146 PRAIRIE AND FOREST. 
probably a buck, doe, and pair of kids, ascending leisurely 
to more elevated ground. 
Slowly plucking the tender grass at each step, they graze 
upward; but ever on guard against danger, the male or fe- 
male pause to watch, or not unfrequently post themselves 
on some rocky excrescence to note what may be occurring 
in the lower world. At length their slow approach has 
brought them within range of your rifle; but be not impa- 
tient; rest a little longer if you wish to make certain work, 
for the bullet must be well and strongly placed, or else your 
labor will be fruitless, for few animals possess greater vi- 
tality ; and unless, in Yankee parlance, you tumble the quar- 
ry in his track, the wounded game will struggle upward 
with speed lent by fear, or fall headlong over the nearest 
ravine into some rugged cafion impossible to descend into, 
or where, even if successful in reaching its bottom, the car- 
cass would be found pounded and torn into a shapeless mass 
of flesh, only fit food for the loathsome vultures who proba- 
bly have already commenced to congregate, in expectation 
of a feed on their beloved carrion. 
In the days of De Bonneville, and Lewis and Clark, big- 
horns and Rocky Mountain sheep were very abundant in 
the mountain ridges that encompass the upper waters of 
the turbulent Columbia River; but the tide of emigration 
which has flowed into Oregon and British North-western 
possessions has had the effect of lessening their numbers, 
and driving a large proportion of the survivors from what 
at one time must have been one of their chief habitats. 
However, both these species are not likely soon to be- 
come extinct, for the nature of the country they inhabit 
is a safeguard which the poor buffalo unfortunately does 
not possess; ay, and what will the undulating prairie be 
to the Indian and hunter when you deprive it of the 
‘ordly bull, who in times gone by caused each tree, rock, 
