l, but my guide insisted that they work higher
and higher up the mountain sides, where the winds have swept the snow
away, and they are able to get this coarse but nourishing food.

The sky-line of these hills made a series of unbroken curves telling of
the mighty power of the glaciers which once held this entire country in
their crushing grasp.

We passed over the great plateau, which even at this latitude was
sprinkled generously with beautiful small wild flowers. Crossing gulch
after gulch we continually worked higher and higher by a gradual and
easy ascent.

We had been gone from camp but little over an hour, when, on approaching
a small knoll, I caught sight of the white coat of a sheep just beyond.
At once dropping upon my hands and knees I crawled up and carefully
peered over to the other side. We had unknowingly worked into the midst
of a big band of ewes, lambs, and small rams. I counted twenty-seven on
my left and twenty-five on my right, but among them all there was not a
head worth shooting.

This was the first great band of white sheep I had seen, and I watched
them at this close range with much interest. Soon a tell-tale eddy in
the breeze gave them our scent, and they slowly moved away, not
hurriedly nor in great alarm, but reminding me much of tame sheep, or
deer in a park. Man was rather an unfamiliar animal to them, and his
scent brought but little dread. From this time until darkness hid them,
sheep were in plain view the entire day. In a short while I counted over
one hundred ewes and lambs.

We worked over one range and around another with the great valley of the
river lying at our feet, while beyond were chain upon chain of bleak and
rugged mountains. Finally we came to a vast gulch supposed to be the
home of the large rams. My men had hunted in this section two years
before, and had never failed to find good heads here, but we now saw
nothing worth stalking. By degrees we worked to the top of the gulch,
and coming to the summit of the ridge paused, for at our feet was what
at first appeared but a perpendicular precipice of jagged rock falling
hundreds of feet. The clouds now lifted a bit and we could see below a
vast circular valley with green grass and rapid glacial streams. On all
sides it was hemmed in and guarded by mighty mountains with giant cliffs
and vast slides of broken rocks reaching from the bottom to the very
summits. Opposite was a great dull blue glacier from which the north
f