X.] BIGHORN SHOOTING. 213 



across, yet, absurd as it may seem to those of my readers who have 

 had no experience of the denseness and impassability of the vege- 

 tation in these and similar regions, I more than once wondered if I 

 should ever get through, I have certainly never been more com- 

 pletely exhausted than when I finished the last yard and rolled 

 helplessly upon the grass on the other side. 



After a rest on board the yacht I rowed along the coast to pick 

 up the game, two of which had rolled down five or six hundred 

 feet upon the beach below. Passing beneath the cliff' at the 

 entrance of the bay, we witnessed the death of a bighorn under 

 unusual circumstances, for the animals are in oeneral as sure-footed 

 as a chamois. A couple of them had been driven into a corner by 

 some of our party at the top of the cliff, but one broke back almost 

 immediately. The other, perched on a little pinnacle at the edge 

 of the precipice, seemed about to follow its comrade, but hesitated, 

 turned, and ran back. As it did so its foot slipped. It checked 

 itself for a moment, slipped again, made one desperate effort to 

 regain its footing, and was over in an instant. The creature never 

 moved a muscle as it fell, and hit the rocks four hundred feet below^ 

 with a dull scrunching thud, breaking one of the massive horns 

 short off, and converting the hind quarters into a shapeless, bleeding 

 pulp. 



Before dusk we had got on board no less than nine bighorn, 

 and the yacht's decks were more like a butcher's shop at Christmas 

 than anything else. AVe were busily engaged in measuring, skin- 

 ning, and weisjliinw during the evenino', and when, wearied with 

 the day's exertions, we turned in for a well-earned night's rest, we 

 looked forward to the prospect of equally good sport on the 

 morrow. 



The general colour of the Kamschatkan Wild Sheep (Ovis 

 nivicola, Eschscholtz) is a brownish grey, and the hair of those we 

 obtained was very long and thick, so much so that we concluded 

 that the animals had assumed their winter coat. The head and 

 neck are more distinctly grey than the rest of the body, the forehead 



