EIGHTH DAY. 139 
steadily on in a wide sweep, and passing close by me to the 
right disappeared in the wood at my back. 
Some moments of suspense had passed, when I suddenly 
heard on the hillside, a few hundred yards above me, a loud 
disturbance like the noise of a stag rolling down through the 
bushes. I did not know what this could be, and never for an 
instant thought of the vulture; but fancying that a wolf had 
got hold of a deer, I hurried down to the valley to ask 
the forester about it. I met, him coming along breathless, 
for he had heard the sharp cracking of the branches half a 
mile away, and said to me, with a satisfied look, that he 
thought it was caused by the falling vulture. 
We now climbed up the hill again to the place whence the 
noise had appeared to come. Just above the nest the slope 
of the hill was almost perpendicular, and we had some diffi- 
culty in forcing our way through the thick copses of hazel ; 
but on reaching a point several hundred yards above my 
former ambush, we saw in one of them the vulture jammed 
between two young beeches, with its wings stretched out 
and quite dead. We hurried up to it in a pleasant state of 
excitement, and by dint of hard work dragged it down the 
rough hillside to our carts, which were standing by the brook 
just at the very edge of the forest, about half a mile away. 
We had been shooting to-day a long distance from Gerevié, 
in a district where the mountain-woods run pretty far back 
into the ‘interior of the country, and a broad belt of bare stony 
outlying hills divides the true Fruska-Gora from the Danube. 
Towards these hills we now drove through a charming valley 
diversified with stony slopes, meadows, pastures, vineyards, 
walnut-trees, and blossoming orchards. 
In about half an hour we came in sight of a village pictu- 
resquely situated on the crest of the height. Flags were 
flying on the church-towers, and merry music sounding in 
the streets, for there was a sort of country fair going on after 
