SEARCHING FOR RAMS 67 



moved upward and disappeared over the crest. Looking 

 back on the spur where I had killed my last ram, I saw 

 a smaller ram walking across the slope. It reached the 

 edge of the cliff, leaped down to a jutting rock below, and 

 lay down. It was still resting at noon when I began to 

 climb the ridge. From the top seven ewes and lambs 

 could be seen back across the valley and laying down 

 on the crest of the mountain I had climbed a few days 

 before. Two hours later they were still resting in the 

 same place. The sun was brightly shining as I con- 

 tinued the long tramp along the ridges, fascinated by 

 the interest of looking down in the basins between the 

 numerous spurs, always hoping to see a bear feeding, or 

 perhaps rams resting. I kept carefully examining the 

 country ahead until the last mountain was climbed, but 

 not an animal was anywhere in sight. Here for the 

 first time I saw the white-tailed ptarmigan, very tame, 

 high up among the rocks. 



I could look down on the edge of the vast meadows, 

 extending many miles north and south, bristling here 

 and there with black spruces, and see well-defined moose 

 and caribou trails, crossing through the long grass. The 

 meadows were about three miles wide and through the 

 middle flowed a large stream coming from a mountain 

 to the south-west, and which was lost to view where it 

 flowed through the mountain ranges fifteen miles to the 

 north-east. On the other side of the meadows, parallel 

 with them, were high mountain chains, similar in ap- 

 pearance to those of the divide. The river is a branch of 

 the Tatonduk or Sheep Creek. Sheep trails extended in 



