176 CHANNEL ISLANDS OF CALIFORNIA 



cry of the wild goat now in the canons, and from 

 where I stood overlooking the deep rifts I could follow 

 the sport below. 



Santa Catalina and Santa Cruz Islands also abound 

 in goats, those on the latter of a different variety. 

 The horns are shaped more like a lyre, an attempt 

 having possibly been made to improve the stock. I 

 have taken an active hand in the sport on Santa 

 Catalina, and have hunted the goats on horseback to 

 the summit of the highest peak, stalking and securing 

 the game only after a strenuous ride around its rocky 

 sides. The wild-goat country culminates in a moun- 

 tain which is really two peaks, Mount Black Jack and 

 Mount Orizaba, twenty-two hundred feet high, readily 

 seen from a great distance. One day after a long 

 hunt in which I had bagged nothing, I found that I 

 had worked around into a deep abounding in rocks. 

 With great difficulty I got my horse out of this bad 

 land, and reaching a soft slope, a sort of llano on the 

 mountain side, I turned him, and settling back on 

 his haunches he tobogganed down a hundred feet, 

 literally running into a herd of goats which had been 

 lying on a sunny lee behind a rock, and which ran 

 away in every direction. I fired from my saddle, my 

 well-bred island horse not moving, and broke the hind 

 leg of one of the animals, sending him rolling down 

 into a cactus forest, where a second shot gave him 

 his quietus. This was a singular instance of luck or 

 coincidence. I had first sighted the goats from a 

 ridge to the south of Big Cottonwood Canon, and 

 fired across the canon at a buck on the slope of Orizaba. 

 I missed him, and all that day followed these will-o'- 

 the-wisps with big horns, running into young ones 



