MOUNTAIN SHEEP. 



75 



seem to have some notion of the modus operandi of gun- 

 powder, for, if by any chance they meet an armed hunter 

 face to face, they will strain every nerve not only to get 

 out of range in the shortest possible time, but also to 

 confuse his aim by the fitfulness and rapidity of their 

 motion, touching the ground only for a moment, coming 

 down in a wide leap and up again instantly like a re- 

 bounding ball, but going zigzag withal : so that the best 

 marksman has to fire at random or content himself with 

 picking off a straggling lamb. A half-hit is as bad as 

 a miss, for an old bighorn takes an amazing deal of 

 killing : a shot through the neck or entrails will not 

 produce any visible effect for the first thirty or forty 

 minutes. 



Herons, hawks, and some other birds that cannot 

 hide their nests are sure to select the tallest tree in a 

 thousand, and a similar instinct seems to guide the 

 cimarron in the choice of his pasture-grounds. He 

 knows what sort of rocks the average hunter would call 

 inaccessible. The North American alps abound with 

 such rocks. Only the roving Apache has ever ap- 

 proached the heights that hide the sources of the Rio 

 Gila. In the Wind River Mountains, in the Wyoming 

 Black Hills, and on the eastern slope of the Sierra Ne- 

 vada there are thousands of square miles which no 

 hunter's eye but that of Orion has ever surveyed. The 

 town of Monclova, near Monterey, is half surrounded 

 by ramparts of the Sierra de San Simon, and from the 



