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 3s. 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, which 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 
swum 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 
114 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. 
