352 SHOET 8TALKS 



we had to wait for an liour. sittino- in a bitiiiir wind, 

 with snow well above the knee, till he chose to appear. 

 This at last he did, feeding below us and we quickly got 

 on better terms, as it was easy to approach silently 

 through the floury snow. I never felt much more hopeless 

 of doing any good, for my fingers were almost without 

 feeling, and the flakes, which now fell again, piled them- 

 selves on the ril) of my gun faster than I could shake 

 them off. However, I had got to let off that gun at that 

 izzard, and I was quite relieved when I had pulled the 

 trigger and got it over. The poor little rock jumper 

 raced, with a frantic scamper, down the snow slope, but 

 almost instantlv rolled over with a hole rioht throuo-h 

 him which might have been made by a crowl^ar. My 

 bourgeois weapon had carried true. 



The ground which the Pyrenean chamois frequents is 

 certainly steeper and the climbing more difficult, at least 

 on the Spanish side, than I have found it in the Alps when 

 similarly engaged. There are also long lines of cliffs which 

 cannot be negotiated except at certain points, few and fiir 

 between, and which therefore involve lono- detours. These 

 cliffs are often more than sheer : thev overhano- at the 

 top, or, as one of my party, somewhat given to exaggera- 

 ti(m, described them — "they are not so steep after all, 

 only that the slope is inside out." A dead or wounded 

 izzard sometimes falls over them, and gets smashed out of 

 all recognition. Gerald had to make a circuit of three 

 hours to reach one which had thus escaped him, and found 

 it already annexed by birds of prey ; a circumstance which 

 mattered the less, as there would have been nothing fit 

 to carry home in any case. 



