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No license is required to hunt them. And to the persistent hunter who goes into the woods, not as we did, with an outfit the size of a cavalry regiment, there is game to be had in abundance. We saw goat-tracks in numbers at Cloudy Pass and the marks of Bruin everywhere. The Chelan National Forest is well protected against fires.
His red-shirted army, daily increasing in numbers, made one of the most wonderful forced flank marches on record, pushing the way along mere goat-tracks over the mountains, and with such rapidity that General Lanzi, the commandant of the royal army in Palermo, was awakened in the middle of the night to hear that the dreaded Garibaldians, whom he supposed to be at least twenty miles away, were actually forcing their way into the city, and driving the soldiers of Bombina before them.
Next morning the Austrian sent on a messenger to Melas, with tidings that a large division of the French had indeed passed by the goat-tracks of Albaredo, but that most certainly not one great gun was with them. Buonaparte, meantime, was hurrying forwards with horse, foot, and artillery too, upon Ivrea.
Off we started along the level land, which, as far as I could judge, extended inland for perhaps a mile and a half by about two miles wide. From this flat shelf the cliffs rose perpendicularly, as they did from the sea. Up their sides were innumerable goat-tracks, upon some of which we could descry a few of those agile creatures climbing almost like flies.
And we slept at night in the houses of Armenians whom my guides knew, so that the journey wasn't bad at all. Everything was going splendidly until we reached a sort of crossroads if you can call those goat-tracks roads without stretching truth too far and there three men came galloping toward us on blown horses from the direction of Marash.
As it was, with fear at my heels and a plenty of inexperience to guide me, I crawled through thickets and blundered over sharply pointed rocks; found myself on the verge of falls from twenty to thirty feet in depth; twisted my ankles, pushed my head into cactus, tangled myself in creepers; found and followed goat-tracks which led into other goat-tracks and ended nowhere; tore my hands with briers and my shoes on jagged granite; tumbled into beds of fern, sweated, plucked at arresting thorns, and at the end of twenty minutes discovered what every Corsican knows from infancy that to lose one's way in the macchia is the simplest thing in life.
Full of these disquieting thoughts I reached the cove and began to descend the steep side, following goat-tracks long grown familiar. The place hereabouts was honeycombed with small caves and with ledges screened by bushes and tangled vines; and here, well hid from observation, I paused to look about me.
They utter harsh notes when alarmed. "Crack, chuck, crack," with the r rolled and prolonged. I also saw fresh and old goat-tracks and some bones that suggest wolves. There is a pass through the mountains at the head of the third glacier. Fine mountains stand at the head on each side. The one on the northeast side is the higher and finer every way. It has three glaciers, tributary to the third.
The exasperating fact was, that all roads did not lead to Jerusalem; most of them led nowhere except over a precipice; and they were but glorified goat-tracks at best. You needed the agility of a monkey, the leaping powers of a "big-horn" and the lungs of a Marathon runner successfully to negotiate them.
Thus destitute, her eye took innumerable pictures sharp as on a brass- plate: torrents, goat-tracks winding up red earth, rocks veiled with water, cottage and children, strings of villagers mounting to the church, one woman kneeling before a wayside cross, her basket at her back, and her child gazing idly by; perched hamlets, rolling pasture-fields, the vast mountain lines.
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