192 THE STILL-HUNTER, 



CHAPTER XVII. 



ANOTHER KIND OF OPEN GROUND. 



THE ground now breaks into a range of hills which 

 in the Eastern States would be called "mountains." 

 There are three or four peaks twelve hundred to fif- 

 teen hundred feet high from which the land descends 

 in smaller hills and slopes for three quarters of a mile 

 or so, forming numerous gulches, little ravines, basins, 

 and a few small plateaus. Scarcely a single tree is in 

 sight, but all the side of the hills is more or less cov- 

 ered with brush. This brush is in most places not 

 over waist-high, and is quite thin enough for com- 

 fortable walking. But in some places, as in and 

 around the heads of ravines, the brush is denser and 

 often higher than one's head. Many of the basins 

 and plateaus, as well as some of the lower ridges, 

 are more or less covered with large clumps of scat- 

 tered bushes, luxuriant and green. On the whole, it 

 is excellent-looking ground for deer to live on, for 

 the hunter to get sight of them and to get a shot at 

 them. 



There appears, however, one difficulty; and as it is 

 one we shall frequently meet on open ground, espe- 

 cially in all those States and Territories where there 

 is no rain during a large part of the summer or 

 autumn, we will consider it now. 



Although the brush is in most places thin enough 



