CHAPTER XIIT 



THE SPANISH IBEX 



In tlie Spanish ibex Spain possesses not only a species peculiar 

 to the Peninsula, but a game- animal of the first rank. 



Fortunate it is that this sentence can be written in the present 

 tense instead of (as but a few years ago appeared probable) in the 

 past. 



Since we first wrote on this subject in 1893 the Spanish ibex 

 has passed through a crisis that came perilously near extirpation. 

 Up to the date named, and for several years later, none of the 

 great landowners of Spain, w^ithin whose titles were included the 

 vast sierras and mountain-ranges that form its home, had cherished 

 either pride or interest in the Spanish wild-goat. Some were 

 dimly conscious of its existence on their distant domains ; but 

 that was all. Not a scintilla of reproach is here inferred. For 

 these mountain-ranges are so remote and so elevated as often to 

 be almost inaccessible — or accessible only by organised expedition 

 independent of local aid. Their sole human inhabitants are a 

 segregated race of goat-herds, every man of them a born hunter, 

 accustomed from time immemorial to kill whenever opportunit}- 

 offered — and that regardless of size, sex, or season. That the 

 ibex should have survived such persecution by hardy moun- 

 taineers bespeaks their natural cunning. Their survival was due 

 to two causes — first, the antiquated weapons employed, but, more 

 important, the astuteness of the game and the "defence" it 

 enjoyed in the stupendous precipices and snow-fields of those 

 sierras, great areas of which remain inaccessible even to specialised 

 goat-herds, save only for a limited period in summer. 



But no wild animal, however astute or whatever its " de- 

 fence," can withstand for ever perjjetual, skilJed human persecu- 

 tion. During the early years of the present century the Spanish 



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