364 Recreations of a Sportsman 



could climb without, and climb places abound- 

 ing in rock or cactus or sand or brush that bore 

 all the signs of possible disaster; yet I did not 

 hear of a horse killed that day, nor was one 

 seriously wounded. 



There was about three miles of this rounding- 

 up before we came to the divide; the sheep were 

 then driven down into the big canon and to the 

 beach where we could see, eighteen hundred feet 

 below, the blue ocean, the shearing party, and 

 the cottonwoods that concealed the camp. The 

 shearers were at work, and a corral was filled 

 with sheep run down that day and days before. 

 Again the wild riding was displayed, even in- 

 tensified, as ever and anon the sheep would 

 break through or leap a fence or barrier, and 

 go scurrying away. 



A real rough rider of the Californian defini- 

 tion was a man who understood his- horse and 

 whose horse had faith and absolute confidence 

 in him. They worked as one. The man had 

 absolute courage, stopped at nothing, never 

 asked his horse to do anything he believed it 

 could not do, and the animal was so well trained, 

 or so intelligent, probably both, that it obeyed 

 orders as a soldier; discipline w r as a paramount 

 question. In the old days in California, and 

 not so long ago, nothing so well illustrated this 

 as the pastime of all Californians, that of roping 

 grizzlies and dragging them for miles on im- 



