[53] Mr. King, in his Italian Valleys of the Alps, says, “In the pair (of horns) I possess, which are two feet long, there are eight of these yearly rings.” It would seem, therefore (if the rings are annual ones), that the maximum length of horn is attained at a comparatively early age.
The keepers and the chasseurs of this district not only say that the rings upon the horns of the ibex tell its age (each one reckoning as a year), but that the half-developed ones, which sometimes are very feebly marked indeed, show that the animal has suffered from hunger during the winter. Naturalists are skeptical upon this point, but inasmuch as they offer no better reason against the reputed fact than the natives do in its favor (one saying that it is not so, and the other saying that it is so), we may perhaps be permitted to consider it an open question. I can only say that if the faintly-marked rings do denote years of famine, the times for the bouquetin are very hard indeed; since in most of the horns which I have seen the lesser rings have been very numerous, and sometimes more plentiful than the prominent ones.
The chef of the keepers (who judges by the above-mentioned indications) tells me that the ibex not unfrequently arrives at the age of thirty years, and sometimes to forty or forty-five. He says, too, that it is not fond of traversing steep snow, and in descending a couloir that is filled with it will zig-zag down, by springing from one side to the other in leaps of fifty feet at a time! Jean Tairraz, the worthy landlord of the Hotel du Mont Blanc at Aosta (who has had opportunities of observing the animal closely), assures me that at the age of four or five months it can easily clear a height of nine or ten feet at a bound!
Long live the bouquetin! and long may its chase preserve the health of the mountaineering king, Victor Emmanuel! Long life to the bouquetin! but down with the crétin!
The peculiar form of idiocy which is called crétinism is so highly developed in the valley of Aosta, and the natives are so familiarized with it, that they are almost indignant when the surprised traveler remarks its frequency. One is continually reminded that it is not peculiar to the valley, and that there are crétins elsewhere. It is too true that this terrible scourge is widespread throughout the Alps and over the world, and that there are places where the proportion of crétins to population is, or has been, even greater than in the valley of Aosta; but I have never seen or heard of a valley so fertile and so charming—of one which, apart from crétinism, leaves so agreeable an impression upon the wayfarer—where equal numbers are reduced to a condition which any respectable ape might despise.
The whole subject of crétinism is surrounded with difficulty. The number of those who are afflicted by it is unknown, its cure is doubtful, and its origin is mysterious. It has puzzled the most acute observers, and every general statement in regard to it must be fenced by qualifications.
It is tolerably certain, however, that the centre of its distribution in the valley of Aosta is about the centre of the valley. The city of Aosta itself may be regarded as its head-quarters. It is there, and in the neighboring towns of Gignod, Villeneuve, St. Vincent and Verrex, and in the villages and upon the high-road between those places, that these distorted, mindless beings, more like brutes than men, commonly excite one’s disgust by their hideous, loathsome and uncouth appearance, by their obscene gestures and by their senseless gabbling. The accompanying portrait of one is by no means overdrawn: some are too frightful for representation.
A CRÉTIN OF AOSTA