392 BIG GAME SHOOTING 



grounds, and retire to the same lairs, with a punctuality which 

 would be becoming in a postman. Their meat is so poor that 

 Indians will hardly eat it, and the market value of their hides 

 is only y. 6d. to a tourist. They occupy only such localities as 

 other beasts would despise, and altogether seem somewhat 

 justified in the mute protest of their wondering regard when 

 attacked, w r hich seems to say as plainly as dumb beasts can 

 speak, ' Surely you are not going to meddle with us ; we, at 

 least, are beasts of no account.' To obtain a good specimen 

 head their haunts ought to be visited as late in the year as 

 possible, as the coats are not so white or the beards so long in 

 early autumn as they are in November, and a goat's head with- 

 out the long patriarchal beard is a poor affair. They abound 

 all over British Columbia, especially in such places as Bute 

 Inlet, and I have even seen them on the islands in the Straits 

 of San Juan, from which I am inclined to infer that they had 

 swurn over from the mainland. An old billy which I shot 

 girthed 56 ins. round the chest after he had been skinned, 

 and the longest horns of which I have any record measured 

 n^ ins. from base to tip. The accompanying plate gives a 

 better idea of the queer old-world appearance of the Rocky 

 Mountain goat than any word-painting of mine could do. In 

 old days, the Indians used to make blankets of their fleece, 

 but the industry appears to be nearly dead, now that English 

 blankets have become cheap and plentiful in British Columbia, 

 so that there appears to be no reason why the white goat should 

 not be allowed to remain unmolested for many years to come. 

 I have seen Haploceros in Alaska as well as in British Columbia, 

 and expect that my friend Mr. John Fannin, curator of the 

 British Columbian Museum, is right in inferring that the goats 

 go as far north as the mountains do. The skin, measured by 

 Mr. Fannin, and mentioned in his article upon goats in the 

 ' Big Game of North America,' is far and away the largest I 

 have ever heard of, a skin 5 ft. from horns to tail, by 40 ins. 

 from side to side, being an exceptionally large one, whereas 

 Mr. Fannin's large skin measured 7 ft. by 4 ft. 10 ins. 



