THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
resulted in a total blank. Despite the skill and tireless efforts of the 
mountaineers, the task of forcing the wild -goats through the selected 
passes proved beyond their powers. 
“The third and last day brought brilliant compensation. The drive 
lay from the gorge of Las Cinco Lagunas towards the rugged mountain- 
mass called the Ameal de San Pablo. The guns, placed in the passes 
of the intervening sky-line, secured seven ibex rams during the day: 
while the biggest old male in all the sierra, after receiving three rifle- 
balls, escaped in the darkness, but was found dead the following 
morning.” 
At the moment of writing we believe the ibex of GrCdos to outnumber 
400 head — a truly striking increase upon the fifteen survivors of eight 
short years ago. 
Such a result may well encourage other Spanish landowners to extend 
protection to the ibex on their properties. Regarded merely as a monetary 
matter, it would assuredly “ pay though that is not a consideration of 
the slightest weight with the grandees of Spain. In Norway the point was 
recognized — as regards reindeer — but only at the eleventh hour (in 1895) 
— and the reindeer is not restricted to Norway as Capra hispanica is to 
Spain. A very few decades hence a Spanish sierra (otherwise almost 
valueless) might command as long a rent as a crack Scottish deer-forest. 
THE CHAMOIS, called in Spanish Rebeco , ranges from the Pyrenees 
westward along the whole Cantabrian range overlooking Biscay, but is 
not found either in the central or South -Spanish cordilleras — nowhere, 
in fact, beyond sight of the Biscayan Sea. There its main stronghold has 
always been in that congeries of stupendous rock pinnacles known as the 
Picos de Europa, some of which exceed 10,000 ft. in altitude. Here, however, 
the chamois has recently passed under the aegis of Royal protection, 
exclusive rights of chase in the Picos having been spontaneously ceded by 
the owners to their monarch — exactly as happened with the ibex in Credos. 
Hence these chamois, which are thousands strong, cease to interest the 
foreign hunter. 
The native method of shooting is confined exclusively to big mountain 
drives, termed Monterias. Chamois could unquestionably be secured by 
stalking — that fact has been demonstrated by Mr E. N. Buxton, whose 
description of chamois -stalking in the Pyrenees should be read by all who 
love that craft (“ Short Stalks,” 1893, chap. xi). The stalker, however, 
must be an Alpinist and cragsman of trained skill, and tough as steel at 
388 
