seeing our large well-armed party, and the vigilant watch we kept, they
did not venture to interfere with us. We were approaching the range it
was our purpose to cross. We had heard that many of the heights were of
great elevation, but that there were passages or canons between them,
through which we might make our way, provided no enemy should appear to
impede our progress. We had during the last day caught sight of what
appeared a bank of white clouds, their outer edges lighted up by the
rays of the sun. During, however, the next couple of days' journey a
light mist hung over the country, which prevented us from seeing objects
at a distance. Having no longer the fear of Indians, the Dominie, Dan,
and I frequently went ahead, sometimes on horseback and sometimes on
foot, for the purpose of killing game or exploring the way. Thus one
day, the ground being rugged and the waggons making but slow progress,
we had proceeded some distance further than usual when we caught sight,
on the top of a rock, of an animal with long horns, which Dan declared
was a sheep, and which I thought was a deer.

"Dan is more nearly right, for it is the sheep of these mountains, but
in its habits it is very like the chamois of Switzerland," observed the
Dominie; "we have very little chance of getting that fellow, but we may
kill others if we are on the watch for them. It is the big-horn, or
`grosse corne,' as the French call it, of the Rocky Mountains. It has
already seen us, and away it goes to some place where it knows we cannot
reach it."

I may as well say that this wild sheep is of stout build, and has feet
stronger and larger than those of the deer. Its light dusky brown
colour is similar to the tint of the rocks among which it lives. About
its ears and neck and legs it carries a small quantity of wool, the rest
of its coat consisting of coarse hair, white on the rump, while the tail
is tipped with black. Both the male and female have horns, those of the
former being remarkable for their enormous size, while those of the
latter somewhat resemble the horns of the ordinary goat. The horns of
some of the sheep we afterwards killed measured upwards of two feet six
inches in length. The head is provided with cartilaginous processes of
great strength, and they with the frontal bone form one strong mass of
so solid a nature that the animal can, when making his escape, fling
himself on his head from considerable heights without inju