Olm was
bad for goats. They not only slip from the rocks, but grow thin and
weakly. Just the reverse of the cattle. Onkel Johann--there is no one
so deep as he in cattle--says that every blade of grass on our Olm is
worth half a pint of milk. And it's not the air, nor the water,
nor the winds that make it wholesome, but some law that he cannot
understand. Who can? There is Jagdhaus, a wonderfully fertile
_sennerei_ an hour beyond Rein. It is far finer than our Olm, which
is so mountainous that timid new-comers amongst the cattle must first
teach themselves to walk about; but at Jagdhaus, which is as large
as a village, all the land is smooth, fat pasturage for miles. Yet
a curse rests on the place for which neither priests nor farmers can
account. Some seasons, it is true, all goes well, but in others the
cattle are suddenly bitten, fall dead, and their flesh then turns
black and rustles like paper. Some say that it is an insect or animal
that attacks them; others, that it is caused by the grass which they
eat; and there are again others who are sure that it is a phantom
which, touching them, blasts them. And there seems reason in the idea,
because when the priest of Taufers, who has an Olm there, goes and
says mass and prays for the cattle, or when the _Sterniwitz_ (landlord
of the Stern), who has acres of pasturage and many heads of cattle at
Jagdhaus, pays a Capuchin to go thither and pray, the murrain ceases."

In Moidel's tale we had almost forgotten our long walk back to the
barn and the arrangement for supper previously at the huts. Now, it
curiously happened that whilst waiting for the tea-pan--rather than
tea-kettle--to boil, I accidentally alighted upon a people's calendar,
published at Brixen for the current year, protruding its somewhat
greasy pages from behind a churn; and after turning over long
black-and red-lettered lists of fasts and feasts, came upon some
pertinent advice to the Tyrolese farmers by Adolph Trientl, concerning
_Milzbrand_. He described it as a dreadful pestilence, the scourge
of many a mountain-pasture. Hundreds of cattle, he tells them, are
sacrificed to it yearly. Even the deer and lesser game die from the
contagion, as well as human beings; death in the latter case being
occasioned either by eating the meat of diseased animals or by having
cuts or wounds which have come in contact with the victims. Even the
bite of a fly which has fed on the contaminated meat will propagate
the mala