86 HUNTING TRIPS 



offer a most attractive home; yet to other 

 living creatures they are at all times as 

 grimly desolate and forbidding as any spot 

 on earth can be; at all seasons they seem 

 hostile to every form of life. In the raging 

 heat of summer the dry earth cracks and 

 crumbles, and the sultry, lifeless air sways 

 and trembles as if above a furnace. Through 

 the high, clear atmosphere, the intense sun- 

 light casts unnaturally deep shadows; and 

 where there are no shadows, brings out in 

 glaring relief the weird, fantastic shapes and 

 bizarre coloring of the buttes. In winter 

 snow and ice coat the thin crests and sharp 

 sides of the cliffs, and increase their look of 

 savage wildness; the cold turns the ground 

 into ringing iron; and the icy blasts sweep 

 through the clefts and over the ridges with 

 an angry fury even more terrible than is the 

 intense, death-like, silent heat of midsummer. 

 But the mountain ram is alike proudly indif- 

 ferent to the hottest summer sun and to tHe 

 wildest winter storm. 



The lambs are brought forth late in May 



