174 WHERE ROLLS THE OREGON 



creature why and why ! The geographical distri- 

 bution of land animals, their successive migra- 

 tions back and forth between the continents during 

 the geological ages, is a story to stir the slowest 

 imagination ; yet no single record of these fossiled 

 wanderings to be read in the rocks ever stirred 

 me more than did the sight of the live cony mak- 

 ing a home for himself in the narrow limits of his 

 rock-slide in the rifts of the rent and blasted peaks 

 of the Wallowas. 



From the gorge of the wild Imnaha we had 

 climbed up and up to the blade-like divide that 

 runs between the head waters of the Big Sheep 

 and Little Sheep Creeks on one side, and the 

 windings of the Imnaha on the other, when our 

 guide and our mammal-collector left us and rode 

 on ahead. They soon struck an old mining-trail 

 around the flank of a peak, and, winding about 

 into this, they shortly disappeared. It was near 

 the end of a hard day's travel, and as our inde- 

 fatigable collector often took such sudden turns, 

 I thought little of it. But that night the two came 

 straggling late into camp with a cony, or " pika," 

 the "little chief," or "crying," hare. This was 

 what they had gone off in such haste for, making 



