In fact, near the summit of the mountain, I could see a large number of small white objects, moving rapidly upward among the precipices, while others were filing along its rocky profile.  Anxious to see the sport, I galloped forward, and entering a passage in the side of the mountain, ascended the loose rocks as far as my horse could carry me.  Here I fastened her to an old pine tree that stood alone, scorching in the sun.  At that moment Raymond called to me from the right that another band of sheep was close at hand in that direction.  I ran up to the top of the opening, which gave me a full view into the rocky gorge beyond; and here I plainly saw some fifty or sixty sheep, almost within rifle-shot, clattering upward among the rocks, and endeavoring, after their usual custom, to reach the highest point.  The naked Indians bounded up lightly in pursuit.  In a moment the game and hunters disappeared.  Nothing could be seen or heard but the occasional report of a gun, more and more distant, reverberating among the rocks.

I turned to descend, and as I did so I could see the valley below alive with Indians passing rapidly through it, on horseback and on foot.  A little farther on, all were stopping as they came up; the camp was preparing, and the lodges rising.  I descended to this spot, and soon after Reynal and Raymond returned.  They bore between them a sheep which they had pelted to death with stones from the edge of a ravine, along the bottom of which it was attempting to escape.  One by one the hunters came dropping in; yet such is the activity of the Rocky Mountain sheep that, although sixty or seventy men were out in pursuit, not more than half a dozen animals were killed.  Of these only one was a full-grown male.  He had a pair of horns twisted like a ram’s, the dimensions of which were almost beyond belief.  I have seen among the Indians ladles with long handles, capable of containing more than a quart, cut from such horns.

There is something peculiarly interesting in the character and habits of the mountain sheep, whose chosen retreats are above the region of vegetation and storms, and who leap among the giddy precipices of their aerial home as actively as the antelope skims over the prairies below.

Through the whole of the next morning we were moving forward, among the hills.  On the following day the heights gathered around us, and the passage of the mountains began in earnest.  Before the village left its camping ground, I set forward in company with the Eagle-Feather, a man of powerful frame, but of bad and sinister face.  His son, a light-limbed boy, rode with us, and another Indian, named the Panther, was also of the party.  Leaving the village out of sight behind us, we rode together up a rocky defile.  After a while, however, the Eagle-Feather discovered in the distance some appearance of game, and set off with his son in pursuit of it, while I went forward with the Panther.  This was a mere NOM de