o its
thunder-tones, the brave sheep in front of it, their gray forms slightly
obscured in the spray, yet standing out in good, heavy relief against
the close white water, with their huge horns rising like the upturned
roots of dead pine-trees, while the evening sunbeams streaming up the
canon colored all the picture a rosy purple and made it glorious. After
crossing the river, the dauntless climbers, led by their chief, at once
began to scale the canon wall, turning now right, now left, in long,
single file, keeping well apart out of one another's way, and leaping in
regular succession from crag to crag, now ascending slippery
dome-curves, now walking leisurely along the edges of precipices,
stopping at times to gaze down at me from some flat-topped rock, with
heads held aslant, as if curious to learn what I thought about it, or
whether I was likely to follow them. After reaching the top of the wall,
which, at this place, is somewhere between 1500 and 2000 feet high, they
were still visible against the sky as they lingered, looking down in
groups of twos or threes.

Throughout the entire ascent they did not make a single awkward step, or
an unsuccessful effort of any kind. I have frequently seen tame sheep in
mountains jump upon a sloping rock-surface, hold on tremulously a few
seconds, and fall back baffled and irresolute. But in the most trying
situations, where the slightest want or inaccuracy would have been
fatal, these always seemed to move in comfortable reliance on their
strength and skill, the limits of which they never appeared to know.
Moreover, each one of the flock, while following the guidance of the
most experienced, yet climbed with intelligent independence as a perfect
individual, capable of separate existence whenever it should wish or be
compelled to withdraw from the little clan. The domestic sheep, on the
contrary, is only a fraction of an animal, a whole flock being required
to form an individual, just as numerous flowerets are required to make
one complete sunflower.

Those shepherds who, in summer, drive their flocks to the mountain
pastures, and, while watching them night and day, have seen them
frightened by bears and storms, and scattered like wind-driven chaff,
will, in some measure, be able to appreciate the self-reliance and
strength and noble individuality of Nature's sheep.

Like the Alp-climbing ibex of Europe, our mountaineer is said to plunge
headlong down the faces of sheer precip