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,[1] 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[2] is so highly developed in the Valley of Aosta, and the natives are so familiarised with it, that they are almost indignant when the surprised traveller 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 wide-spread 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
- ↑ Jean Tairraz was the leading guide of the late Albert Smith on his celebrated ascent of Mont Blanc.
- ↑ "Crétinism may be looked upon as being the highest stage of Idiocy, although it differs from it, in having a vitiated state of the body, in conjunction with the loss of the faculties of the mind. Thus it is composed of two distinct elements,—the one, Idiocy, the other, bad habit of body."—Blackie, On Crétinism, p. 6.
