Two days later the native arrived from the main camp with more provisions, and brought an interesting letter from Blake.  It seemed that some Englishmen who had been hunting in these hills just before us had driven the big rams to the other end of the range, where my friend had been most fortunate in finding them.  He strongly advised my leaving my present camp and coming to the country which he had just left, having got six excellent heads.  This was the limit which we had decided upon as the number of sheep that we each wanted.

It was now apparently clear that I had been hunting at a great disadvantage in my district.  On receiving Blake’s letter I at once determined to retrace my steps to the main camp, go to the head of the lake and follow up the trail which he had laid out upon the mountains.

Therefore the next morning (September 7) we shouldered our packs and went over the hills to our main camp.  Instead of following the trail by which we had come, we decided to push straight across country, hoping in this way to reach our main camp in one march.  Our change of route was unfortunate, and this day I can easily put down as the hardest one I ever passed in the mountains.

In order to bring out all our belongings in one trip we had extra heavy packs, and the country over which we marched was very trying.  About noon I spied sheep on one of the outlying hills, and as we came nearer I made out through the glasses that this was a bunch of five rams, and that three of them carried exceptionally good heads.  My only chance was to push ahead of my men, and this I did, but stalking sheep over a rough country with a heavy pack on your back is very trying work, and I failed to connect with these rams.

About five o’clock in the afternoon we came down over the mountains on to the high plateau above our main camp.  We were all too used up to go any further, or even put up our light tent, although it soon began to rain.  We made a rude camp in a patch of stunted hemlocks, and as I sat before the fire having my tea, I chanced to look up on the hills before me, and there was the bunch of five rams I had tried so hard to stalk early in the afternoon.  They were at no great distance, but it was rapidly growing dark, and there was not time to get within range while it would be light enough to shoot.  So I sat and studied these sheep through the glasses, determined to find them later, even if it took me a month.

One of them had a most beautiful head, with long and massive horns well over the full turn.  Another had a head which would have been equally good if the left horn had not been slightly broken at the tip.  The third also had an excellent head, and although not up to the other two, his horns made the full turn.  The remaining two rams were smaller.  I watched them until darkness came on, and all this while they fed slowly back toward the mountains on which my friend had been hunting the week before.  I am convinced that this bunch of sheep had been driven out of these hills by Blake, and had been turned back again by me.