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