MULE DEER AND MOUNTAIN GOAT 77 



had only got one ram, the season was getting very 

 late and we feared the weather would break. 



In some ways the Rocky Mountain goat is the 

 most remarkable animal in North America. He is 

 an anachronism ; an unfortunate animal antedated 

 for the age in which he lives, bearing to the mam- 

 mals of his country the same relationship as does 

 the pelican to the birds. They both in their re- 

 spective spheres look as prehistoric as a non-bridgite 

 at a fashionable dinner-party. 



I shall not forget an evening as we fished on the 

 Yellowstone Lake, watching one of these curious birds 

 come sailing up out of the setting sun, uncouthly 

 silhouetted against the fading light into the embodied 

 semblance of a dragon in one of Mr. E. T. Reed's 

 drawings of the stone age. Nor shall I forget my 

 first view of Oreamnos in his native haunts amid 

 the snow and rocks of British Columbia, looking 

 very much at home and yet absurdly out of place ; 

 for I wondered as he stood there if he were not 

 the shrunken degenerate of mighty ancestors, who, 

 five or six times his own size, the companion of 

 the mammoth and other beasts long dead, peopled 

 the earth when she was still young. Now, with 

 something of the monkey or performing poodle in 

 his appearance, you half expect the strange beast 

 who stares at you with such sang-froid to start 

 exploiting drawing-room tricks for your edification ; 

 but he is a contradictory creature and you watch 

 in vain. In the summer he falls an easy prey to 



