Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 2 (1878).djvu/421

Rh their hunting expeditions, it is surprising that he could have found time to study the habits of the wild animals which he met with, and to note the many interesting particulars concerning them which his book contains.

Wet-mountain Valley, at the foot of the Sierra Verde, extending over an area of forty miles by twenty, enclosed by interlocking peaks belonging to the Rocky Mountain range, and forming a congeries of mountain glades, glens, and small valleys, watered by streams which coursed through osiers and willows, aspens and cotton-wood trees, must be a perfect paradise for explorers who, like Major Campion, combine a love of sport with a taste for Natural History.

"We had the whole valley to ourselves," he says, "and it was full of game — fur, feather, and fin — the streams being full of trout. The game consisted principally of several kinds of deer. In the low valleys and the timber bordering the creeks were ' white-tails,' so called because their tails, which, for deer, are very long — fifteen inches — are quite white on the under side, and they have a way of raising and flourishing them as they gallop away which is very noticeable. These deer have very long legs, standing high for their weight, which averages for bucks in good condition eighty pounds net, and for does in equal condition sixty. They are essentially a creek or valley deer, not frequenting the mountain slopes. Nor do they congregate together in large herds. We often found solitary ones, sometimes two or three, and but rarely as many as a dozen together.

"'Black-tails,' large-bodied, short-legged deer — the bucks dressing a hundred and fifty pounds, the does proportionably heavy — were on the mountain sides, the alps, and the most elevated of the small mountain valleys ; being only seen in the plain when crossing from range to range. Large black-tail bucks we often found alone, but it was not unusual to see twenty or thirty black-tails in a herd. On one occasion thirty-seven were counted.

"Last and least, 'spruce-deer,' of which a few small bands ranged high up the mountains ; fat, short-legged little fellows, about the size of goats, very hard to find and kill, but furnishing the best venison. Above, far up on the rocky sunny peaks, were droves of the 'Ashlata,' or big-horns — the American equivalent for the 'Argali' of Asia — a true sheep in all respects, though their wool does resemble hair, and whose mutton is, so far as I can judge, the best in the world. In the large valleys were several herds of antelopes [the Prong-horn], averaging about twenty head, but in the ' park' was one of over seventy. They were all very wild and wary, rendered so by being continually chased by packs of wolves. Quantities of elk-