The White Goat and his Country 



picture which the white, slightly moving dots 

 made, like mites on a cheese, inclined one to 

 a large estimate of them, since they covered 

 the whole side of a hill. The more we looked 

 the more we found; besides the main army 

 there were groups, caucuses, families sitting 

 apart over some discourse too intimate for the 

 general public; and beyond these single 

 animals could be discerned, moving, gazing, 

 browsing, lying down. 



"Megod and Begod," said T (he oc- 

 casionally imitated a brogue for no hereditary 

 reason), "there's a hundred thousand goats!" 



" Let's count 'em," I suggested, and we took 

 the glasses. There were thirty-five. 



We found we had climbed the wrong hill, 

 and the day was too short to repair this error. 

 Our next excursion, however, was successful. 

 The hill where the goats were was not two 

 miles above camp, you could have seen the 

 animals from camp but for the curve in the 

 canon, yet we were four hours and a half 

 climbing the ridge, in order to put ourselves 

 above them. It was a hard climb, entirely 

 through snow after the first. On top the 

 snow came at times considerably above the 



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