The afternoon was well advanced and the pack train started back
and camped only a mile or two down the valley, while I stopped among
some great rocks to watch the movements of the sheep. Though at first
not easy to see, the animals' presence was evident by their calling, and
at length several were detected almost at the top of the cliff, but
already making their way back into the valley.
I was much interested in watching a ewe, which was coming down a steep
slope of slide rock. There was apparently no trail, or if there was
one, she did not use it, but picked her way down to the head of the
slope of slide rock, stood there for a few moments, and then, after
bleating once or twice, sprang well out into the air and alighted on the
slide rock, it seemed to me, twenty-five feet below where she had
been. A little cloud of dust arose and she appeared to be buried to her
knees in the slide rock. I could not see how it was possible for her to
have made this jump without breaking her slender legs, yet she repeated
it again and again, until she had come down about to my level and had
passed out of sight.
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