148 CAMP-FIRES OF A NATURALIST. 



there was a band of the animals, but as they were 

 on a barren mountain-top, four hours were vainly 

 spent in the endeavour to get close to them without 

 being seen. Finding this to be impossible, Dyche re- 

 turned to camp, as he preferred to leave them for 

 another day when they might possibly be in some 

 more accessible place. 



At nine o'clock next morning he was back again, 

 carefully scrutinising the rocks and hills, and at last 

 made out what he thought was the head of an old 

 ram on the top of one of the highest crags in the 

 vicinity. 



Slipping carefully along the edge of the crag, he 

 got within a quarter of a mile of the sheep unob- 

 served, but could see no way of approaching nearer 

 without attracting the sentinel's attention. Nothing 

 was visible but that big fellow on the rock, but the 

 naturalist was confident that the whole band was 

 somewhere in the immediate neighbourhood. As- 

 cending a tree, he beheld a rare sight. In a sheltered 

 cove below the crag on which stood the watcher was 

 a band of seventeen big rams. Their fine propor- 

 tions, their enormous curving horns, and their appar- 

 ent freedom from all danger set the blood bounding 

 through the veins of the hunter as he took in the 

 situation from the top of that spruce tree. 



For a full half -hour Dyche watched the animals 

 from his tree-top, and then he began to plan a way 

 of getting at them. Every foot of ground for five 

 hundred yards in every direction from the sen- 

 tinel's post was as bare as a floor, and there was 

 little encouragement offered the naturalist. The old 



