Mountain Game 143 



terrace rather over a hundred and twenty-five yards 

 below me. I promptly fired, but overshot. The 

 goat merely gave a few jumps and stopped. My 

 second bullet went through its lungs; but fearful 

 lest it might escape to some inaccessible cleft or 

 ledge I fired again, missing; and yet again, break 

 ing its back. Down it went, and the next moment 

 began to roll over and over, from ledge to ledge. 

 I greatly feared it would break its horns; an an 

 noying and oft-recurring incident of white-goat 

 shooting, where the nature of the ground is such 

 that the dead quarry often falls hundreds of feet, its 

 body being torn to ribbons by the sharp crags. 

 However, in this case the goat speedily lodged un 

 harmed in a little dwarf evergreen. 



Hardly had I fired my fourth shot when my com 

 panion again exclaimed, &quot;Look at the white goats! 

 look at the white goats !&quot; Glancing in the direction 

 in which he pointed I speedily made out four more 

 goats standing in a bunch rather less than a hun 

 dred yards off, to one side of my former line of fire. 

 They were all looking up at me. They stood on a 

 slab of white rock, with which the color of their 

 fleece harmonized well ; and their black horns, muz 

 zles, eyes, and hoofs looked like dark dots on a 

 light-colored surface, so that it took me more than 

 one glance to determine what they were. White 

 goat invariably run up hill when alarmed, their one 

 idea seeming to be to escape danger by getting above 



