the water forty or fifty feet in two 

 or three hours. It was in such a place that wild shouts 

 were heard in front, and on roundino^ a corner, we saw the 

 hin<l wheels of the hcrg-wagen already on the water-worn 

 slope of rocks below the path, while the body of the 

 machine literally overhung the goroe. The foremost man 



