11? 



148 



AUDUBON 



wm- ■■'■' 



ing up to Fort Mortimer." He will also accompany us 

 in our hunt after Bighorns, which I shall undertake, 

 notwithstanding Mr. Culbertson and Squires, who have 

 been to the Mauvaises Terres, both try to dissuade me 

 from what they fear will prove over-fatiguing; but though 

 my strength is not what it was twenty years ago, I am yet 

 equal to much, and my eyesight far keener than that of 

 many a younger man, though that too tells me I am no 

 longer a youth. . . . 



The only idea I can give in writing of what are called 

 the " Mauvaises Terres " would be to place some thou- 

 sands of loaves of sugar of different sizes, from quite 

 small and low, to large and high, all irregularly truncated 

 at top, and placed somewhat apart from each other. No 

 one who has not seen these places can form any idea of 

 these resorts of the Rocky Mountain Rams, or the diffi- 

 culty of approaching them, putting aside their extreme 

 wildness and their marvellous activity. They form paths 

 around these broken-headed cones (that are from three to 

 fifteen hundred feet high), and run round them at full 

 speed on a track that, to the eye of the hunter, does not 

 appear to be more than a few inches wide, but which is, 

 in fact, from a foot to eighteen inches in width. In some 

 places there are piles of earth from eight to ten feet high, 

 or even more, the tops of which form platforms of a hard 

 and shelly rocky substance, where the Bighorn is often 

 seen looking on the hunter far below, and standing im- 

 movable, as if a statue. No one can imagine how they 

 reach these places, and that too with their young, even 

 when the latter are quite small. Hunters say that the 

 young are usually born in such places, the mothers going 

 there to save the helpless little one from the Wolves, 

 which, after men, seem to be their greatest destroyers. 

 The Mauvaises Terres are mostly formed of grayish 

 white clay, very sparsely covered with small patches of 

 thin grass, on which the Bighorns feed, but which, to 



all 



