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The descent was rugged and romantic, along deep ravines and defiles, overhung with crags and cliffs, among which they beheld numbers of the ahsahta or bighorn, skipping fearlessly from rock to rock. Two of them they succeeded in bringing down with their rifles, as they peered fearlessly from the brow of their airy precipices.
At this critical juncture, when famine stared them in the face, M'Lellan casting up his eyes, beheld an ahsahta, or bighorn, sheltering itself under a shelving rock on the side of the hill above them. Being in a more active plight than any of his comrades, and an excellent marksman, he set off to get within shot of the animal.
The ahsahta, argali, or bighorn, on the contrary, has short hair like a deer, and resembles it in shape, but has the head and horns of a sheep, and its flesh is said to be delicious mutton. The Indians consider it more sweet and delicate than any other kind of venison.
Singular Noises in the Mountains Secret Mines.-Hidden Treasures. Mountains in Labor. Scientific Explanation.-Impassable Defiles. Black-Tailed Deer.-The Bighorn or Ahsahta.-Prospect From a Lofty Height. Plain With Herds of Buffalo.-Distant Peaks of the Rocky Mountains. Alarms in the Camp.-Tracks of Grizzly Bears.
In proceeding along Snake River, he found small hordes of Shoshonies lingering upon the minor streams, and living upon trout and other fish, which they catch in great numbers at this season in fish-traps. The greater part of the tribe, however, had penetrated the mountains to hunt the elk, deer, and ahsahta or bighorn.
From the fibres, the Indians manufacture baskets of such close texture as to hold water. The principal quadrupeds that had been seen by the colonists in their various expeditions were the stag, fallow deer, hart, black and grizzly bear, antelope, ahsahta or bighorn, beaver, sea and river otter, muskrat, fox, wolf, and panther, the latter extremely rare.
The Blackfeet, therefore, refrained from venturing in after the Nez Perces, awaiting a better chance, when they should once more emerge into the open country. Captain Bonneville soon found that the Indians had not exaggerated the advantages of this region. Besides the numerous gangs of elk, large flocks of the ahsahta or bighorn, the mountain sheep, were to be seen bounding among the precipices.
Wide prairies Vegetable productions Tabular hills Slabs of sandstone Nebraska or Platte River Scanty fare Buffalo skulls Wagons turned into boats Herds of buffalo Cliffs resembling castles The chimney Scott's Bluffs Story connected with them The bighorn or ahsahta Its nature and habits Difference between that and the "woolly sheep," or goat of the mountains
Amidst this wild and striking scenery, Captain Bonneville, for the first time, beheld flocks of the ahsahta or bighorn, an animal which frequents these cliffs in great numbers.
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.
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