144 CAMP-FIRES IN THE CANADIAN ROCKIES 



crows and Canada jays that circled about us, or perched 

 briefly on the tips of the dead and ragged spruces; the 

 whistling of the cold, raw wind through the pines, and 

 over all the dull gray clouds flying swiftly and silently 

 across the tops of the peaks. 



We climbed on and on, seeing much but saying little. 

 In a patch of green timber, we found a nut-pine tree 

 that had been butted and badly scarred, by a mountain 

 sheep ram. Its stem was about ten inches in diameter, 

 and about three feet from the ground the horns of a lusty 

 sheep had battered the bark off, quite down to the wood. 

 Two long, elliptical scars were left, with a narrow strip 

 of living bark between them, as a record of the time 

 when a well-fed ram passed that way, and was seized 

 by the boy-like impulse to carve his name in the bark of 

 a tree. This is a favorite pastime of mountain sheep 

 rams during the months of September and October, when 

 they are so full of grass and energy that the mountains 

 seem scarcely big enough to contain them. 



To scramble for several hours along a steep mountain- 

 side, going always in the same direction, is very wearing 

 upon the ankles, and tends to make one leg shorter than 

 it really ought to be. At the " psychological moment," 

 whatever that may be, Charlie changed our course, 

 and bore diagonally downward until we struck the bot- 

 tom of Avalanche Valley close to the circle of light that 

 radiated from the blazing logs of our royal camp-fire. 



And then it began to snow. 



