Ere long, even these traces of vegetation became more scarce, and the appearance of every thing around us wilder and more steril. Still the brilliant peaks of the Wildgrad Kögle gleamed brightly before us, and beckoned us on. Our path lay now, steep and rugged, along the edge of a ravine, at the bottom of which we heard the torrent chafing and roaring many a yard below us. There was a precipitous bank of rocks and screes to our right, quite unclimbable, which seemed only to want the will--they certainly had the way--to topple us into the abyss. Just as we were turning an abrupt angle very gingerly, with our eyes fixed on our slippery path, and longing for an elephant's trunk, to try the sound bits from the rotten ones, we suddenly heard a rushing "sough," like the falling of a moist snow avalanche, and a cloud passed across the sun. Glancing hastily upwards, I--yes I, in the body at this present, inditing this faithful description of my chase,--saw, not a hundred paces from me, an enormous vulture! Any thing so fiercely, so terribly grand, as this great bird, saw I never before, and can scarcely hope to see again. He was so near that we could distinctly see the glare of his fierce eye, and the hard bitter grip of his clenched talons. The sweep of his vast wings was enormous--I dare not guess how broad from tip to tip; and their rushing noise, as he beat the air in his first labored strokes, sounded strangely wild and spirit-like in the mountain stillness. A dozen strange strokes, and he took a wild swoop round to our right, and away, like a cloud before the blast, till a neighboring peak hid him from our sight, followed by a wild shout of astonishment from Joseph. I opened not my mouth, or if I did--left it open. Nothing ever gave me such a feeling of _reality_ as the sight of this vast vulture so near me. Often and often had I seen them, both in Switzerland and the Tyrol, sailing so high that, although well up the mountain flank myself, I almost doubted whether they were realities, or mere _muscæ volitantes_, produced by staring up in to the clear bright sky, with one's head thrown back. This fellow there was no doubt of--we saw his very beard! We were really then chamois-hunting--we had penetrated into the very den of the mountain tyrant. No fear of gigs and green parasols _here;_ we were above the world!