IN THE SHEEP COUNTRY 



195 



would clamber down the apparently sheer face of the rocks 

 on to the glacier after these sheep and return later with the 

 horns, etc. In the afternoon Glyn returned to his camp, he 

 and Little meaning to strike out for the moose country in 

 a day or two. 



We were now camped at some considerable height above 

 sea-level, and had a sharp touch of frost each night. This 

 in no way inconvenienced either Hanbury or myself. He in 

 particular was well accustomed to cold, since he had only 

 recently come down from the Arctic Circle, where he had 

 spent some three years living with the Esquimaux in the 

 Mackenzie River country. The touch of frost put an end to 

 the few remaining mosquitoes, which fortunately are never 

 very bad in the sheep country. The last of these little pests 

 which I remember seeing was on our first evening in this 

 new camp, and it afforded some amusement to me if not to 

 Hanbury, who was at that moment enveloped in a huge kind 

 of mackintosh cloth which he tied round his head and arms in 

 order to make a kind of dark room, in which he changed the 

 plates of his camera. Whilst busily engaged at this work 

 the last mosquito of summer took him at a disadvantage, 

 and having found some soft spot commenced to work its 

 wicked will on him. The awful flow of language coming in 

 muffled tones from beneath the improvised dark room, and 

 his futile efforts to get at the aggressor were so comical, that 

 at the risk of making an enemy for life, I laughed most 

 immoderately at his discomfiture. 



At 5 o'clock next morning we were off to the hill-tops, 

 and both walked together as far as the edge of the precipices 

 overlooking the glacier. One glance down was enough to 

 convince me that all the sheep on earth would not induce me 

 to go down the face of those rocks. We saw a few rams in 



