Mountain Sheep 
The bighorn might be called the chamois of our Western 
mountains, scaling the rugged cliffs and plunging over precipices 
with the same agility and confidence that mark the famous in- 
habitant of the Alps. 
The elastic spring of the animal when started and the easy 
poise of the splendid head as it settles back on the shoulders 
are exceedingly graceful, and the animal seems built and pro- 
portioned to the finest detail for the life that it leads. 
From the edges of the Alaskan glaciers to the dry, water- 
less crags of the Mexican Sierras we find one variety or other 
of the mountain sheep. 
During the breeding season an old ram _ presides over the 
flock of ewes and lambs, driving the younger rams off by them- 
selves, as is usual among polygamous animals. The flocks are 
exceedingly watchful and at the slightest alarm are off instantly, 
selecting a course that few animals or men care to follow. In 
early spring the sheep venture farther down into the mountain 
valleys in search of food, but soon return to their rocky fastnesses 
among the higher slopes. 
In the ‘‘Bad Lands,” the easternmost part of their range, 
Audubon made the acquaintance of these noble animals in 1843. He 
says: ‘‘The parts of the country usually chosen by the sheep 
for their pastures are the most extraordinary broken and pre- 
cipitous clay hills or stony eminences that exist in the wild regions 
belonging to the Rocky Mountain chain. Perhaps some idea of 
the country they inhabit—which is called by the French Canad- 
ians and hunters ‘mauvaise terres’—may be formed by imagin- 
ing some hundreds of loaves of sugar of different sizes, irregularly 
broken and truncated at top, placed somewhat apart and 
magnifying them into hills of considerable size. Over these hills 
and ravines the Rocky Mountain sheep bound up and down and 
you may estimate the difficulty of approaching them and con- 
ceive the great activity and sure-footedness of this species. They 
form paths around these irregular clay cones that are at times 
six to eight hundred feet high, and in some situations are even 
fifteen hundred feet or more above the adjacent prairies; and 
along these they run at full speed, while to the eye of the specta- 
tor below, these tracks do not appear to be more than a few 
inches wide although they are generally from a foot to eighteen 
inches in breadth. In many places columns or piles of clay or 
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