ded, crossed the
stream, and came up the other side until I got on what was literally the
stamping ground of the sheep. Their tracks showed that they had spent
their time for many weeks, and probably for all the winter, within a
very narrow radius. For perhaps a mile and a half, or two miles at the
very outside, they had wandered to and fro on the summit of the canyon,
making what was almost a well-beaten path; always very near and usually
on the edge of the cliff, and hardly ever going more than a few yards
back into the grassy plain-and-hill country. Their tracks and dung
covered the ground. They had also evidently descended into the depths of
the canon wherever there was the slightest break or even lowering in the
upper line of basalt cliffs. Although mountain sheep often browse in
winter, I saw but few traces of browsing here; probably on the sheer
cliff side they always got some grazing. When I spied the band they
were lying not far from the spot in which they had lain the day before,
and in the same position on the brink of the canon. They saw me and
watched me with interest when I was two hundred yards off, but they let
me get up within forty yards and sit down on a large stone to look at
them, without running off. Most of them were lying down, but a couple
were feeding steadily throughout the time I watched them. Suddenly one
took the alarm and dashed straight over the cliff, the others all
following at once. I ran after them to the edge in time to see the last
yearling drop off the edge of the basalt cliff and stop short on the
sheer slope below, while the stones dislodged by his hoofs rattled down
the canon. They all looked up at me with great interest and then
strolled off to the edge of a jutting spur and lay down almost directly
underneath me and some fifty yards off. That evening on my return to
camp we watched the band make its way right down to the river bed, going
over places where it did not seem possible a four-footed creature could
pass. They halted to graze here and there, and down the worst places
they went very fast with great bounds. It was a marvelous exhibition of
climbing.

After we had finished this horseback trip we went on sleds and skis to
the upper Geyser Basin and the Falls of the Yellowstone. Although it was
the third week in April, the snow was still several feet deep, and only
thoroughly trained snow horses could have taken the sleighs along, while
around the Yellowstone Falls it was