Snow-slopes tipped at steep angles never inspire confidence in the unaxed climber, especially when the surface is half melted, revealing green ice beneath, and when the disappearing curve conceals from view what dangers may lurk below. Again a suddenly interrupted ledge--say where some great block has become disintegrated from the hanging face--necessitates a sort of nervy jump quite calculated to shorten one's days, even if it does not precipitately terminate them.
The ibex is always nocturnal. On the great cordilleras it spends its day asleep on some rock-ledge isolated amidst snow-fields, its security doubly assured by sentinels, whenever such are deemed necessary: or, lower down, in the caves of a sheer precipice. Only after sun-down do the ibex descend, and never, even then, so far as timber-line. On these loftier sierras their home by day is confined to rock and snow; by night to that zone of moss, heath, and alpine vegetation that intervenes between the snow-line and topmost levels of scrub and conifer.
Such are the ibex of the loftier ranges--Grédos and Neváda. But in the south, wild-goats are found on mountains of inferior elevation, 4000 to 6000 feet, many of which are jungled--some even forested--to their summits, and there they cannot disdain the shelter of the scrub. We have hunted them (within sight of the Mediterranean) in ground that appeared more suitable to roe-deer, and have seen the "rootings" of wild-pig within the ibex-holding area.
In such situations the wild-goats take quite kindly to the scrub, forming regular "lairs" wherein they lie-up as close as hares or roe. Amidst the brushwood that clothes the highland--heaths and broom, genista, rhododendron, lentiscus, and a hundred other shrubs--they rest by day and browse by night without having to descend or shift their quarters at all. On these lower hills the ibex owe their safety, and survival, to the vast area of covert, and, in less degree, to their comparatively small numbers. So few are they and so big their home, they are considered "not worth hunting."
During summer the ibex feed on the mountain-grasses, rush, and flowering shrubs which at that season adorn the alpine solitudes; later, on the berries and wild-fruits of the hill. By autumn they attain their highest condition--the beards of the rams fully developed and their brown pelts glossy and almost uniform in colour. At this period (September to October) the rutting season occurs and fighting takes place--the champions rearing on hind-legs for a charge, and the crash of opposing horns resounds across the corries of the sierra. Even in spring memories of the combative instinct survive, for we have watched, in April, a pair of veterans sparring at each other for half an hour.