328 THE IMAGE OF WAR 



alive some years previously. He could not say, 

 however, that they still existed there, and I must 

 be prepared for disappointment. 



Now it so happened that those very Gerez 

 Mountains were named in the article to which I 

 referred as the habitat of the Spanish ibex (C. 

 pyrenaica) in Portugal ; and not only this, but the 

 writer proceeded to describe the native method of 

 hunting them there, which, although it struck me 

 as one very unlikely to be very successsful, also 

 seemed to me to be one exceedingly unlikely to 

 be adopted in a district where the intended object 

 of pursuit was at all uncommon. 



Wishing to make myself as sure as possible about 

 the matter, I wrote also to the author of Wild Sj^jain, 

 and asked him for information. He kindly replied that 

 he really knew nothing about Portugal, but that if 

 the ibex really existed there it seemed to him to be 

 more likely to be found in the highest mountains of 

 the country — the Estrella Range, — which, too, are a 

 continuation of those Spanish Sierras where it is known 

 to exist, whereas the Gerez Range is an offshoot of 

 the Cantabrian Mountains, where it is not found. I 

 myself had exactly the same idea about the matter, 

 and I therefore wrote to the noble writer of the 

 article which had first drawn my attention to 

 Portugal, and put Mr Chapman's theory to him. 

 In reply I received the following letter : — 



" Sir, — In answer to your letter, I must tell you 

 that the ibex can only be found in the Serra 

 do Gerez, and therefore, in order to go shoot- 

 ing, you had better make your headquarters in 

 the Grand Hotel do Gerez. If the hotel should 



