It seems premature to fear that the bouquetins will soon become extinct. It is not easy to take a census of them, for, although they have local habitations, it is extremely difficult to find them at home. But there is good reason to believe that there are at least six hundred still roaming over the mountains in the neighborhood of the valleys of Grisanche, Rhèmes, Savaranche and Cogne.
It would be a pity if it were otherwise. They appeal to the sympathies of all as the remnants of a diminishing race, and no mountaineer or athletic person could witness without sorrow the extinction of an animal possessing such noble qualities; which a few months after birth can jump over a man’s head at a bound, without taking a run; which passes its whole life in a constant fight for existence; which has such a keen appreciation of the beauties of Nature, and such disregard of pain, that it will “stand for hours like a statue in the midst of the bitterest storm, until the tips of its ears are frozen”! and which, when its last hour arrives, “climbs to the highest mountain-peaks, hangs on a rock with its horns, twists itself round and round upon them until they are worn off, and then falls down and expires”!![[52]] Even Tschudi himself calls this story wonderful. He may well do so. I disclaim belief in it,—the bouquetin is too fine a beast to indulge in such antics.
[52] Tschudi’s Sketches of Nature in the Alps.
Forty-five keepers, selected from the most able chasseurs of the district, guard its haunts. Their task is not a light one, although they are naturally acquainted with those who are most likely to attempt poaching. If they were withdrawn, it would not be long before the ibex would be an extinct wild animal, so far as the Alps are concerned. The passion for killing something, and the present value of the beast itself, would soon lead to its extermination. For as meat alone the bouquetin is valuable, the gross weight of one that is full grown amounting to from one hundred and sixty to two hundred pounds, while its skin and horns are worth ten pounds and upward, according to condition and dimensions.
In spite of the keepers, and of the severe penalties which may be inflicted for killing a bouquetin, poaching occurs constantly. Knowing that this was the case, I inquired at Aosta, upon my last visit, if any skins or horns were for sale, and in ten minutes was taken into a garret where the remains of a splendid beast were concealed—a magnificent male, presumed to be more than twenty years old, as its massive horns had twenty-two more or less strongly-marked knobby rings. The extreme length of the skin, from the tip of the nose to the end of the tail, was one metre sixty-nine centimetres (about five feet seven inches), and from the ground to the top of its back had been, apparently, about seventy-seven centimetres. It is rare to meet with a bouquetin of these dimensions, and the owner of this skin might have been visited with several years’ imprisonment if it had been known that it was in his possession.
THE BOUQUETIN
The chase of the bouquetin is properly considered a sport fit for a king, and His Majesty Victor Emmanuel, for whom it is reserved, is too good a sportsman to slaughter indiscriminately an animal which is an ornament to his domains. Last year (1869) seventeen fell to his gun at one hundred yards and upward. In 1868, His Majesty presented a fine specimen to the Italian Alpine Club. The members banqueted, I believe, upon its flesh, and they have had the skin stuffed and set up in their rooms at Aosta. It is said by connoisseurs to be badly stuffed—that it is not broad enough in the chest and is too large behind. Still, it looks well-proportioned, although it seems made for hard work rather than for feats of agility. From this specimen the accompanying engraving has been made.
It is a full-grown male about twelve years old, and if it stood upright would measure three feet three and a half inches from the ground to the base of its horns. Its extreme length is four, feet seven inches. Its horns have eleven well-marked rings, besides one or two faintly-marked ones, and are (measured round their curvature) fifty-four and a half centimetres in length. The horns of the first-mentioned specimen (measured in the same way) had a length of only fifty-three and a half centimetres, although they were ornamented with nearly double the number of rings, and were presumably of double the age of the former.[[53]]