Dakota, and I dare say that their long life on the plains
has created in them a distinct sub-species of the bighorn."

The Colorado Desert is situated in Wyoming, between the Green River on
the west, and the Red Desert on the east. The sheep are seen mostly on
the breaks on Green River. They are sometimes chased by cowboys, but I
have never known of one being caught in that way.

I am told that in some bad lands in the Red Desert, locally known as
Dobe Town, there is a herd of wild sheep, which are occasionally pursued
by range riders. Rarely one is roped.

Mr. Fred E. White, of Jackson, Wyo., advised me in 1898 of the existence
of sheep in the mountains which drain into Gros Ventre Fork, the heads
of Green River and Buffalo Fork of Snake River. Mr. White was with the
Webb party, some years ago, when they secured a number of sheep. The
same correspondent calls attention to the very large number of sheep
which in 1888, and for a few years thereafter, ranged in the high
mountains between the waters of the Yellowstone and the Stinking
Water. This is one of the countries from which sheep have been pretty
nearly exterminated by hunters and prospectors.

Within the past twenty or thirty years mountain sheep have become very
scarce in all of their old haunts in Wyoming and northern Colorado. This
does not seem to be particularly due to hunting, but the sheep seem to
be either moving away or dying out. Mr. W.H. Reed, in 1898, wrote me
from Laramie, Wyo., saying: "At present there are perhaps thirty head on
Sheep Mountain, twenty-two miles west of Laramie, Wyo.; on the west side
of Laramie Peak there are perhaps twenty head; on the east side of the
Peak twelve to fifteen head, and near the Platte Canon, at the head of
Medicine Bow River, there are fifteen. In 1894 I saw at the head of the
Green River, Hobacks River, and Gros Ventre River, between two and three
hundred mountain sheep. There are sheep scattered all through the Wind
River, and a very few in the Big Horn Mountains; but all are in small
bunches, and these widely separated. Some of the old localities where
they were very abundant in the early '70's, but now are never seen, are
Whalen Canon, Raw Hide Buttes, Hartville Mountains, thirty miles
northwest of Ft. Laramie, Elk Mountains, and the adjacent hills fifteen
miles east of Fort Steele, near old Fort Halleck. They seem to have
disappeared also from the bad lands along Green River, south of the
Union Pacific Railro