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.