BIG GAME OF NORTH AMERICA 383 



above the river the proper places to hunt them in. To 

 enjoy sheep shooting to perfection a man should leave the 

 Pacific coast in September, pass through the belt of water 

 meadows and pine forests, where the pink fireweed contrasts 

 vividly with the grey stems of the pines and the soft green of 

 the ferns, and through the country of sage brush and rolling 

 yellow bluffs. From this point his road will lie steadily upwards, 

 over the rolling prairie, through belts of green timber where the 

 deer swarm in winter, and then by thread-like trails over side- 

 hills and stone-slides along the course of some tributary of the 

 Frazer, until at last a great yellow cone, patched here and 

 there with snow, rises clear above the timber-line in front of 

 him. This is sheep-land, the land of the roaring wind (Skul- 

 loptin), but it will take him a good long day to reach it, and 

 both he and his horses will be dead tired by the time they stop 

 to camp. At first a sheer rock wall rises from the river ; on the 

 top of the rock is a bench of golden grass, and then again there 

 is a sharp ascent and another bench of grass. Finally the 

 ladder of benches is lost in the forest, which goes climbing away 

 uphill in resolute fashion until towards nightfall the hunter 

 reaches the land of stone-slides and burnt timber, and passing 

 through that comes out upon the edge of the sheep downs, 

 where the stream becomes no more than a succession of small 

 pools amongst the moss, and the only trees still left are dwarfed, 

 stunted, and twisted into all manner of forms by the violence of 

 the mountain winds. If the sun has left the landscape when the 

 hunter first sees it, the effect is weird and cheerless. The great 

 brown wastes above, the soft silent mosses underfoot, the trees 

 huddled together in little groups as if for mutual support, the 

 hanging fringes of blackened beard moss, all help to accentuate 

 the bleakness of the land over which the mountain wind sobs 

 or shrieks. But in the morning all changes as if at a magician's 

 word. The skies are cloudless, the sunlight dances on snow- 

 field and streamlet, and even the grey stems of the trees are 

 beautiful when contrasted with the ruddy orange of the Indian 

 pinks at their feet better than all, the hunter's lungs are 



