The White Goat 245 



graphical mistake. Some original map-maker 

 had traced his map on hearsay or guesswork, 

 hadn't gone down the creek to see for himself, 

 and all his successors faithfully reproduced his 

 ignorance. The people who knew better were 

 merely Indians, prospectors, cowboys, or stray 

 hunters like myself. We didn't count; that 

 wasn't being found out ! 



Pacific Creek being wrong to a certainty, how 

 then about Atlantic Creek, and Thoroughfare, 

 and a good many more ? Did these, also, flow 

 one way officially, and actually another? How 

 could I be sure until I had crossed mountains 

 and found them for myself? And how should 

 you, reader, enjoy being condemned to such 

 maps in a country where Indians, and bears, and 

 blizzards prevailed ? You will scarce wonder 

 that I grew to place upon those maps the same 

 chastened reliance that I place to-day upon books 

 which tell me that the goat is not strictly white, 

 or that he lives in the Rocky Mountains. You 

 might search a good many hundred miles of 

 Rocky Mountains that have never seen a goat, 

 but which the sheep has frequented since before 

 the memory of man. Here again comes the con- 

 trast between the two: having come the same 



