184 The Mountain Sheep 



neither of men nor locomotives ; but just here 

 there is a hole in our dictionary. Do you 

 imagine that five years of captivity are going to 

 tame the blood and the nerves of a creature that 

 came over the Aleutian bridge from Asia during 

 the Pleistocene, and has been running wild in the 

 mountains until 1887 ? He was " tame " enough 

 to pay you no attention — until he wanted to kill 

 you ; and this was what he did want when I saw 

 him on the first day of the following December. 

 Then was his rutting time ; he was ready to 

 attack and destroy with his powerful horns any- 

 thing in Livingston ; and so it was in a stable 

 that I found the poor fellow, took a peep through 

 the quarter-opened door, where his owner had 

 shut him and tied him in the dark, away from 

 his natural rights of love and war. I noted his 

 winter coat of maltese, I heard his ominous 

 breathing, I saw the wild dangerous lustre in 

 his rolling eye ; and that was my farewell to 

 the captive. 



So good a chance to study a live ram I have 

 never had again. Upon the other occasions when 

 I have been able to approach them at all, study 

 has not been my object, and the distance between 

 us has been greater ; but on one happy later day. 



