234 The White Goat 



sheep and goat have never been found, or are never 

 to be found, frequenting the same pasture ; I don't 

 know this, and all of us do know that negatives 

 are difficult of proof. But I have camped high 

 in Washington, Vv^ith goats in profusion all around, 

 and the whole country looking precisely like a 

 sheep country, yet never the sign of a sheep any- 

 where to be seen. People said, " Plenty of sheep 

 over there," and they would point to some clearly 

 visible heights. And next, people came from not 

 thirty miles away, having seen and killed sheep. 

 It was the same latitude, the same altitude, the 

 same season, the same everything. What is to be 

 drawn from this ? That it was an accidental year, 

 and just happened so for the few weeks that I was 

 there } This is the conclusion that you might 

 draw, as I then did ; and you would be wrong, as 

 I then was. For I returned there six years later, 

 and it was still the case, and had been the case 

 meanwhile, saving only that goats and sheep and 

 all wild animals, wherever their chosen abode was, 

 had been growing scarcer and shyer, and were 

 approaching that extinction which we deal to all 

 helpless things that do not minister to our own 

 comfort and survival. During those intervening 

 years I had hunted sheep in a country which for 



