364 BIG GAME OP NORTH AMERICA. 



When bands of Sheep are feeding, they usually post a 

 sentinel on some prominent point, to watch for possible 

 danger; and when about to lie down, they seek the highest 

 ground in the neighborhood, in order that each member 

 of the flock may act as his own guardian. 



The muscular development of this animal is simply mar- 

 velous; and while,possibly not as graceful and elastic in his 

 movements as the Deer or the Antelope, yet he will leap 

 from crag to crag, will bound up over ragged ledges, over 

 ice-glazed slopes, or down perpendicular precipices, alighting 

 on broken and disordered masses of rock, with a courage 

 and a sure-footedness that must challenge the admiration 

 of everyone who has an opportunity 'to study him in his 

 mountain home. 



It may be well to state once more, however, that all the 

 old stories of hunters and mountaineers, to the effect that 

 the Sheep jump over precipices and alight on their heads, 

 are purely mythical. A full-grown ram weighs three hun- 

 dred pounds or more; and while his horns would probably 

 stand the shock of such a fall, his bones would not. His 

 *neck, and probably every other bone in his body, would, if 

 he jumped from a precipice and fell fifty or a hundred feet, 

 be crushed to splinters. Besides, if the rams could stand 

 it, and come out of it safely, what would become of the ewes 

 and lambs, which have not the big horns, and which follow 

 wherever the rams lead? A Sheep never jumps down a 

 sheer precipice of more than ten or fifteen feet; and when- 

 ever or wherever he does jump, he always lands on his feet. 



General Gordon, one- of the Special Indian Commission- 

 ers, who was traveling in Northern Washington when I was 

 there, bought from a hunter the head of a ram that had the 

 tips of the horns broken. The General showed them to 

 several persons of my acquaintance, and said lie had never 

 before believed the stories of the Sheep jumping down 

 mountains and alighting on their heads, but that now he 

 was compelled to believe them, for here was an undeniable . 

 proof of the truth of them. This noble animal had, he 

 said, undoubtedly broken his horns in this way. But I can 



