standing, or moving a few feet onward in my direction. This means
that she was coming up a quite gentle slant, and that thirty yards
more would land her at my evergreen bush. She came nearer than thirty
yards and abruptly stopped. She had suddenly not liked the looks of
my evergreen. Behind her on one side, the last steep ascent of the
mountain rose barer and barer of all growth to its stony, invisible
summit which a curve of the final ridge hid from view. Behind her,
down the quiet slant of the terrace, was the wall where she had left
the lamb. She now backed a few stiff steps, keeping her eye upon the
evergreen. Her uncertainty about it, and the ladylike reserve of her
shut lips, caused me to choke with laughter. To catch a wild animal
going through a (what we call) entirely human proceeding has always
been to me a delightful experience; and from now to the end this
sheep’s course was as human as possible. I had been so engaged with
watching her during the last few minutes that I had forgotten the
lamb. The lamb had somehow got up the wall and was approaching. Its
mamma now turned and moderately hastened down the slope to it. What
was said between them I don’t know; but the child came no farther in
my suspicious direction; it stayed behind among some little bushes,
and the mother returned to scrutinize my hiding-place. She looked
straight at me, straight into my eyes it seemed, and her curiosity and
indecision again choked me with laughter. She came even nearer than she
had come before. How much of me she saw I cannot tell, but probably my
hair and forehead; she at any rate concluded that this was no suitable
place. She turned as I have seen ladies turn from a smoking-car, and
with no haste sought her child again. How she managed their next move
passes my comprehension; I imagined that every foot of the mountain
ascent near me was in my full view. But it was not. Quite unexpectedly
I now became aware of the two, trotting over the shoulder of the ridge
above me, with already two or three times the distance between us that
had been just now. If I had wished to follow them, it would have been
useless, and I had seen enough. When I was ready, I made for the summit
myself. The side which I had so far come up was the south side, and
a little further climbing took me over the narrow shoulder to the
north, where I was soon walking in long patches of snow. Across these
in front of me went the tracks of the mamma and her lamb, the sage and
gentle guide with the little novice who was learning the mountains and
their dangers; across these patches I followed them for several miles,
because my way happened to be theirs. No doubt they saw me sometimes;
but I never saw them again. I hope no harm ever came to them; for I
like to think of these two, these members of an innocent and charming
race that we are making away with, as remaining unvexed by our noise
and destruction, remaining serene in the freedom that lives among their
pinnacles of solitude.
AMERICAN BIGHORN
(OVIS CANADENSIS[15])
The bighorn of the American continent, inclusive of its local
races (frequently regarded as distinct species), is a large sheep,
distinguished from the Asiatic argalis, among other features, by the
comparative smoothness of the horns, in which the outer front angle is
prominent, and the inner one rounded off, and also by the smaller size
of the face glands. There is a well-marked whitish patch on the rump,
but the amount of white on the under parts and legs shows considerable
local variation. In the typical Rocky Mountain race (_O. canadensis
typica_) the ears are long and pointed, with short hair, and the horns,
which are very heavy, diverge but little outwards, and generally have
the tips broken. The Californian _O. canadensis nelsoni_ is a paler
southern race. On the other hand, in _O. canadensis stonei_ of the
northwest territories the color of the back is very dark, and the white
on the belly and legs sharply defined. And both in this race and the
light-colored _O. canadensis dalli_ of Alaska the horns are lighter,
more divergent, and sharper pointed, while the ears tend to become
shorter, blunter, and more hairy. Height at shoulder about 3 feet 2
inches; weight about 350 pounds.
The horns of the ewes are very small in comparison to those of the
rams, seldom measuring more than 15 inches on the curve from base to
tip. Large male horns are now difficult to obtain, and of late years
it is seldom that those of fresh-killed specimens are seen exceeding
38 inches on the curve from tip to tip. American sportsmen are keen
to obtain horns of large basal girth; but these, as will be seen from
the following table, rarely exceed 16 inches. The Maclaine of Lochbuie
possesses a specimen whose girth, according to his own measurement, is
19 inches.
_Distribution._--North America, from the Rocky Mountains southward to
Sonora, northern Mexico, and California, and northward to Alaska and
the shores of Bering Sea. The Alaskan race, for at least some portion
of the year, is snow-white.
MEASUREMENTS OF HORNS
========+=======+==========+=================+==========================
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
[Illustration: ABOVE TIMBER LINE]
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.”