“Wild Sheep.”

  NEARLY all of the lofty mountain chains of the globe are inhabited by wild sheep, which are ordinarily classified under five or six distinct species. These are the argali (Ovis ammon, Lin.), found throughout all the principal mountains of Asia; the burrhal (Ov. burrhel), of the upper Himalayas; the Corsican wild sheep (Ov. musimon, Pal.); the African (Ov. tragelephus, Cuv.); and the American bighorn (Ov. montana, Cuv.). This last, also called the Rocky Mount­ain sheep, is identical with the wild sheep of the Sierra Nevada. Its range, according to Professor Baird, 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 they extend as far as the Cascade and Coast ranges of Washington, Oregon, and California, and follow the highlands some distance into Mexico.^*

  In California, the wild sheep ranks among the noblest of animal mountaineers. Possessed of keen sight, immovable nerve, and strong limbs, he dwells secure amid the loftiest summits of the Sierra, leaping unscathed from crag to crag, crossing foaming torrents and slopes of frozen snow, exposed to the wildest storms, yet maintaining a brave life, and developing from generation to generation in perfect strength and beauty. Compared with the argali, which, considering its size and the vast extent of its range, is perhaps the most important of all the wild sheep, the horns of our species are more regularly curved and less divergent at the base and near the tips; moreover, the argali may not be quite so large, but their more important characters are essentially the same, some of the best naturalists maintaining that they are only varied forms of one species. Cuvier conjectures that the argali may have come to this continent by crossing Behring’s Straits on the ice.

  It is generally supposed that the innumerable breeds of domestic sheep have been derived from the various wild species, but the whole question is involved in obscurity. According to Darwin, sheep have been domesticated from a very ancient period, the remains of a small breed differing from any now known having been found in the famous Swiss lake-dwellings. Compared with the best known domestic breeds, we find that our wild species is two or three times as large, full-grown specimens weighing from 200 to 350 pounds. Instead of wool, they are covered with a thick mattress of coarse hair, like that of the deer, with only a very little fine wool at the bottom; but, though coarse, this hair is soft and spongy, and lies smoothly, as if carefully tended with comb and brush. I have frequently observed some of the same kind of coarse hair mixed with the wool of Mexican sheep. The predominant color is brownish gray, varying somewhat with the seasons; the belly and a large conspicuous patch on the buttocks are white, and the tail, which is very short, is black, with a yellowish border. The horns of the male are of immense size, measuring in their greater diameter from five to six inches, and in length around the curve from two to three feet. They are yellowish white in color, and ridged transversely, like those of the domestic ram. Their cross-section near the base is somewhat triangular in outline. In rising from the head they curve gently backward and outward, then forward and outward, until about three-fourths of a circle has been described, and until the tips, which are flattened and blunt, are about two feet apart. Two specimens found last summer on the head- waters of the San Joaquin measured as follows: Circumference at the base, 13 ½ and 16 ¼ inches; distance across from tip to tip, 22 and 24 inches. Those of the female are more flattened, less curved, and much smaller, measuring only six or seven inches in length along the curve. The following measurements of a male, obtained from the Rocky Mountains, are from Audubon:^†

Besides these differences in size, color, and clothing, we might note that in form the domestic sheep is expressionless, like a round bundle of something only half alive; the wild is elegant as a deer, and every muscle glows with life. The tame is timid; the wild is bold. The tame is always ruffled and soiled; the wild is trim and clean as the flowers of its pasture.

  The earliest mention that I have been able to find of our sheep, is by Father Picolo, a Catholic missionary at Monterey, in the year 1797, who, after describing it as being as large as a calf one or two years old, and as having the body of a deer with the head and horns of a sheep, adds, “I have eaten of these beasts; their flesh is very tender and delicious.” Mackenzie mentions them in his travels as a kind of buffalo. A few of the more energetic of the Mono Indians hunt the sheep every season among the slate summits between Castle Peak and Mount Lyell, this section of the Sierra being comparatively easy of access, and here, from having been pursued, they are now extremely wary; but farther to the south, in the wilderness of snowy peaks, where the many rugged branches of the San Joaquin and King’s rivers take their rise, they fear no hunter save the wolf, and are more guileless and approachable than any of their tame kindred.

  I have been greatly interested in studying their habits during the last four years, while engaged in the work of exploring these high regions. In spring and summer the males form separate bands. They are usually met in small flocks, numbering from three to twenty, feeding along the edges of glacier meadows, or resting among the castle-like crags of lofty summits; and, whether feeding or resting, or scaling wild cliffs for pleasure, their noble forms, the very embodiment of muscular beauty, never fail to strike the beholder with liveliest admiration. Their resting-places seem to be chosen with reference to sunshine and a wide outlook, and, most of all, to safety from the attacks of wolves. Their feeding-grounds are among the most beautiful of the wild Sierra gardens, bright with daisies and gentians, and mats of blooming shrubs. These are hidden away high on the sides of rough cañons, where light is abundant, or down in the valleys, along lake-borders, and stream-banks, where the plushy turf is greenest, and the purple heather grows. Sweet grasses also grow in these happy Alpine gardens, but the wild sheep eats little besides the spicy leaves and shoots of the various shrubs and bushes, perhaps relishing both their taste and beauty, although tame men are slow to suspect wild sheep of seeing more than grass. When winter storms fall, decking their summer pastures in the lavish bloom of snow, then, like the blue-birds and robins, our brave sheep gather and go to warmer climates, usually descending the eastern .flank of the range to the narrow, birch-filled gorges that open into the sage plains, where snow never falls to any great depth, the elevation above the sea being about from 5,000 to 7,000 feet. Here they sojourn until spring sunshine unlocks the cañons and warms the pastures of their glorious Alps.

  In the months of June and July they bring forth their young, in the most solitary and inaccessible crags, far above the nest 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 consist simply of an oval-shaped hollow, 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 passionately across those lofty crags almost without intermission. Such is the cradle of the little mountaineer, aloft in the sky, rocked in storms, curtained in clouds, sleeping in thin, icy air; but wrapped in his hairy coat, nourished by a warm, strong mother, defended from the talons of the eagle and teeth of the sly coyote, the bonnie Iamb grows apace. He learns to nibble the purple daisy and leaves of the white spirræa; his horns begin to shoot, and, ere summer is done, he is strong and agile, and goes forth with the flock, shepherded by the same Divine love that tends the more helpless human Iamb in its warm cradle by the fireside.

  Like the Alp-climbing ibex of Europe, our mountaineer is said to plunge fearlessly down the faces of sheer precipices, and alight on his huge elastic horns. I know only two hunters who claim to have witnessed this feat; I never was so fortunate. They describe the act as a diving head-foremost. Some of the horns that I have examined with reference to this question are certainly much battered in front, and are so large at the base that they cover all the upper portion of the head down nearly to a level with the eyes; moreover, the skull of a wild sheep is stronger than a bull’s. I struck an old bleached specimen on Mount Ritter a dozen blows with my ice-axe without breaking it. Such skulls would not fracture very readily by the wildest rock-diving; but other bones might, and the numerous mechanical difficulties in the way of controlling the movements of their bodies after striking upon an irregular rock surface would seem to make such a bowlder-like method of progression improbable, even for the big-horned rams, much more for the ewes. Perhaps when a great leap is made they may endeavor to lighten the shock upon their legs; and assist in arresting farther progress, by striking their horns against any rock that may chance to be favorably situated for the purpose, just as men mountaineers do with their hands.

  Nothing is more commonly remarked by travelers in the high Sierra than the absence of animal life; but if such would go singly, without haste or noise, away from the region of trails and pack-trains, they would speedily learn that these mountain mansions are not without in­ habitants, many of whom, confiding and gentle, would be glad to make their acquaintance. Last September, I was following the south fork of the San Joaquin up its wild cation to its farthest icy fountains. It was the season of mountain Indian summer. The sun beamed lovingly, squirrels were nutting amid the pine­ cones, butterflies hovered about the last of the golden-rods, willow and maple groves were yellow, the meadows were brown, and the whole mellow landscape glowed like a countenance with the deepest and sweetest repose. On my way along the rocky river-side, I came to a fine meadowy expansion of the cañon, about two miles long and half a mile wide, inclosed with picturesque granite walls like those of Yosemite, and with the river sweeping through its groves and meadows in magnificent curves. This little Yosemite was full of wild life. Deer with their fawns constantly bounded from thicket to thicket as I advanced. Grouse kept rising from the brown grass with a great whirring of wings, and, alighting on low branches or the poplar or pine, allowed a near approach, as if pleased to be observed. A broad-shouldered wild-cat showed himself, coming out of a grove and crossing the river upon a flood-jam of logs. The bird-like tamias frisked about among pine-needles and seedy grass-tufts. Cranes waded the shallows of the river bends, the king-fisher rattled from perch to perch, and the blessed ouser sung with the leaping spray of every cascade. Purple evening came as I lingered in the company of these mountain dwellers, and, as darkness fell, I awoke from their enchantment and sought a camping-spot near the river. I slept among the yellow leaves of an aspen grove, and, pushing forward next morning, discovered yet grander landscapes and grander life. The scenery became more Alpine. The lofty sugar-pine and silver fir gave place to the hardier cedar and dwarf pine, the canon walls became more jagged and bare, and gentians became more abundant in the gardens of the river bank. In the afternoon, I came to a valley strikingly wild in all its features. As regards area of bottom, it is one of the very smallest of San Joaquin Yosemites; but its walls are sublime, rising from 2,000 to 4,000 feet above the river. At the head of the valley, the river forks, as is found to be the case in all Yosemites. Its formation was accomplished by the action of two vast ice – rivers, whose fountains were on the flanks of mounts Humphreys and Emerson, and mountains farther south. On their recession at the close of the great winter, this valley basin became first a lake; then a sedgy meadow; then, filled with flood-bowlders and logs, and planted with bushes and grass, it became the Yosemite of to-day—a range for wild sheep, whose tracks I saw printed everywhere along its briery lanes and gulches.

  The chafed river sings loud on its way down the valley, but above its deafening songs I could hear the heavier booming of a water-fall, which caused me to push eagerly forward. Emerging from the tangled groves at the head of the valley, I beheld the young San Joaquin coming from its fountains in a glorious cascade. Scanning the steep incline down which the white waters thundered, I discovered a crooked seam, by which I climbed to the edge of a narrow terrace, which, crossing the cañon, divides the cascades nearly in the middle. Here I sat down to take breath and to make some entries in my note-book, taking advantage of my elevated position to gaze back down over the valley into the heart of the glorious landscape, little knowing the while what neighbors were near. Chancing to look across the cascade, there stood three wild sheep within a few yards, calmly observing me. Never did the sudden appearance of human friend, or mountain, or waterfall, so forcibly seize and rivet my attention. Anxiety to observe accurately on so rare an opportunity checked enthusiasm. Eagerly I marked the flowing undulations of their firm-braided limbs; their strong, straight legs, size, color, ears, eyes, heads; their graceful rounded necks, the upsweeping cycloidal curve of their noble horns. When they moved, I devoured every gesture; while they, in nowise disconcerted either by my attention or by the loud roar of the waters, advanced slowly up the rapids, often turning to look at me. Presently, they made a dash at a steep ice-polished incline, and reached the top without a struggle, by a succession of short, stiff leaps, bringing their hoofs down sharply with a patting sound. This was the most astounding feat of mountaineering I had ever witnessed. Just a few days previous, my cautious, iron-shod mules fell, on good rough ground, descending the cañon-side in lawless avalanche; and many a time I have been compelled to tie my shoes and stockings to my belt, and creep up far easier slopes with the utmost caution. No wonder, then, I watched the progress of these animal mountaineers with intensest sympathy, and exulted in the boundless sufficiency of wild nature displayed in their invention, construction, and keeping. But judge the measure of my overjoy when, a few moments later, I caught sight of a dozen more in one flock near the base of the upper cascade. They were on the same side of the river with me, distant only twenty-five or thirty yards; and looking as unworn, calm, and bright, as if created on the spot. It appears that when I came up the cañon, they all were feeding together in the valley, and in their haste to reach high ground, where they could look about them to ascertain the nature of the disturbance, they were divided, three having ascended on one side of the cascade, the rest on the other. The main flock, headed by an experienced chief, began to cross the rapids soon after I first observed them. The crossing of swift torrents on chance bowlders is nerve-trying work even for men mountaineers, yet these shepherdless sheep leaped from bowlder to bowlder, and held themselves in perfect poise above the whirling current, as if doing nothing extraordinary. The immediate foreground of the rare picture before me, was glossy ice-planed granite, traversed by seams in which grew rock-ferns and tufts of heathy bryanthus, the gray canon walls on both sides splendidly sculptured, and adorned with brown cedars and pines; in the distance, lofty mountains rising far into the thin blue sky; in the centre, the snowy cascade, the voice and the soul of al fringing shrubs waving time to its thunder-tones; and in front, the brave sheep, their gray forms slightly obscured in the spray, yet firmly defined on the close, dense white of the cataract, their huge rough horns rising in the midst like upturned roots of dead pine-trees—the setting sun lighting the cañon, purpling and glorifying all.

  After crossing the river, the dauntless climbers, led by their chief, at once began to scale the canon wall; now right, now left, in long single file, leaping in succession from cliff to cliff; now ascending slippery dome-curves; now walking 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 find out whether I was about to follow. When they had reached the top of the wall, 1,500 to 2,000 feet high, I could still see their noble forms outlined on the sky as they lingered, looking down in groups of two or three, giving rare animation to the sublime cliffs. Throughout the whole ascent, I did not observe a single awkward step or unsuccessful effort. I have often seen tame sheep in the mountains jump upon a sloping rock-surface, hold on tremulously a few seconds, and fall back baffled and irresolute; but in the most trying dangers, where the slightest inaccuracy would have resulted in destruction, these moved with magnificent reliance on their strength and skill, the limits of which they never seemed to know.

  Moreover, each one of the flock, though acknowledging the right of leadership to the most experienced, climbed with intelligent independence—a perfect individual, capable of separate existence whenever it should choose to secede from the little clan. But the domestic sheep is only a fraction of an animal, a whole flock being required to form an individual, just as numerous florets are required for the making of one complete sunflower. Shepherds acquainted with mountain dangers, who in watching by night and day have be­ held their feeble flocks broken by bears, crushed and disintegrated by storms, and scattered diverse in the rocks like wind-driven chaff, will in some measure appreciate the strong self-reliance and noble individuality of nature’s sheep.

  The only animal which may fairly be regarded as a companion of our sheep, is the so-called Rocky Mountain goat (Aplocerus montanus, Rich), which according to Professor Baird is far more antelope than goat. He, too, is a brave and hardy fellow, fearlessly accompanying our sheep on the wildest summits, and braving with him the severest storms, but smaller and much less dignified in demeanor, and the long white hair with which his body is covered obscures the expression of his limbs. His jet-black horns are only about five or six inches long. I have never seen this American chamois, although a few small flocks have been found in the Sierra. In some portions of the Rocky and Cascade ranges it is said to occur in flocks of considerable size, where it i hunted by the Indians, who make use of its skin in various ways, that of the head with the horns attached being sometimes worn as a cap.

  Three species of deer occur in California—the black-tailed, white-tailed, and mule-deer. The first-mentioned species (Cervus Columbianus) is by far the most common, and is frequently met by our sheep in summer on high glacier meadows, and along the outskirts of the upper forests; but being a forest animal, seeking shelter, and rearing its young in dense thickets, it seldom visits our sheep in his higher homes. The antelope, though not a mountaineer, is occasionally met during his winter sojourn on the edge of the sage-plains. The elk (Cervus Canadensis) still exists in a few places along the base of the Sierra, but I doubt if our sheep has ever seen him. Perhaps no animal in the world is without its enemy, but mountaineers as a class have fewer enemies than low landers. Our Sierra sheep seems to be favored above his companions.

  The panther pounces upon the antelope and deer, but his track is seldom seen crossing the craggy threshold of the sheep, nor is he often exposed to the hunter’s rifle. A few perish by swift and heavy snow-storms. Two that I found last summer on the side of a glacial meadow, appear to have perished in this way; and three were discovered snow-bound in Bloody cañon, a few years ago, and killed with an axe by some men who had occasion to cross the range by the Mono Pass, in midwinter. The bear can hardly be considered an enemy, for though sometimes he leaves berries and acorns for mutton, be prefers hunting the tame and helpless civilized sheep. The eagle and coyote occasionally capture an unprotected lamb, or some unfortunate hard beset in deep snow; but these are little more than-accidents, and as for man, the unsatisfiable enemy of all nature, our sheep have little to fear from him, because, like stars and angels, they dwell mostly above his reach in the sky. The golden plains of Sacramento and San Joaquin were recently thronged with bands of antelope, but being fertile and accessible they are required for human pastures; so also are the splendid feeding-grounds of the deer—hill, valley, forest, and meadow; but it will be long ere he will be able to take and use the highland castles of the sheep; and remembering here how rapidly whole species of the noble animals are disappearing before the footsteps of man, all lovers of wilderness life will rejoice with me in the rocky security of Ovis montana, the bravest mountaineer of the Sierra.

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^{* Pacific Railroad Survey, vol. viii,, page 678.
† Audubon and Bachman’s Quadrupeds of North America.}