CLIMBING FOR WHITE SHEEP 229 



slides and precipices looked almost impassable. At any 

 rate it would have been a long way around to reach 

 home. We therefore slipped down over the brink that 

 we were standing on, several hundred feet to the valley 

 below. Loose stones in quantities gave way beneath our 

 feet and we slid rather than chmbed, holding to the 

 alders and willows as we went down, until we emerged in 

 the flat below. Here we found ourselves from time to 

 time in almost impassable patches of alders, but with 

 patience we managed to work through all of them, fol- 

 lowing the general course of the river. At the edge of a 

 deserted beaver dam lay a very large pair of old moose 

 antlers which probably measured about sixty-seven inches 

 in their dried and broken condition. Then we struck 

 one of Steve's former trails, much grown up, as it had 

 evidently not been used for many years, and arrived 

 weary in camp at dark. 



Our fifth day at this cabin yielded us two black bear 

 cubs. Evidently our repeated trips around the valley 

 had sent the sheep up into the snow or over the hills 

 which enclosed the river basin, for we saw very few. 

 Numerous ravens were hovering in the air above the 

 spot where we had killed the two sheep, and as we came 

 over the rising grornid and got a view of them, three 

 eagles were sitting there so gorged with meat that at 

 our approach they could hardly take to their wings. 

 Scarcely anything was left but the bones of the animals. 



While we stood there two black spots on the hillside 

 above us moved rapidly across from left to right going up 

 the river. They looked like a grown she-bear and a 

 nearly grown cub and were traveling at a great pace 

 across the rocky shde. When they had, however, gone 

 out of view around a turn on the hillside, and we had 



