aterfall, echoing their divine
music; and throughout the whole of their beautiful lives interpreting
all that we in our unbelief call terrible in the utterances of torrents
and storms, as only varied expressions of God's eternal love.

CHAPTER XIV

THE WILD SHEEP
(_Ovis montana_)

The wild sheep ranks highest among the animal mountaineers of the
Sierra. Possessed of keen sight and scent, and strong limbs, he dwells
secure amid the loftiest summits, leaping unscathed from crag to crag,
up and down the fronts of giddy precipices, crossing foaming torrents
and slopes of frozen snow, exposed to the wildest storms, yet
maintaining a brave, warm life, and developing from generation to
generation in perfect strength and beauty.

Nearly all the lofty mountain-chains of the globe are inhabited by wild
sheep, most of which, on account of the remote and all but inaccessible
regions where they dwell, are imperfectly known as yet. They are
classified by different naturalists under from five to ten distinct
species or varieties, the best known being the burrhel of the Himalaya
(_Ovis burrhel_, Blyth); the argali, the large wild sheep of
central and northeastern Asia (_O. ammon_, Linn., or _Caprovis
argali_); the Corsican mouflon (_O. musimon_, Pal.); the aoudad
of the mountains of northern Africa (_Ammotragus tragelaphus_); and
the Rocky Mountain bighorn (_O. montana_, Cuv.). To this last-named
species belongs the wild sheep of the Sierra. Its range, according to
the late Professor Baird of the Smithsonian Institution, extends "from
the region of the upper Missouri and Yellowstone to the Rocky Mountains
and the high grounds adjacent to them on the eastern slope, and as far
south as the Rio Grande. Westward it extends to the coast ranges of
Washington, Oregon, and California, and follows the highlands some
distance into Mexico."[1] Throughout the vast region bounded on the east
by the Wahsatch Mountains and on the west by the Sierra there are more
than a hundred subordinate ranges and mountain groups, trending north
and south, range beyond range, with summits rising from eight to twelve
thousand feet above the level of the sea, probably all of which,
according to my own observations, is, or has been, inhabited by this
species.

Compared with the argali, which, considering its size and the vast
extent of its range, is probably the most important of all the wild
sheep, our species is about the same size, but the horns are