TENTH DAY. 163 
neighbours imaginable: no game-laws or sporting-rules are 
sacred to them, nor have they the slightest consideration for 
the adjoining proprietors. 
We now drove along the crest of the mountain for a good 
half-hour more, the road being in some places so narrow that 
it fell away in steep slopes on either hand, and then we halted 
where the ridge of another chain of hills branched off obliquely 
towards the south. As we were out of the forester’s domains 
he did not know what sort of a nest there was at this place, 
but the charming jagers of the monastery informed us that 
a large eagle with a bare head was here nesting on an oak 
tree. I naturally thought that we were going to encounter a 
Cinereous Vulture, especially as we had recently seen a pair 
of these birds flying swiftly along the side of the valley, and 
had also observed some others cruising about the outskirts of 
the mountains early in the morning. 
Accompanied by the forester, I hastened along a wretched 
road leading down to the plains of the Save, which passed just 
under the tree on which the nest was situated, and I was still 
a few hundred yards away when I caught sight of it on the 
dead branches at the top of a huge oak. Neither its size nor 
its general construction led me to think that it was inhabited 
by a Cinereous Vulture; and I was right, for a dark-coloured 
eagle suddenly dashed out of it towards the valley, and 
the forester thought at the first glance that it was a “ Stein” 
Eagle. 
I now sent my attendant back to the trap, and crouched 
down near the nest, hidden by the stem of the tree; but 
hardly had I loaded my gun and got ready a little screen of 
branches, prepared for a long wait, when I saw a large shadow 
on the ground, and looking up as well as the glare of the sun 
would allow me, I noticed the great form of the eagle as it 
disappeared among the branches of the tree. I also soon heard 
the folding of its wings and the bustle it made inside its 
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