MOUNTAIN SHEEP. 5, 



and that the cimarron population of their border-states 

 has been considerably increased by emigrants from the 

 North. There is no doubt that the freedom- 1 ovine 

 monteros have steadily retreated before the advance of 

 our noisy civilization, — first westward, and lately both 

 southward and northward, from the neighborhood of the 

 great trans-continental highway. Colonel Pennypacker, 

 of the United States army, has told me that he remem- 

 bers the time when the " bighorns" were as abundant as 

 mountain quail in Western Colorado, and that the officers 

 of Fort Garland used to kill them by dozens in the vi- 

 cinity of the fort. They are now found only near the 

 head-waters of the Gunnison River; and if the Lead- 

 ville Railroad should be extended to the Colorado Val- 

 ley they will probably leave the State altogether. They 

 have already left Nebraska, Utah, and Southern Wyo- 

 ming, and even in the northern part of the territory the 

 name of the " Bighorn Mountains" is fast becoming an 

 anachronism. In the Southwest they have maintained 

 their ground much better (carnero-meat is a drug in the 

 markets of Chihuahua, Tucson, and Santa Fe, and they 

 are still pretty abundant in the Sierra Nevada of South- 

 ern California), but also in the far Northwest — for their 

 southward migration has nothing to do with climatic 

 predilections : the mountain sheep is as hardy as the 

 grizzly bear. The Montana prospectors meet great 

 herds of them in the main chain of the Rocky Moun- 

 tains, but especially in the icy summit-regions of the 



