14 THROUGH ANGOLA 



walking upright, yards behind me. Owing to his 

 stubbornness I lost my first chance, as the goats 

 saw Pareisha and ran, giving me a difficult shot 

 at a hundred yards at the ram, which appeared at 

 the time to have been missed, though actually 

 mortally wounded and found dead soon after. 



A mile or so up the valley, searching continually 

 for goats, we came to a rough stone wall and a 

 broken well ; farther on, a ruined house and the 

 remains of a chapel all that was left of three 

 hundred years of human occupation. Man was 

 driven from the island by the fierce wind and rain 

 a hundred years ago ; then the wild sheep disap- 

 peared (even a pair of moufflon from Sardinia placed 

 on the island have never been seen since) ; the 

 last of the pine woods is nearly gone, the dying 

 trees throwing out innumerable cones in a pathetic 

 and desperate endeavour to reproduce their kind. 



The goat alone is left, as hardy as a life amidst 

 little grazing and less water can make him ; wary 

 and ever more watchful as the years go by, but 

 happy possibly in the freedom of the wilds. 



After continual searching we saw and then 

 stalked on the northern cliff of the island a small 

 herd, of which the big goat was mortally wounded 

 and found refuge in a precipice, from which it 

 seemed impossible to retrieve him ; but old 

 Pareisha went down the cliff without a word, and 

 a couple of hours after brought up the goat. I 

 watched part of his climb, and the ground he 

 traversed was so steep as to have been very difficult 

 for a young mountaineer to have crossed, un- 

 burdened ; for an old man of seventy to have 



