IBEX-SHOOTING IN SPAIN. 169 



at favourable passes, wherein to await the wild-goats as 

 they moved up or down the mountain- side at dawn and 

 dusk respectively, their favourite food being the rye-grass 

 which the peasants from the villages below contrive to 

 grow in tiny patches — two or three square yards scattered 

 here and there amidst the crags. It is only by rare 

 industry that even so paltry a crop can be snatched at 

 such altitudes, and during the short period when the snow 

 is absent from the southern aspects. At present it 

 enveloped everything — not a blade of vegetation, nor a 

 mouthful for a wild-goat could be seen. 



Although in going to our puestos during the clay the 

 snow was generally soft — the sun being very hot — yet in 

 returning after dark we found the way most dangerous, 

 traversing a sloping, slippery ice-surface like a huge glacier, 

 where a slip or false step would send one down half a 

 mile with nothing to clutch at or to save oneself. Such 

 a slide meant death, for it could only terminate in an 

 awful precipice or in one of those horrible holes with a 

 raging torrent to receive one in its dark abyss, and convey 

 the fragments beneath the snow — where to appear next ? 

 Each step had to be cut with a hatchet, or hollowed — the 

 butt of a rifle is not intended for such work, but has had 

 to perform it. 



Every day here we saw goats on or about the snow-fields 

 and towering rocks above our cave. They were of a light 

 fawn colour, very shaggy in appearance, some males 

 carrying magnificent long horns. One old ram seemed to 

 be always on the watch, kneeling down on the very verge 

 of a crag 500 or 600 yards above us, and which com- 

 manded a view for miles — miles, did we say ? paltry words ! 

 From where that goat was, he could survey half-a-dozen 

 provinces. 



These ibex were quite inacessible, and though daily seen, 

 nearly a week had passed away ere a wild-goat gave us a 

 chance. One night shortly after quitting my post, little 

 better than a human icicle, and not without fear of the 

 dangers of scrambling cave-wards, in absolute darkness 

 along the ice-slope, a little herd of goats passed — mere 



