Part 10

========+=======+==========+=================+========================== LENGTH |CIRCUM-| | | ON FRONT|FERENCE|TIP TO TIP| LOCALITY | OWNER CURVE | | | | --------+-------+----------+-----------------+-------------------------- --52½ | 18½ | .. |The Selkirks, |W. F. Sheard | | | B.C., 1885 | | | | | --45 | .. | .. | ? |W. Grant Mackay | | | | --42½ | 16¼ | 25¾ |Lower California |George H. Gould | | | | 42 | 16 |(tips much|Wyoming |Picked up by | | worn) | | T. W. H. Clarke | | | | .. | 17¼ | .. |Wyoming |T. W. H. Clarke | | | | --41½ | 15 | .. |Kootenay, B.C. |Measured by John Fannin, | | | | Provincial Museum, B.C. | | | | --40¾ | 16½ | .. |Yellowstone |British Museum | | | | 40¼ | 15¼ | 20¼ | ? |Sir Edmund G. Loder, Bart. | | | | --40 | 15¼ | .. |Rocky Mountains |Otho Shaw | | | | 40 | 15 | 21½ |British Columbia |J. W. R. Young | | | | 39⅝ | 15⅜ | .. |Colorado |St. George Littledale | | | | 39½ | 16½ | 24¾ |Montana |British Museum | | | | 39½ | 15½ | 19 | ? |Sir Edmund G. Loder, Bart. | | | | --39 | 15¾ | .. | ? |W. A. Baillie-Grohman | | | | 38⅜ | 15½ | 22 | ? |Gerald Buxton | | | | 38¼ | 16⅜ | .. |Bighorn |H. Seton-Karr | | | Mountains | | | | | 38¼ | 15¼ | 19¼ |Montana |Edmund Littledale | | | | 38¼ | 16 | 19 |N.W. Territories |S. Ratcliff | | | | 38 | 17 | .. |Alberta, N.W.T. |Arnold Pike | | | | 38 | 15 | .. |British Columbia |Captain F. Cookson | | | | --38 | 16½ | .. |British Columbia |Major C. C. Ellis | | | | 37¾ | 15⅞ | 23⅜ |Mexico |J. A. H. Drought | | | | --37¾ | 16¼ | 22½ |British Columbia |J. O. Shields | | | | 37¼ | 15½ | 16 |British Columbia |J. Turner-Turner | | | | --37 | 16 | 31 |Wyoming |T. W. H. Clarke | | | | 37 | 16¼ | .. |Montana |Major Maitland Kirwan | | | | 37 | 16⅝ | 16 |British Columbia |R. H. Venables Kyrke | | | | 37 | 15½ | 18½ |Wyoming | Lord Rodney | | | | 36¾ | 19 | 15 |British Columbia |C. H. Kennard | | | | 36¾ | 15¼ | 22½ |Wyoming |Moreton Frewen | | | | 36½ | 14½ | .. |Wyoming |Gerald Buxton | | | | 36½ | 16 | .. | ? |Thomas Bate | | | | 36½ | 14 | .. | ? |J. D. Cobbold | | | | 36¼ | 14⅜ | 18½ | ? |Gerald Buxton | | | | 36 | 14¾ | 16½ |Montana |R. H. Sawyer | | | | 36 | 15½ | .. |Alberta, N.W.T. |Arnold Pike | | | | 36 | 14¾ | 16 |Wyoming |Capt. G. Dalrymple White | | | | --35⅞ | 14¾ | 17½ |Wyoming |Count E. Hoyos | | | | 35¾ | 15¼ | 18½ |British Columbia |G. Wrey | | | | 35¾ | 13¾ | 17½ |British Columbia |Hon. S. Tollemache | | | | 35½ | 16 | 21 |British Columbia |T. P. Kempson | | | | 35¼ | 12¼ | 16 |California |Sir Victor Brooke’s Coll. | | | | 35¼ | 15¼ | 18½ |British Columbia |Sir Peter Walker, Bart. | | | | 35 | 14 | 18½ |British Columbia |Admiral Sir Michael | | | | Culme-Seymour, Bart. | | | | --35 | 15 | 19¾ |Wyoming |Count Schiebler | | | | 35 | 14 | 16 |Wyoming |Gerald Hardy | | | | 34½ | 14¾ | 19 |S.E. Montana |J. A. Jameson | | | | 34½ | 14½ | .. |California |G. P. Fitzgerald | | | | --34 | 16 | 17 |N.W. Wyoming |A. Rogers | | | | 34 | 16¼ | 20 |British Columbia |Barclay Bonthron | | | Border | | | | | 33½ | 15¼ | .. |British Columbia |Admiral Sir Michael | | | | Culme-Seymour, Bart. | | | | 33 | 15⅜ | 18 |British Columbia |Capt. E. G. Verschoyle | | | | 33 | 14¾ | 24½ |Wyoming |Lieut.-Col. Hon. W. Coke | | | | 33 | 14½ | 22 | ? |F. H. B. Ellis | | | | 33 | 14 | 23 |British Columbia |T. P. Kempson | | | | 33 | 15½ | 22 |British Columbia |A. E. Butter | | | | 32¾ | 15½ | 17½ | ? |C. G. R. Lee | | | | --32½ | 14⅝ | 19½ |Fraser River, |A. E. Leatham | | | B.C. | | | | | 32½ | 15 | 17½ |Lower California |G. Barnardiston

32 | 15¼ | 19½ |British Columbia |J. W. Wood, Jr. | | | | 32 | 14¾ | 17¼ |Yellowstone |British Museum | | | River | | | | | 31½ | 14½ | 17½ |N.W. Territory |Maj. Algernon Heber-Percy | | | | 31 | 17½ | .. |Grand Encampment,|Frank Cooper | | | Wyo. | | | | | --31 | 13 | 22 |British Columbia |T. E. Buckley | | | | 30¾ | 15 | 23 | ? |Hon. Walter Rothschild | | | | 30½ | 15¾ | about |Lower California |Ely Quilter | | 17½ | | | | | | 30½ | 15½ | 18 |Wyoming |J. L. Scarlett | | | | --30½ | 14 | 15½ |Wyoming |Hugh Peel | | | | 30 | 15¼ | 14 |Alberta, N.W.T. |F. C. Williamson --------+-------+----------+-----------------+-------------------------

ALASKAN BIGHORN (_Ovis canadensis dalli_)

+-------+----------+-----------------+------------------------- 34 | 12⅝ | 18⅛ |Alaska |Rowland Ward | | | | 33 | 12¾ | 15 |Alaska |Hon. Walter Rothschild | | | | 32½ | 13¼ | 20½ |Alaska |J. T. Studley, | | | |British Museum | | | | ♀9⅛ | 4⅞ | 8 |Alaska |British Museum ========+=======+==========+=================+=========================

THE WHITE GOAT AND HIS WAYS

BY OWEN WISTER

Should you wish with your own eyes to look upon this odd and much-debated creature, it is (to name some of his territories) in the Saw Tooth Range in Idaho, and among the peaks northward from Lake Chelan, the Okanogan and Methow rivers, all three in Washington, and also upon many mountains near the coast in British Columbia that, if you climb high and hard enough, you are almost sure to find him; and you would be perfectly certain to find him in the Zoölogical Gardens at Philadelphia to-day April twenty, 1903. But it may be that by the time you shall read this the summer heat of Philadelphia will have ended his existence there; and this is the only place in our country (or in any country at present writing) where he is in captivity. Of his natural habitat and the interesting questions that it raises, I shall presently speak; let me at once dismiss the question of his species, now finally known as _Oreamnus montanus_.

He is not a goat at all. We have fallen to speaking of him so in English because for a good number of years it has been the name he has gone by where he lives; but he is an antelope, and his nearest relative is the chamois, whose quite peculiar way of walking his own gait closely resembles. The chamois I have never hunted, but have often watched the singular hunching and truculent movement of the goat, as with head lowered (you might suppose for a charge) he slowly and heavily proceeds along his chosen vertiginous paths of rock and snow. He is a mountain antelope; and his various Latin names, and the confusion, both popular and scientific, of which he was the subject through most of the nineteenth century, are curious and interesting matters. He was doubtless in zoölogic truth an emigrant, having walked from frozen Asia to frozen America across that great old Aleutian Isthmus between two frozen oceans, adjacent seas unmerged as yet by Behring Strait. With other newcomers he replaced the original dwellers of the soil, the American rhinoceros and any number more of old inhabitants with whom the climate had ceased to agree. After landing upon our continent away up in the north the goat and sheep spread themselves widely; but the goat not half nor a quarter so widely as the sheep. The more we compare these similar creatures, the more singular seem their contrasts.

If they were fellow-travellers and twin arrivals, if they did come over the Aleutian bridge together, it is either because there was only one bridge and both had to use it, or else they fell out on the way, and reached here not on speaking terms. The first hypothesis is the one to which I incline: they had to use the same trail because there was only one. Sheep and goat do not seem to me to live on good terms. I should not venture this observation were it based upon my individual experience alone. What my campings have gradually led me to notice is this: you don’t find sheep and goat on the same hill as you find elk and deer in the same wood. Considering that both animals like steep places, like rocks, like very high rocks; and also that their respective habitats coincide in certain regions,--in British Columbia, for instance, and in Washington, and, I think one might fairly add, in Idaho,--I dare by no means make the sweeping assertion that sheep and goat have never been found, or are never to be found, frequenting the same pasture; I don’t know this, and all of us do know that negatives are difficult of proof. But I have camped high in Washington, with goats in profusion all around, and the whole country looking precisely like a sheep country, yet never the sign of a sheep anywhere to be seen. People said, “Plenty of sheep over there,” and they would point to some clearly visible heights. And next, people came from not thirty miles away, having seen and killed sheep. It was the same latitude, the same altitude, the same season, the same everything. What is to be drawn from this? That it was an accidental year, and just happened so for the few weeks that I was there? This is the conclusion that you might draw, as I then did; and you would be wrong, as I then was. For I returned there six years later, and it was still the case, and had been the case meanwhile, saving only that goats and sheep and all wild animals, wherever their chosen abode was, had been growing scarcer and shyer, and were approaching that extinction which we deal to all helpless things that do not minister to our own comfort and survival. During those intervening years I had hunted sheep in a country which for all the world looked as if a goat might come round the corner at any moment. But no goat ever did; and yet, had I ridden down those mountains, and over a space of plains to the westward, and up the very first mountains I should then have met, there would then have been all the goat I wanted, and not (I have been told) a single sheep!

Thinking these things over, I began to wonder if some particular kind of food (since climate it could absolutely not be) was the cause of this flocking apart. Was there, perchance, some little herb which a goat must have and a sheep didn’t like? Well, if that be so, no botanist has so far told me its name; while on the other hand, very recently, I have had news of a sportsman who was hunting in some mountains of British Columbia where sheep and goat were both readily to be found, and whose experience was like mine, only more marked and significant. He had stood upon one mountain where there were goat, and looked across to an adjacent one where he could plainly see sheep. Now on his mountain there was not a single sheep; he must go to the other for them; but over there he must expect no goat. He found this so, and he was assured that it was always so: the animals did not seem to trespass upon each other’s premises.

These few facts that I have here gathered seem to me worthy of recording, and perhaps enough to warrant a presumption; but insufficient for an assertion. Until others shall have on their part added similar observations, I would lay down no rule that a chronic hostility separates _Ovis_ and _Oreamnus_. Perhaps such a rule has been laid down, but if it be printed anywhere, I have not met it; nor have I had the fortune (after consulting the books) to meet any accounts of goat which essentially add to what has been said already by Audubon; and that is somewhat meagre. Many pictures there are, much better than his old-fashioned plates, but further solid information is uncommonly scarce. Even the latest and most official authorities, when you test their pages by an intimate searching for a piece of comprehensive and definite information, do not give you that information.

If my surmise be true, and sheep and goat are apt to be upon strained relations, I think we may be certain which of the two has regulated the affair. I will hazard the guess that in single combat the goat could ruin the sheep before the sheep was fully aware of what had befallen him. Hunters can picture such an encounter, which probably would be brief if grand. The gallant old sheep would stand, aim, bound to the attack and leap in the air, expecting to dash his forehead and curling horns against the face and horns of the goat. But the goat--ah! that’s not the goat’s way. It would have happened so quickly as not to be made out; but there the poor ram would lie, ripped open. The goat does nothing so picturesque and unpractical as jumping in the air. He lowers his sullen head, one shrewd thrust and jerk-back with his deadly sharp horns, and the business is despatched. And the goat looks it, too. His appearance suggests immediately that you had better look out for him if you happen to be a ram with beautiful useless horns--useless, that is, against any such apparatus as the goat carries. One day I stood watching a good specimen billy-_Oreamnus_. The nanny, less conspicuous, lay in the shade on some flat ground, asleep. But the billy sat hunched on the peak of a built-up pyramid of rocks. It was in the Zoölogical Gardens at Philadelphia where this pair, taken into captivity in 1901, have grown and thrived, but have not bred. The billy shows his formidable nature; no strangers can go near him; he would disembowel them in a jiffy; even his keeper has to be wary. At the top of his pile of rocks sat the captive, hunched, as I have said, and truculent and lowering, in spite of his stillness. His eye had that gaze which so wonderfully remains with wild animals who are prisoned from the great free natural spaces that belong to them, whose birthright is a liberty of no sparrow-and-robin size, but a colossal liberty, the range of the primal world, where fences and statutes are not. Our delightfully conventional intelligence is familiar with this look in the eyes of the lion and the eagle because the poets have called our attention to it, have said pretty things about it; but if you have the unusual gift of making your own observations, you will find it in many other animals, including certain types of man. As for this goat, no goat sitting on a rock at Harlem could stare like him; he might have been sitting on the top of the Cascade Mountains, surveying huge gulfs, and (possibly) meditating how improving it would be to disembowel a ram.

As I watched him, an odd thought revisited me: how Asiatic he looked, for some obscure reason! I remembered thinking this same thing when I had shot my first goat eleven years before. Asiatic? Yes; and I cannot at all explain why, unless it be that one has seen pictures of animals which hail from somewhere like Tibet, and which bear some resemblance to the _Oreamnus_. I know that no other of our Western big game strike me in this way; buffalo, elk, deer, antelope, sheep,--all these have always seemed to me to look indigenous, to belong to our North American soil. But this goat is a figure that it surprises me to meet among the haunts of my own language; his idiom should be Mongolian!

He’s white, all white, and shaggy, and twice as large as any goat you ever saw. His white hair hangs long all over him, like a Spitz dog’s or an Angora cat’s; but it is stiff and coarse, not silky, and against its shaggy white mass the blackness of his hoofs, and horns, and nose, looks particularly black. His legs are thick, his neck is thick, everything about him is thick, saving only his thin black horns. They’re generally about six inches long, they spread very slightly, and they curve slightly backward. At their base they are a little rough, but as they rise they cylindrically smooth and taper to an ugly point. His hoofs are heavy, broad, and blunt. The track they make is huge, and precisely the reverse of the sheep’s; it is a capital V, pointing backward. The sheep’s track is a V also, but pointing forward. By his clumsy-looking hoofs, and his thick-set and apparently unwieldy legs, it would seem as though this goat had best keep his level, as though he might seldom go up two steps of even a porch without accident; a set of legs and hoofs could scarce be instanced of seemingly less avail for a mountaineer. So, at least, I should argue, recalling the various sharp apparatus which we need ourselves. One does not see how these heavy animals can leap and cling. But let me transcribe uncorrected some sentences from my hunting journal of November, 1892, pencilled in flippant spirit after a day’s pursuit of the goat.

“They … chose places to lie down where falling off was the easiest thing you could do.… The individual tracks we have passed always choose the inclined plane where they have a choice between that and the level.… I suppose these animals sometimes must fall, though they have a projecting heel of horn to their hoof which is wonderfully adapted to their vertical habits. But if they do fall, it probably amuses them. Their hair is more impenetrably thick than any hair I have seen, and beneath this is the hide thicker than buffalo. If they play games together, it is probably to push each other over a precipice, and the goat that takes longest to walk up again loses the game.”

You can see from these lines what a tide of resentment flows between them. I remember that hard but successful day very well; and it furnished some facts about size and weight and so on, which were all recorded on the spot, and which give some good details well to know.

To begin with, there is that “projecting heel of horn” to the goat’s hoof. We cannot imagine how he manages to make such a slight thing (not over a quarter of an inch) catch his weight. He weighs anywhere from one hundred and eighty to three hundred pounds. I had no means that day on top of the Cascade Mountains to ascertain how much the male I had killed might weigh, but he was very much of a load for two of us to move. His hide (not the hair but the leather) on his rump was as thick as the sole of my boot. My boot was made for climbing mountains, and the sole was filled with hobnails; the hide was as thick as such a sole, and when balanced against things in camp whose weight we knew,--such as flour and sugar bags,--it alone weighed thirty pounds! We carried home, beside the head and hide, the web-tallow, and this was three-quarters of an inch thick. Hunters will know what ample supply this means in animals much larger than the goat. This specimen was, my most companionable guide told me, of good but not supreme size. We carried home none of the meat. The flesh of the grown-up goat cannot be eaten with much pleasure; but later, for the sake of a complete set of specimens, I shot a kid; and the flesh of this we ate with entire satisfaction for our Thanksgiving dinner. And this brings me to the next point.

“These wild goat,” says my journal, “are twice the size and more of the ordinary goat, and if their hides kept clean and snow-white as they naturally are, they would be a splendid-looking animal.”