304 Unexplored Spain 
While writing the above we hear (from two sources) that the 
“Mauser” has at last got into the hands of at least one local 
goat-herd, who last summer killed four out of a band of five ibex 
—all sexes and sizes. There is no mistaking the import of this. 
It signifies that the end is in view unless prompt measures are 
taken to save the ibex of Nevdda from extirpation. 
So long as local hunters were restricted to their old ball- 
guns, the contest was fairly equal and the game could hold its 
own. But neither ibex nor any other wild beast on earth can 
withstand Frrzz shooting (unlicensed and unlimited) with 1000- 
yard “repeaters.” Personally the writer regards the use of 
repeating-rifles on game as sheer barbarism. These are military 
weapons, and should be excluded from every field of sport. 
A precisely analogous case is afforded by Norway and her rein- 
deer. The Mauser first appeared there in 1894. Three years 
later we pointed out, both to the Norwegian Government and also 
in Wild Norway, that unless steps were taken to regulate and 
limit the resultant massacre, the wild reindeer would be extinct 
within five years. Our warnings passed unheeded ; but the pre- 
diction erred only on the side of moderation. For only four years 
later (in 1901) the Norsk Government was forced to prohabit 
absolutely all shooting for a period of seven years, and to impose, 
on the expiry of that time, both licence-duties and limits, alike 
on native as well as on foreign sportsmen. 
Free shooting, unregulated and unlimited, means with modern 
weapons instant extermination—a matter of a few years. Then, 
after some creature has perished off the face of the earth, we read 
a gush of maudlin regret and vain disgust. It is too late; why 
do not these good. folk bestir themselves while there is time 
to safeguard creatures that yet survive, though menaced with 
deadly danger? Warnings such as ours pass unnoticed, and 
platonic tears are bottled-up for posthumous exhibition. 
In winter the ibex are driven downwards by the snow. 
They first descend southwards to the Trevenque—one of those 
abruptly peaked mountains that “stretch out” even skilled 
climbers to conquer. A long knife-edged ridge is Trevenque, 
culminating in a sheer pyramidal aiguille, its flanks scarred by 
ravines with complication of scarp and counter-scarp, upstanding 
crags and steep shale-shoots that defy definition by pen or pencil. 
