OF THE LARGE AMERICAN MAMMALS 215 
between the Rocky Mountain continental divide and the 
waters of the Pacific. Over the southern end of this great 
wilderness ranges the black mountain sheep, and throughout 
the remainder, with many sheepless intervals, is scattered 
the white mountain sheep. 
Owing to the immensity of this wilderness, the well-nigh 
total lack of railroads and also of navigable rivers, excepting 
the Yukon, it will not be thoroughly “opened up” for a quarter 
of a century. The few resolute and pneumonia-proof sports- 
men who can wade into the country, pulling boats through 
icy-cold mountain streams, are not going to devastate those 
mountains of their herds of big game. The few head of 
game which sportsmen can and will take out of the great 
northwestern wilderness during the next twenty-five years 
will hardly be missed from the grand total, even though a 
few easily accessible localities are shot out. It is the deadly 
resident trappers, hunters and prospectors who must be 
feared! It takes from twenty-two to thirty-two mountain 
sheep to feed two Alaska or Yukon miners through one winter; 
and this according to their own figures. 
And who can control the wilderness prospectors, miners, 
hunters and trappers? Can any wilderness government on 
earth make it possible? Therefore, in time, even the great 
wilderness will be denuded of big game. This is absolutely 
fixed and certain; for within much less than another century 
every square rod of it will have been gone over by prospectors, 
Jumbermen, trappers and skin-hunters, and raked again and 
again with fine-toothed combs. A railway line to Dawson, 
the Copper River and Cook Inlet is to-day merely the next 
