American Big-Game Hunting 



T told me something of his experiences 



in huntinor this animal among- the Maciers and 

 snow-fields of the coast range, and discoursed 

 at length on its tenacity of life and its abil- 

 ity — even though fatally wounded — to creep 

 around a point of rock, or to spring across 

 a narrow chasm and lie there, just out of the 

 hunter's reach. When it is shot in such a 

 situation its last dying struggles usually carry 

 it over the brink of the precipice, to fall per- 

 haps a thousand feet, and then to roll or slide 

 as much more, over rock talus or snow-bank, 

 bringing up at last a mere sack of tough hide 

 stripped of hair and horns, and inclosing 

 a pulp of crushed flesh and broken bones. 

 He declared that to see one of these falls 

 is enough to turn a man's hair white, for 

 it makes him realize that in hunting goats 

 he is exposing himself to the danger of just 

 such a tremendous fall. Sometimes the goats, 

 plunging down, are engulfed in the bottom- 

 less crevasses that seam the glaciers, and 

 numbers of them are lost in this way. 



This second billy seemed to me twice the 



size of a domestic goat. He was certainly 



twice the weio'ht. His hide alone weighed 



46 



