THE LAST FREE MOUNTAIN RACES. 161 
The wild goat, sung by Gaston Phoebus, Count of Foix, cotera- 
porary of Duguesclin, the great hunter of the fourteenth century, has 
already disappeared from the Alps a hundred years and more, be- 
cause picturesque Helvetia is more in the way of the idle rich of 
Europe than the Pyrenean chain that separates Spain from France. 
The wild goat was already becoming a mere tradition in the wood- 
ed cantons of Claris and the Grisons toward the commencement 
of the seventeenth century. 
The time is not distant when it will have disappeared also from 
the Pyrenees, and we may one day find it again on some beetling 
cliff of Crete or of Mingrelia, forgotten by the English. Expe- 
rience has proved that the domestic goat, abandoned on desert 
isles, soon regains the appearance of the wild mountain goat, first 
source of the race. 
The wild goat differs essentially from the chamois, by its size 
and its headdress. It equals the fallow deer in size. Its immense 
horns, curved and bent back like those of the domestic goat, are 
storied over with humps or knots, whose number indicates the age 
of the animal. The brow of the female is equally armed thus. 
The chamois and the isard, which belong to the same species, wear 
short, straight horns like the antelope and the gazelle, only this 
vertical horn curves at its end into a pretty hook, which renders it 
peculiarly fitted to be used for a shoeing horn. 
The wild goat, the chamois, and isard feed in troops, more or 
less numerous, in the fragrant meadows moistened by the blue 
waters of the glaciers. To avoid all surprise, they are careful to 
post sentinels around their temporary encampment. At the least 
breath of alarm the whole band darts swift as the avalanche to- 
ward the issue indicated, and with prodigious leaps regains the 
shelter of the precipice. Thus on the flowery banks of Kara Ko- 
issou, in the fields of Circassia, a party of young, golden-haired 
maidens enchants the valley with its joyous sports, when sudden- 
ly thunders the alarm-gun of the citadel, announcing the arrival of 
the Russians, and warns the truant flock to re-enter their fold. 
The female of the goat, chamois, and isard carry their young 
five or six months, like the tame goat, and give birth in the spring 
to one or two little ones, the most graceful and charming of all in- 
