“I am not surprised at your question, for I doubt if the word be in the dictionary with the meaning attached to it here. People call the pasture-lands on the hills or lower parts of the mountains, ‘alp.’ Almost every farmer of any importance has one to which he sends the greater part of his cattle during the summer months, and there butter and cheese are made for the winter. Where the alps are extensive, they are held by several persons, and instead of one little wooden residence, there are sometimes twenty or thirty.”
“A sort of inhabited common, perhaps?”
“By no means. They are inherited or bought, or given in leases, and are sometimes very valuable.”
“The view from them is, of course, very extensive,” observed Hamilton.
“Generally, or I should not have been on so many.”
“And I,” said Baron Z—, “always endeavour to pass the night on one when I am on a hunting expedition; for, besides the chance of a few hours’ sleep in a hay-loft, one can warm one’s self at a good fire, and breakfast before daybreak. You shall see an alp, and a chamois-hunt, also, if I can manage it, before you return to Seon.”
“I have no doubt of being able to mount any alp you please,” said Hamilton; “but for a person who is not a good shot to undertake anything so dangerous as a chamois-hunt——”
“Danger! There is none whatever.”
“No danger! Why, I have read frightful accounts of chamois-hunts!”
“Read! Oh, so have I—and I don’t deny that an accident may occur occasionally. In Switzerland, for instance, where the chase is free, the chamois have become so scarce and shy that they have taken refuge in the highest parts of the mountains. There, and perhaps in those parts of Tyrol where they are only nominally protected, they are difficult to be got at—but in the neighbourhood of Berchtesgaden, Ischl, and Steyermark, a chamois is not much more difficult to shoot than a stag or a roebuck.”