276 SPORT AND TRAVEL 



see that he had horns, but whether he carried a fine 

 head or was only a young bull, I cannot say. Had I 

 only come home half an hour earlier, I might possibly 

 have got a good chance at him. 



The weather had now become wonderfully fine and 

 warm for the time of year, and the mountains were 

 rapidly losing their wintry appearance, for wind and 

 sun had cleared the snow from every piece of open 

 ground, even on the highest slopes of the mountains 

 high above timber line. Beneath the pine forests, 

 however, where neither sun nor wind had much effect, 

 the ground was still everywhere covered with snow 

 from a foot to two feet in depth. These conditions 

 made hunting almost hopeless, for the wapiti and 

 deer never came out of the forest except during the 

 night, and in the forest itself were almost unapproach- 

 able, as the sharp frosts at nights froze the surface of 

 the snow and formed a crust which would not bear a 

 man's weight and always made a noise on being 

 broken through. The game, too, which had com- 

 menced to come down towards their winter feeding- 

 grounds during the October snow-storms, now all 

 went back again to the higher forests near the verge 

 of timber line, in fact, to their feeding-grounds of 

 early autumn. 



Another difficulty that I had not counted upon 

 was getting about on the steep slopes of the moun- 

 tains where there was no snow. By an oversight, I 

 had left England without my shooting boots, and so 



