ges, to feed on bushes and dry bunch-grass, and then
returning up into the snow. Once I was snow-bound on Mount Shasta for
three days, a little below the timber line. It was a dark and stormy
time, well calculated to test the skill and endurance of mountaineers.
The snow-laden gale drove on night and day in hissing, blinding floods,
and when at length it began to abate, I found that a small band of wild
sheep had weathered the storm in the lee of a clump of Dwarf Pines a few
yards above my storm-nest, where the snow was eight or ten feet deep. I
was warm back of a rock, with blankets, bread, and fire. My brave
companions lay in the snow, without food, and with only the partial
shelter of the short trees, yet they made no sign of suffering or
faint-heartedness.

In the months of May and June, the wild sheep bring forth their young in
solitary and almost inaccessible crags, far above the nesting-rocks of
the eagle. I have frequently come upon the beds of the ewes and lambs at
an elevation of from 12,000 to 13,000 feet above sea-level. These beds
are simply oval-shaped hollows, pawed out among loose, disintegrating
rock-chips and sand, upon some sunny spot commanding a good outlook, and
partially sheltered from the winds that sweep those lofty peaks almost
without intermission. Such is the cradle of the little mountaineer,
aloft in the very sky; rocked in storms, curtained in clouds, sleeping
in thin, icy air; but, wrapped in his hairy coat, and nourished by a
strong, warm mother, defended from the talons of the eagle and the teeth
of the sly coyote, the bonny lamb grows apace. He soon learns to nibble
the tufted rock-grasses and leaves of the white spirsea; his horns begin
to shoot, and before summer is done he is strong and agile, and goes
forth with the flock, watched by the same divine love that tends the
more helpless human lamb in its cradle by the fireside.

Nothing is more commonly remarked by noisy, dusty trail-travelers in
the Sierra than the want of animal life--no song-birds, no deer, no
squirrels, no game of any kind, they say. But if such could only go away
quietly into the wilderness, sauntering afoot and alone with natural
deliberation, they would soon learn that these mountain mansions are not
without inhabitants, many of whom, confiding and gentle, would not try
to shun their acquaintance.

[Illustration: HEAD OF THE MERINO RAM (DOMESTIC).]

In the fall of 1873 I was tracing the South Fork of the San J