WILDERNESS RESERVES/ 



BY 



PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT. 



PART II. 



A COUPLE of days after leaving Cot- 

 tonwood Creek, where we had spent 

 several days, we camped at the Yellow- 

 stone Canon below Tower Falls. Here 

 we saw a second band of mountain 

 sheep, numbering only eight none of 

 them old rams. We were camped on 

 the west side of the canon ; the sheep 

 had their abode on the opposite side, 

 where they had spent the winter. It 

 has recently been customary among 

 some authorities, especially the English 

 hunters and naturalists who have writ- 

 ten of the Asiatic sheep, to speak as if 

 sheep were naturally creatures of the 

 plains rather than mountain climbers. 

 I kno\v nothing of old world sheep, but 

 the Rocky Mountain bighorn is to the 

 full as characteristic a mountain animal, 

 in every sense of the word, as the 

 chamois, and, I think, as the ibex. 

 These sheep were well known to the 

 road-builders, who had spent the winter 

 in the locality. They told me they 

 never \vent back on the plains, but 

 throughout the winter had spent their 

 days and nights on the top of the cliff 

 and along its face. This cliff was an 

 alternation of sheer precipices and very 

 steep inclines. When coated with ice 

 it would be difficult to imagine an uglier 

 bit of climbing, but throughout the 

 winter, and even in the wildest storms, 

 the sheep had habitually gone down it 

 to drink at the water below. When we 

 first saw them they were lying sunning 

 themselves on the edge of the canon, 

 where the rolling grassy county behind 

 it broke off into the sheer descent. It 

 was mid-afternoon and they were under 

 some pines. After a while they got up 

 and began to graze, and soon hopped 

 unconcernedly down the side of the cliff 

 until they were half way to the bottom. 

 They then grazed along the sides, and 

 spent some time licking at a place where 



there was evidently a mineral deposit. 

 Before dark they all lay down again on 

 a steeply inclined jutting spur midway 

 between the top and the bottom of the 

 canon. 



Next morning I thought I would like 

 to see them close up, so I walked down 

 three or four miles below where the 

 caiion ended, crossed the stream, and 

 came up the other side until I got on 

 what was literally the stamping ground 

 of the sheep. Their tracks showed 

 that they had spent their time for many 

 weeks, and probably for all the winter, 

 within a very narrow radius. For per- 

 haps a mile and a half, or two miles at 

 the very outside, they had wandered 

 to and fro on the summit of the canon, 

 making what was almost a well-beaten 

 path ; always very near and usually on 

 the edge of the cliff, and hardly ever 

 going more than a few yards back into 

 the grassy plain-and-hill country. 

 Their tracks and dung covered the 

 ground. They had also evidently de- 

 scended into the depths of the canon 

 wherever there was the slightest break 

 or even lowering of the upper line of 

 basalt cliffs. Although mountain sheep 

 often browse in winter, I saw but few 

 traces of browsing here ; probably on 

 the sheer cliff side they always got some 

 grazing. 



When I spied the band they were ly ing 

 not far from the spot in which they had 

 lain the day before, and in the same po- 

 sition on the brink of the caiion. The)^ 

 saw me and watched me with interest 

 when I was two hundred yards off, but 

 they let me go up within forty yards and 

 sit down on a large stone to look at them 

 without running off. Most of them 

 were lying down, but a couple were 

 feeding steadily throughout the time I 

 watched them. Suddenly one took the 

 alarm and dashed straight over the cliff, 



Copyiight, 1904, by the Forest and Stream Publishing Co., through whose special permis- 

 sion this article is reprinted here. 



(301) 



