ioo Sport and Life. 



five minutes I lay there; what with the excitement and my 

 breathlessness, I instinctively felt that every minute thus gained 

 would bring my bullet an inch nearer to my quarry. When 

 finally the old -500 Express sped its solid 48ogr. bullet, the ram 

 was my meat. 



A most singular, not to say fantastic, habit of the antelope- 

 goat is worthy of special notice. It is the practice of sitting 

 up on his haunches like a dog, and, when anything startles him, 

 to raise his front legs from the ground and sit up much in the 

 position of a begging poodle. The hide and hair on the rump 

 of old animals are quite worn, and much thicker than else- 

 where. On one occasion I approached such squatting goats 

 to within sixty yards. On another occasion a friend and I left 

 camp together for a long day after goat. We had not pro- 

 ceeded very far along a steepish ridge when we discovered 

 almost simultaneously, two different " outfits " of goats. Mine, 

 three in number, were lying on a narrow shelf of rock, over- 

 hanging a stupendous precipice, about twelve hundred yards 

 from, and considerably below, us. His, four head all told, were 

 yet lower, and were rambling about on the green sward 

 surrounding a tiny glacier lake. Among the former there was 

 a big ram a sight which made our pulses beat high. Deciding 

 to separate, I took the route along the top of the knife-back 

 ridge, hoping to be able to circumvent, while he took a lower 

 level, and was to work down to them under cover of a buttress 

 of rock. 



An hour's scramble along the ridge, where in places perfect 

 sure-footedness and freedom from giddiness were imperatively 

 necessary, brought me to the spot selected by me from below as the 

 point of vantage from which I could cut off the only two ways of 

 escape, should the goat take an upward course after my friend had 

 opened fire on them. I lay down panting on a projecting crag r 

 which was so small in size that my legs dangled over the brink of a 

 perpendicular wall of rock, several hundreds of feet in depth, that 

 here formed the end of the ridge. My friend, who appeared not 



