The IVhi'te Goaf 239 



when I had shot my first goat eleven years 

 before. Asiatic ? Yes ; and I cannot at all ex- 

 plain why, unless it be that one has seen pic- 

 tures of animals which hail from somewhere like 

 Tibet, and which bear some resemblance to the 

 Oreamnus. I know that no other of our Western 

 big game strike me in this way ; buffalo, elk, deer, 

 antelope, sheep, — all these have always seemed 

 to me to look indigenous, to belong to our North 

 American soil. But this goat is a figure that 

 it surprises me to meet among the haunts of my 

 own language ; his idiom should be Mongolian ! 

 He's white, all white, and shaggy, and twice as 

 large as any goat you ever saw. His white hair 

 hangs long all over him, like a Spitz dog's or an 

 Angora cat's; but it is stiff and coarse, not silky, 

 and against its shaggy white mass the blackness 

 of his hoofs, and horns, and nose, looks particularly 

 black. His legs are thick, his neck is thick, every- 

 thing about him is thick, saving only his thin 

 black horns. They're generally about six inches 

 long, they spread very slightly, and they curve 

 slightly backward. At their base they are a little 

 rough, but as they rise they cylindrically smooth 

 and taper to an ugly point. His hoofs are heavy, 

 broad, and blunt. The track they make is huge, 



