MOUNTAIN GAME. 149 



fall and winter that the long hair and fine wool 

 give the robe any beauty. 



So the quaint, sturdy, musky beasts, with 

 their queer and awkward ways, their boldness 

 and their stupidity, with their white coats and 

 big black hoofs, black muzzles, and sharp, 

 gently- curved span-long black horns, have 

 held their own well among the high mountains 

 that they love. In the Rockies and the Coast 

 ranges they abound from Alaska south to 

 Montana, Idaho, and \\^ashington ; and here 

 and there isolated colonies are found among 

 the high mountains to the southward, in Wy- 

 oming, Colorado, even in New Mexico, and, 

 strangest of all, in one or two spots among 

 the barren coast mountains of southern Cali- 

 fornia. Long after the elk has followed the 

 bufifalo to the happy hunting grounds the white 

 goat will flourish among the towering and 

 glacier-riven peaks, and, grown wary with 

 succeeding generations, will furnish splendid 

 sport to those hunters who are both good 

 riflemen and hardy cragsmen. 



