166 
ROCKY MOUNTAIN SHEEP. 
the Missouri, when a group of them, numbering twenty-two in all, came 
in sight. This flock was composed of rams and ewes, with only one young 
one or lamb among them. They scampered up and down the hills much 
in the manner of common sheep, but notwithstanding all our anxious 
efforts to get within gun-shot, we were unable to do so, and were obliged 
to content ourselves with this first sight of the Rocky Mountain Ram. 
The parts of the country usually chosen by these animals for their 
pastures, are the most extraordinary broken and precipitous clay hills 
or stony eminences that exist in the wild regions belonging to the 
Rocky Mountain chain. They never resort to the low lands or plains 
except when about to remove their quarters, or swim across rivers, 
which they do well and tolerably fast. Perhaps some idea of the 
country they inhabit (which is called by the French Canadians and 
hunters, “mauvaise terres”) may be formed by imagining some hun- 
dreds of loaves of sugar of different sizes, irregularly broken and trun- 
cated at top, placed somewhat apart, and magnifying them into hills 
of considerable size. Over these hills and ravines the Rocky Moun- 
tain Sheep bound up and down among the sugar loaf shaped peaks, 
and you may estimate the difficulty of approaching them, and con- 
ceive the great activity and sure-footedness of this species, which, 
together with their extreme wildness and keen sense of smell, enable 
them to baffle the most vigorous and agile hunter. 
They form paths around these irregular clay cones that arc at times 
from six to eight hundred feet high, and in some situations are even 
fifteen hundred feet or more above the adjacent prairies, and along these 
they run at full speed, while to the eye of the spectator below, these 
tracks do not appear to be more than a few inches wide, although thej^ 
are generally from a foot to eighteen inches in breadth. In many 
places columns or piles of clay, or hardened earth, are to be seen eight 
or ten feet above the adjacent surface, covered or coped with a slaty flat 
rock, thus resembling gigantic toad stools, and upon these singular places 
the big horns are frequently seen, gazing at the hunter who is winding 
about far below, looking like so many statues on their elevated pedestals. 
One cannot imagine how these animals reach these curious places, es- 
pecially with their young along with them, which are sometimes brought 
forth on these inaccessible points, beyond the reach of their gieatest 
enemies, the wolves, which prey upon them whenever they stray into 
the plains below. 
The “ mauvaise terres” are mostly formed of greyish white clay, very 
sparsely covered with small patches of thin grass, on which the Rockjr 
Mountain Sheep feed. In wet weather it is almost impossiole lor any 
