324 THE MOUNTAINS OF CALIFORNIA 



the bears be regarded as enemies ; for, though they 

 seek to vary their every-day diet of nuts and ber 

 ries by an occasional meal of mutton, they prefer 

 to hunt tame and helpless flocks. Eagles and co 

 yotes, no doubt, capture an unprotected lamb at 

 times, or some unfortunate beset in deep, soft 

 snow, but these cases are little more than acci 

 dents. So, also, a few perish in long-continued 

 snow-storms, though, in all my mountaineering, I 

 have not found more than five or six that seemed 

 to have met their fate in this way. A little band 

 of three were discovered snow-bound in Bloody 

 Canon a few years ago, and were killed with an ax 

 by mountaineers, who chanced to be crossing the 

 range in winter. 



Man is the most dangerous enemy of all, but 

 even from him our brave mountain-dweller has 

 little to fear in the remote solitudes of the High 

 Sierra. The golden plains of the Sacramento and 

 San Joaquin were lately thronged with bands of 

 elk and antelope, but, being fertile and accessible, 

 they were required for human pastures. So, also, 

 are many of the feeding-grounds of the deer hill, 

 valley, forest, and meadow but it will be long be 

 fore man will care to take the highland castles of 

 the sheep. And when we consider here how rapidly 

 entire species of noble animals, such as the elk, 

 moose, and buffalo, are being pushed to the very 

 verge of extinction, all lovers of wildness will re 

 joice with me in the rocky security of Ovis mon- 

 tana, the bravest of all the Sierra mountaineers. 



