ON THE SHEEP RANGES 



47 



ment of mythological conceptions. It persists among 

 most primitive men to-day, but is lost to us replaced by 

 the aesthetic feeling slowly and gradually evolved from it. 

 In civilized man the hunting instinct has become broad- 

 ened and transformed. We have learned to love and con- 

 template nature. We go back to the wilderness, and 

 the more primitive it is, the more strongly we feel its 

 charm. But the wilderness must include the animals. 

 Our active sympathies, developed by civilization, extend 

 also to them. We feel for them along with their wilder- 

 ness environment. We learn to know and love them. 

 They become inseparable from the mysterious emotions 

 aroused by mountains, valleys, woods, and waters. They 

 also arouse, kindle, and set glowing the primitive instinct 

 to hunt and kill. The pursuit leads us to nature which 

 in turn leads us to the pursuit. We cannot deny that this 

 must react upon our race. Endurance, strength, skill, 

 boldness, independence, manliness, are the qualities pro- 

 duced. 



The time may come when most of us will undertake 

 to work, endure, and suffer the hardships of the wilder- 

 ness, prompted only by love of it for its own sake. But 

 to many of us, in our present stage, hunting prevents the 

 mere contemplative indulgence in the beautiful from pro- 

 ducing effeminateness. 



We skinned the ram and went up a short distance to 

 the carcass of the caribou. It was photographed sev- 

 eral times, and then, after cutting off the head, Rungius 

 and Gage started back over the crest to take it down to 

 the horses and return to camp. It was 6.30 in the even- 



