TWO DIANAS IN ALASKA 229 



a hunter of any worth possesses. When dotted about 

 the mountains, away from the snow patches, sheep 

 can be very plainly seen, and in the wonderful atmo- 

 sphere it was often the simplest thing in the world to 

 judge accurately from a great distance whether or no 

 a head was worth the trouble involved in the taking 

 of it. 



The Indians have it that by the rings on the horns 

 you can tell the age of a sheep. A dreadful give- 

 away this for the ladies of the genus ! They only 

 carry small, graceful horns, curving backwards, which 

 rarely exceed eleven or twelve inches. The sheep in 

 the locality we hunted over are considered to boast 

 much finer heads than the rams of the Kenai Pen- 

 insula country and nearer the coast. A circumference 

 of fifteen inches at the base of the horn would be a 

 very splendid trophy from most of the get-at-able 

 sheep districts. One of mine from this Sushitna 

 River region came out at sixteen and a quarter inches 

 base measurement, and forty and a quarter inches on 

 the curves. A magnificent and wonderful head. One 

 of our other trophies topped fifteen and a half, another 

 fifteen, so that we grew exceedingly uppish, and 

 regarded anything under fifteen as too beggarly for 

 words. 



I think it is quite accurate to say that the rings 

 around the horns do tell the age of the carrier, for it 

 is easy to estimate the years of a sheep by the teeth, 

 and almost always the teeth and the rings, taken in 

 conjunction, gave the same evidence. 



We had mutton chops for supper the night we 



