The Habile Goaf 251 



upon the goat's habitat in Oregon and Wash- 

 ington, were it not wholly silent as to the 

 animal's presence or absence, past or present, 

 in the state of California. 



The farther we follow the story of the white 

 goat, the more do we find his steps attended with 

 the mists of confusion ; and for the gloomy critic 

 this would be a timely moment to write some 

 sentences about the longevity of error. But it 

 all came out right in the end ; and we will get 

 to the facts at once, and how I first began to 

 meet the stream of uncertainty of which the 

 fountain-source lies in the old romantic pages of 

 Lewis and Clark. 



A while ago I spoke of a goat tradition in 

 Wyoming. Now it was not until the fall of 1889 

 that I believed there was such a thing as this 

 goat anywhere. I thought — I could not then 

 say why — that the unlettered mountaineers and 

 plainsmen, whose talk I heard, were speaking of 

 the sheep ; and, also, they contradicted each other 

 in a way so curious and persistent that the animal 

 became in a manner fabulous to me, like the uni- 

 corn, or the wool-bearing horse. Now I would 

 meet the assurance that " over there somewhere," 

 among the mountains near the Pacific, a snow- 



