MOUNTiilN SPORTS. 293 



Deer or Antelope, than to the Goat. This creature, on the con- 

 trary, has no relation either to Deer or Antelope, and would 

 seem to border closely on the Sheep, and to be a connecting 

 link between that and the true Goat. To this conclusion I am 

 led by the loose and fleecy nature of its covering, as also by the 

 shortness of its horns. 



Had it not been for these, I should have fancied that some 

 analogy might have existed between this Goat and that de- 

 scribed ages ago by Homer, utterly lost sight of during- all 

 intervening time, and lately rediscovered by English travellers, 

 as peculiar to the highlands of the Isle of Crete, or Candia, as 

 it is termed in modern Geography, in the Levantine Sea. 



If it be true, that this Goat is easily killed by the hunters, it 

 is an anomaly in natural history — for, generally speaking, in all 

 countries, the Wild Goat of the mountain-tops is, to a proverb, 

 the most wary and difficult to be pursued of all beasts of chase 

 — their extraordinary agility and sureness, no less than swift- 

 ness, of foot, giving them an advantage among their rocky, and 

 often, to the tread of man, inaccessible fastnesses, which neither 

 the craft nor the deadly firearms of the civilized man can ob- 

 viate or neutralize ; but I am inclined to doubt the truth of the 

 assertion. 



I conceive that the Rocky Mountain Goat is rarely an object 

 of particular systematic pui-suit, and that when killed at all, it 

 is almost by accident, during the winter season, the snows of 

 which are said to drive it down into the valleys. 



While among the herbless crags and awful precipices of 

 those dread mountain solitudes which it inhabits, and among 

 which it bounds fearless and sublime, where man can only- 

 creep and cling, it is out of the nature of things that it can be 

 captured easily. It is not easy to see it, in the first place ; and 

 when seen, to outclimb and circumvent it, must require that the 

 hunter should be every inch a man. 



With regard to stalking these animals — of course, there is no 

 other way of approaching them — I have but one or two remarks 

 to make, which I have deferred to this place, rather than con- 



