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I go   MEMORIES OF MY LIFE

all the turmoil sank below, leaving a starlit sky above.

Sleeping-bags were customary in the Pyrenees. Mr. George Bentham told me that when he botanised in the little Republic of Andorre some years previously, there was not a bed in the place, and he was lent a sleeping-bag. They were familiar to Arctic travellers,but had not been thought of by Alpine climbers, so I published my experiences. In consequence, at an amusing dinner of the Alpine Club, of which I was a member for a few years, I was toasted by Mr. Wm. Longman as the greatest "bagman " in Europe. It is very difficult to arrange any sleeping gear that shall satisfy those who rough it rarely. Luxury is out of place. I read in some well-known book that one of the Camerons- of Lochiel, when bivouacking with his son in the snow, noticed that the lad had rolled up a snowball to make a pillow. H e thereupon rose and kicked it away, saying sternly, " No effeminacy, boy."

Bears were not infrequent. We reached, I think it was Cauteret, after passing a small plantation near the town. During the table d'h6te there.was a rush to the windows to see the dead body of a big bear cub which had just been killed at that very plantation. Its mother, who was with it, escaped. I often saw their human-like tracks. They occasionally kill oxen. Once, when near a cattle station, while watching the cattle returning home in file, each in its turn executed a fantastic sort of war-dance as it passed a particular spot, such as I had frequently, but by no means invariably, witnessed in Africa, when a line of my cattle passed over the place where I had shot an ox