_THE CHAMOIS._
Amongst the animals met with in the Alps, there is none so interesting
to the traveller as the chamois. The reason for this is not far to
seek, for the animal is sufficiently rare to excite both the curiosity
and the imagination, while its pursuit is known to be so difficult
and often dangerous, that it has frequently been described as
“mountaineering without a rope.” Thus a glamour of romance is thrown
over the whole subject.
Chamois-shooting in Switzerland is only allowed during one month of
the year, September. It is seldom indulged in, in this country, by
foreigners, as there is a great deal of difficulty in obtaining a
license. Indeed, it can only be had after the stranger has taken out
a _Niederlassung_ (which gives many of the rights of naturalisation
without loss of those of the free-born Briton), and this is both a
troublesome and a tedious process, besides entailing a residence of
some time in Switzerland.
There are several other plans, however, by which the ardent sportsman
works his will. One of these is simply to go and shoot, and,
disregarding all monetary considerations, pay a heavy fine for each
chamois secured. At what period, however, the Swiss authorities would
pronounce the offender against their laws incorrigible, and introduce
him to the interior of one of their prisons, I do not know.
A third course, and the one usually followed, is for the foreigner to
accompany a native who is armed with a license and a gun for his own
use. I will not affirm that in the excitement of the chase the latter
does not sometimes change hands.
Hampered by a rifle, and minus the help of the trusty rope and ice-axe,
chamois-hunting calls for exceptional activity and endurance. Most
Englishmen who go in for the sport make their headquarters in the
Italian Alps, where the Government regulations are less stringent than
in this country.
The Engadine contains large herds of chamois, and one can see thirty
or forty almost every day in summer feeding on the slopes of Piz
Tschierva, opposite the Roseg restaurant. This is no doubt because that
part of the Engadine has been strictly preserved for some years.
For the benefit of such of my readers as have never seen a chamois,
I extract the following description of one from Mr. Baillie Grohman’s
brightly written little work, “Tyrol and the Tyrolese.”
“Somewhat larger than a roedeer, a chamois weighs, when full grown,
from forty to seventy pounds. Its colour, in summer of a dusky
yellowish brown, changes in autumn to a much darker hue, while in
winter it is all but black. The hair on the forehead and that which
overhangs the hoofs, remains tawny brown throughout the year, while
the hair growing along the backbone is in winter dark brown and of
prodigious length; it furnishes the much-prized ‘Gamsbart,’ literally
‘beard of the chamois,’ with tufts of which the hunters love to adorn
their hats. The build of the animal exhibits in its construction a
wonderful blending of strength and agility. The power of its muscles
is rivalled by the extraordinary facility of balancing the body, of
instantly finding, as it were, the centre of gravity.”
Most districts of the Alps have their famous chamois-hunters; but,
according to Tschudi, the most celebrated of all was Jean-Marie Colani
of Pontresina. It is said that he kept about 200 chamois, half-tamed,
on the hills near his home. Each year he shot sixty males or so,
calculating on about the same number of young ones being born every
season. He would not tolerate any strangers in the district, and the
Tyrolese especially suffered much at his hands. It was popularly
related at Pontresina that he had a room in his châlet decorated with
foreign hunting implements, which he had taken from those whom he had
killed, the number of his victims being estimated at thirty. Of course
this was a gross exaggeration, and A. Cadonau, an old chamois-shooter
of Bergün, asserted that Colani only killed one Tyrolese hunter whom
he found on Swiss ground near Piz Ot; but he tells that one day he met
Colani unexpectedly, and the latter took deliberate aim at him, only
lowering his weapon when he recognised his friend.
It is said that on one occasion Colani killed three chamois grouped
together with one shot, and many anecdotes are told of him, most of
which are by no means to his credit. From the time he was twenty years
of age till his death, Colani killed 2600 chamois. This figure has
never been reached by any one else. Colani’s death in 1837 was caused
by over-exertion, he having undertaken for a bet to mow a piece of
land in the same time that it would take a couple of the best Tyrolese
mowers to accomplish a like amount.
The Grisons have had other famous chasseurs, amongst whom may be
mentioned J. Rüdi of Pontresina and Jacob Spinas of Tinzen. The latter
began to hunt at twelve years old, and, in a career of twenty-two
years, shot 600 chamois, besides securing every season forty to fifty
hares, about sixty marmots, some hundred or more partridges, a dozen
foxes or so, and in a single day catching trout to a weight of fifteen
to twenty pounds.
The largest herd of chamois Spinas ever saw numbered from sixty-five
to sixty-eight head. Spinas contested that he was only surpassed as a
hunter by one other man in the canton, namely, B. Cathomen of Brigels.
Other noted chamois-hunters, inhabiting Val Bregaglia and the
neighbouring valleys, are Giacomo Scarlazzi of Promontogno, who has
shot as many as five chamois in a day and seventeen in a week, and
Pietro Soldini of Stampa. The latter, up to 1887, had killed 1200 to
1300 chamois, of which he shot forty-nine in one autumn. J. Saratz of
Pontresina was also a famous chasseur, and the three brothers Sutter
of Bergün must not be forgotten. Amongst them they shot 1700 head, in
addition to which Mathew Sutter has killed a bear, a læmmergeier, and
often in a day eight to ten ptarmigan. He has only seen three lynx,
but has never shot one.
October 1852 was a fatal time for chamois-hunters, three of whom,
including the famous guide Hans Lauener, were killed during that month.
The saying that more chamois-hunters are killed while engaged in their
favourite sport than die a natural death has, unfortunately, a good
deal of truth in it. Sometimes the chasseur, overcome by fatigue, falls
asleep in some cold and exposed spot, never to wake again. Sometimes
he is mortally wounded by falling stones, or struck by lightning in
a thunderstorm. Often he is killed by avalanches, and if, when on
difficult ground far from home, he is overtaken by a thick fog, his
position becomes most perilous. He may wander for hours without nearing
the valley; he may slip down a precipice concealed by the mist; he may
give in to utter exhaustion. The diminution of the chamois within the
last fifteen or twenty years also makes his task much harder, and he
may spend days without being able to approach, or perhaps even without
seeing one.
A pretty anecdote of a chamois is told by Dr. John Forbes in his work
“A Physician’s Holiday.” He says that in the year 1843 the proprietor
of a large flock of goats on the Great Scheideck had rendered a
chamois so tame, by training it almost from its birth, as to get it to
mingle in the herd with its more civilised cousins, and to come and go
with them to and from the mountains with perfect docility and seeming
content. Like most of its companions, it was decorated with a bell
suspended round its neck. After following for three successive seasons
this domestic course, it all at once forgot the lessons it had learnt,
and lost its character as a member of civilised society for ever. One
fine day, when higher up the mountains than was customary for the
flock, it suddenly heard the bleat of its brethren on the cliffs above,
and pricking up its ears, off it started, and speedily vanished amid
the rocks, whence the magical sounds had come. Never from that hour
was the tame chamois seen on the slopes of the Scheideck, but its bell
was often heard by the hunters ringing among the wild solitudes of the
Wetterhorn.
It is only when the chamois has lost, through disease, that amount of
intelligence with which it is gifted by nature that it will abandon
its mountain home and seek the haunts of man. Johann Scheuchzer of
Zurich tells us that in the year 1699, only four years before the
date of his journey, a chamois suddenly descended into the valley of
Engelberg in Unterwalden, and not only mixed with the horses and cows,
but could not even be driven from them by stones. It was at length
shot, and on its body being examined after death by one of the fathers
of the neighbouring monastery, a sac containing watery serum and sandy
particles was found pressing on the brain. Some ten years ago a chamois
appeared in the streets of Bonneville (Haute-Savoie), and walked
calmly in at the open door of a restaurant, where it was captured. The
Chamonix hunters say that there is a certain herb which, on being eaten
by chamois, maddens them, and that they consequently wander down into
the valley.
On September 1, 1887, a chamois was seen by an Englishman who was
driving on the high-road at Frauenkirch, near Davos-Platz. The coachman
also saw it, and the distance from the road to the right bank of
the Landwasser, where it was first perceived, was so short that an
excellent view of the animal was obtainable. It swam vigorously across
the river, and disappeared in the forest beyond. Perhaps as September
1st is the date on which chamois-hunting commences, it had been driven
down the valley by terror.
Chamois take freely to the water, and several instances are on record
of their having been enabled by swimming to elude their pursuers.
Many hunters look upon one particular animal in the district they
inhabit as a pet, and refrain from shooting it themselves, or allowing
it to be shot. These favoured beasts are sometimes so tame that they
linger round the alps where the chasseurs live, and allow them to
approach to within a distance of a few feet.
In common with many other animals, chamois dearly love salt, and in
certain districts where the rocks are flavoured with a saline taste,
the animals come in flocks to lick them. The hunters sometimes put down
salt for the benefit of the chamois, refraining, however, from shooting
them when they come to eat it, as they might thus frighten them away
from that part of the country.
There are several ways of hunting chamois. Sometimes they are driven,
either as in the great preserves of the Duke of Coburg near the
Achensee, that of the Archduke Victor near Kufstein, and others in
Tyrol and Germany (it is needless to add that there are no private
preserves in Switzerland), or in a more sportsmanlike manner, when
three or four hunters drive the chamois down from their pastures
at dawn, and, later on, remounting the slopes, drive them up again,
often imitating the barking of a dog, towards their retreat. Here
several chasseurs are lying hidden, and as soon as the animals arrive
within range, they shoot. It is, of course, often difficult to drive
the chamois in the right direction, but the knowledge of their haunts
displayed by the hunters is frequently most astonishing in its
exactitude.
The most usual way of hunting chamois is to stalk them, and I think
there can be no question as to the infinite superiority of the sport
thus obtained. I would here add, in the words of a sportsman, that “the
wholesale slaughter of an animal that Nature herself has placed in the
most sublime recesses of her creation, and endowed with such noble
qualities and wonderful organisation, is a proceeding which a true
sportsman ought not to countenance.”
It is supposed that there are as many as 2000 head of chamois in the
Grisons alone. The oldest chamois ever shot was believed to have
reached the age of forty years. It was killed in the Engadine in 1857,
but its age is probably much exaggerated. As for the heaviest chamois,
one weighing 125 Swiss pounds was shot on the Tschingel (Bernese
Oberland). I can find no record of a chamois of greater weight than
this.
It has been estimated, from measurements made on Monte Rose, that a
chamois can jump crevasses sixteen to eighteen Swiss feet in width,
while it can jump down twenty-four feet or so.
Every year the number of chamois shot in the Grisons exceeds 500, and
in December a corresponding number of skins are offered for sale at St.
Andrew’s market at Chur.
It has often been a matter for speculation as to whether the chamois
will ever become extinct in this country. I cannot think it likely
that it will. It is carefully preserved in the closed districts, and
as the wild valleys of the Alps are more and more opened up, poaching
will become more difficult and the animals consequently freer from
molestation. The more, too, that habitations increase in the higher
valleys, the wilder will the chamois probably become, and the more
difficult, therefore, to shoot; so that I do not think that we need
fear the dying out of the race.