!86 RANCH LIFE AND THE HUNTING-TRAIL 



and scrambling up an almost perpendicular path that led across the face of 

 the cliff above. Holding my rifle just over it, I fired, breaking the neck 

 of the goat, and it rolled down some fifty or sixty yards, almost to where 1 

 stood. I then went after the old goat, which had lain down ; as I ap- 

 proached she feebly tried to rise and show fight, but her strength was 

 spent, her blood had ebbed away, and she fell back lifeless in the effort. 

 They were both good specimens, the old one being unusually large, with 

 fine horns. White goats are squat, heavy beasts ; not so tall as black-tail 

 deer, but weighing more. 



Early next morning I came back with my two men to where the goats 

 were lying, taking along the camera. Having taken their photographs 

 and skinned them we went back to camp, hunted up the ponies and mules, 

 who had been shifting for themselves during the past few days, packed up 

 our tent, trophies, and other belongings, and set off for the settlements, 

 well pleased with our trip. 



All mountain game yields noble sport, because of the nerve, daring, and 

 physical hardihood implied in its successful pursuit. The chase of the 

 white goat involves extraordinary toil and some slight danger on account 

 of the extreme roughness and inaccessibility of its haunts ; but the beast 

 itself is less shy than the mountain sheep. How the chase of either com- 

 pares in difficulty with that of the various Old World mountain game it 

 would be hard to say. Men who have tried both say that, though there is 

 not in Europe the chance to try the adventurous, wandering life of the 

 wilderness so beloved by the American hunter, yet when it comes to com- 

 paring the actual chase of the game of the two worlds, it needs greater 

 skill, both as cragsman and still-hunter, to kill ibex and chamois in the 

 Alps or Pyrenees by fair stalking I mean ; for if they are driven to the 

 guns, as is sometimes done, the sport is of a very inferior kind, not rising 

 above the methods of killing white-tail in the Eastern States, or of driving 

 deer in Scotland. I myself have had no experience of Old World moun- 

 taineering, beyond two perfectly conventional trips up the Matterhorn and 

 Jungfrau on the latter, by the way, I saw three chamois a long way off. 



My brother has done a good deal of ibex, mountain sheep, and mark- 

 hoor shooting in Cashmere and Thibet, and I suppose the sport to be had 

 among the tremendous mountain masses of the Himalayas must stand 

 above all other kinds of hill shooting ; yet, after all, it is hard to believe 

 that it can yield much more pleasure than that felt by the American hunter 

 when he follows the lordly elk and the grizzly among the timbered slopes 

 of the Rockies, or the big-horn and the white-fleeced, jet-horned antelope- 

 goat over their towering and barren peaks. 



