During the day they go up again into the
snow, for which they have an extraordinary love, and in which they skip
and play, amusing themselves like a band of scholars in play hours.
They tease one another, butt with their horns in fun, run off,
return, pretend new attacks and new flights with charming agility and
frolicsomeness.

"While the young ones give themselves up to their sports, an old female,
posted as sentinel at some yards distance, watches the valley and scents
the air. At the slightest indication of danger, she utters a sharp cry;
the games cease instantly, and the whole anxious troop assembles round
the guardian, then the whole herd sets off at a gallop and disappears in
the twinkling of an eye....

"Hunting on the neves and the glaciers is very dangerous. When the snow
is fresh it is with difficulty one can advance. The hunters use wooden
snowshoes, like those of the Esquimaux.

"One of my comrades, in hunting on the Roseg, disappeared in the bottom
of a crevasse. It was over thirty feet deep. Imagine two perfectly
smooth sides; two walls of crystal. To reascend was impossible. It was
certain death, either from cold or hunger; for it was known that when he
went chamois-hunting he was often absent for several days. He could not
therefore count on help being sent; he must resign himself to death.

"One thing, however, astonished him; it was to find so little water in
the bottom of the crevasse. Could there be then an opening at the bottom
of the funnel into which he had fallen? He stooped, examined this grave
in which he had been buried alive, discovered that the heat of the sun
had caused the base of the glacier to melt. A canal drainage had been
formed. Laying himself flat, he slid into this dark passage, and after
a thousand efforts he arrived at the end of the glacier in the moraine,
safe and sound."

We had finished breakfast. We wanted something warm, a little coffee.
Schmidt set up our spirit-lamp behind two great stones that protected it
from the wind. And while we waited for the water to boil, he related to
us the story of Colani, the legendary hunter of the upper Engandine.

"Colani, in forty years, killed two thousand seven hundred chamois. This
strange man had carved out for himself a little kingdom in the mountain.
He claimed to reign there alone, to be absolute master. When a stranger
penetrated into his residence, within the domain of 'his reserved
hunting-ground,' as he called the regi