$80 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTERS. 
migrating, but they generally do so in large numbers, keeping 
near the water; there was none in this region. How the 
creature got there, and how it lived, will always be a positive 
mystery to me. The impression made by this combination 
of singular circumstances—the fact of its being there at all— 
then of my seeing it, just at the crisis when I thought I was 
dying—its crouching so close to me as to make it a matter 
of impossibility almost for me to fail of killing it, even in my 
fecble condition,—all together, it can never fade from my 
memory. 
