e right bank of the river, and trying to catch a glimpse of him. The
opposite hill-side was gaunt and bare; a southern aspect shut out the
sun in winter, and for all its rich traces of copper ore, "Holkam's
Head" found no favour in the eyes of either shepherds or master. Grass
would not grow there except in summer, and its gray, shingly sides were
an eye-sore to its owner. We sat down on the cliff, and looked around
carefully. Presently F---- said, in a breathless whisper of intense
delight, "I see him." In vain I looked and looked, but nothing could
my stupid eyes discover. "Lie down," said F---- to me, just as if I had
been a dog. I crouched as low as possible, whilst F----settled himself
comfortably flat on his stomach, and prepared to take a careful aim at
the opposite side of the hill.

After what seemed a long time, he pulled his rifle's trigger, and the
flash and crack was followed apparently by one of the gray boulders
opposite leaping up, and then rolling heavily down the hill. F----
jumped up in triumph crying, "Come along, and don't forget the
revolver." When we had crossed the river, reckless of getting wet to
our waists in icy-cold water, F---- took the revolver from me and went
first; but, after an instant's examination, he called out, "Dead as a
door-nail! come and look at him." So I came, with great caution, and
a more repulsive and disgusting sight cannot be imagined than the huge
carcass of our victim already stiffening in death. The shot had been a
fortunate one, for only an inch away from the hole the bullet had made
his shoulders were regularly plated with thick horny scales, off which
a revolver bullet would have glanced harmlessly, and he bore marks of
having fought many and many a battle with younger rivals. His huge tusks
were notched and broken, and he had evidently been driven out from
among his fellows as a quarrelsome member of their society. Already the
keen-eyed hawks were hovering above the great monster, and we left him
to his fate in the solitary river gorge, where all was bleak and cold
and gloomy,--a fitting death-place for the fierce old warrior.

Chapter IV: Skating in the back country.

I do not believe that even in Canada the skating can be better than that
which was within our reach in the Malvern Hills. Among our sheltered
valleys an sunny slopes the hardest frost only lasted a few hour after
dawn; but twenty-five miles further back, on the border of the glacier
region,