Whatever Might Be The Supernatural Influences Among These
Mountains, The Travellers Found Their Physical Difficulties Hard
To Cope With.
They made repeated attempts to find a passage
through or over the chain, but were as often turned back by
impassable barriers.
Sometimes a defile seemed to open a
practicable path, but it would terminate in some wild chaos of
rocks and cliffs, which it was impossible to climb. The animals
of these solitary regions were different from those they had been
accustomed to. The black-tailed deer would bound up the ravines
on their approach, and the bighorn would gaze fearlessly down
upon them from some impending precipice, or skip playfully from
rock to rock. These animals are only to be met with in
mountainous regions. The former is larger than the common deer,
but its flesh is not equally esteemed by hunters. It has very
large ears, and the tip of the tail is black, from which it
derives its name.
The bighorn is so named from its horns; which are of a great
size, and twisted like those of a ram. It is called by some the
argali, by others the ibex, though differing from both of these
animals. The Mandans call it the ahsahta, a name much better than
the clumsy appellation which it generally bears. It is of the
size of a small elk, or large deer, and of a dun color, excepting
the belly and round the tail, where it is white. In its habits it
resembles the goat, frequenting the rudest precipices; cropping
the herbage from their edges; and like the chamois, bounding
lightly and securely among dizzy heights, where the hunter dares
not venture. It is difficult, therefore, to get within shot of
it. Ben Jones the hunter, however, in one of the passes of the
Black Hills, succeeded in bringing down a bighorn from the verge
of a precipice, the flesh of which was pronounced by the gormands
of the camp to have the flavor of excellent mutton.
Baffled in his attempts to traverse this mountain chain, Mr. Hunt
skirted along it to the southwest, keeping it on the right; and
still in hopes of finding an opening. At an early hour one day,
he encamped in a narrow valley on the banks of a beautifully
clear but rushy pool; surrounded by thickets bearing abundance of
wild cherries, currants, and yellow and purple gooseberries.
While the afternoon's meal was in preparation, Mr. Hunt and Mr.
M'Kenzie ascended to the summit of the nearest hill, from whence,
aided by the purity and transparency of the evening atmosphere,
they commanded a vast prospect on all sides. Below them extended
a plain, dotted with innumerable herds of buffalo. Some were
lying among the herbage, others roaming in their unbounded
pastures, while many were engaged in fierce contests like those
already described, their low bellowings reaching the ear like the
hoarse murmurs of the surf on a distant shore.
Far off in the west they descried a range of lofty mountains
printing the clear horizon, some of them evidently capped with
snow.
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