THE WILD SHEEP OF THE SIERRA. 



By JOHN MUIR. 



THE wild sheep ranks highest among the animal mountaineers 

 of the Sierra. Possessed of keen sight and scent, immovable 

 nerve, and strong limbs, he dwells secure amid the loftiest 

 summits of the Alps, from one extremity of the range to the other ; 

 leaping unscathed from crag to crag, up and down the fronts of 

 giddy precipices, crossing foaming torrents and slopes of frozen 

 snow, exposed to the wildest storms, yet maintaining a brave, warm 

 life, and developing from generation to generation in perfect strength 

 and beauty. 



Nearly all the lofty mountain chains of the globe are inhabited 

 by wild sheep, which, by the best naturalists, are classified under 

 five distinct species. These are the argali (Ovis amnion, Linn.), 

 found throughout all the principal ranges of Asia ; the burrhal (Ovis 

 burrhel), of the upper Himalayas ; the Corsican moufflon (Ovis musi- 

 mon, Pal.); the African wild sheep (Ovis tragelephns, Cuv.) ; and 

 the American big horn, or Rocky Mountain sheep (Ovis Montana, 

 Cuv.). To this last-named species belongs the wild sheep of the 

 Sierra Nevada. Its range, according to Professor Baird, of the 

 Smithsonian Institution, extends " from the region of the upper 

 Missouri and Yellowstone to the Rocky Mountains and the high 

 grounds adjacent to them on the eastern slope, and as far south as 

 the Rio Grande. Westward it extends to the coast ranges of Wash- 

 ington Territory, Oregon, and California, and follows the highlands 

 some distance into Mexico."* Throughout the vast region bounded 

 on the east and west by the Wasatch Mountains and the Sierra 

 Nevada, there are more than a hundred independent ranges and 

 * Pacific Railroad Survey, vol. viii., page 678. 



