United States or Turks and Caicos Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
This conjecture is not so ill founded as at first sight would appear; for the Strait is only about fifty miles wide, is interrupted by three islands, and is jammed with ice nearly every winter. Furthermore the argali is abundant on the mountains adjacent to the Strait at East Cape, where it is well known to the Tschuckchi hunters and where I have seen many of their horns.
Some are desolate and dreary; others are oäses of vegetation, which fascinate the traveller whose fortune it has been, after toiling among naked rocks, to gaze upon their smiling fertility. These lovely wilds are the favourite home of many strange animals. The argali, or mountain-sheep, with his huge curving horns, is seen there; and the shaggy wild goat bounds along the steepest cliffs.
This is the Aoudad, which dwells in the mountains of Barbary. Asia appears to be the head-quarters of the wild sheep. One species is found in Armenia, and another in the Caucasus. Siberia has an argali, that appears altogether to differ from the argali of the Himalayas.
The sheep had reached the bottom of the valley before my fourth bullet broke his neck. Tom opened fire when the other ram and the ewe appeared at the mouth of the amphitheater, but his rear sight had been loosened in the climb down the cliff, and his shots went wild. It was hard luck, for I was very anxious to have him kill an argali.
Looking down where they had been so quietly feeding only a few moments before, I called myself all known varieties of a fool. I felt very bad indeed that I had bungled hopelessly my first chance at an argali. But the sympathetic old hunter patted me on the shoulder and said in Chinese, "Never mind. They were small ones anyway not worth having."
His heart was set upon the big ram peacefully sleeping a mile away. "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" is a motto which I have followed with good success in hunting, and I was loath to let that argali go even for the prospect of the big one across the valley. But I had a profound respect for the opinion of my hunter.
He told me he knew just where that ram would go; we couldn't have carried in his head anyway; that it would be much better to save him for to-morrow; and that I had killed the other two so beautifully that he was proud of me. I continued to feel better when I saw the two dead argali. They were both fine rams, in perfect condition, with beautiful horns.
Barker was greatly handicapped by using a special model U.S. Army Springfield rifle, which weighed almost as much as a machine gun, and could not have been less fitted for hunting in rough country. No man ever worked harder for an argali than he did, and he deserved the best head in the mountains. By noon I was burning with fever and almost unable to drag myself back to camp.
But I knew in my heart that it was all unnecessary. My bullet had gone where I wanted it to go and that was quite enough. No sheep that ever walked could live with a Mannlicher ball squarely in its neck. When we finally descended, the animal lay halfway down the slope, feebly kicking. What a huge brute he was, and what a glorious head! I had never dreamed that an argali could be so splendid.
Compared with the argali, which, considering its size and the vast extent of its range, is probably the most important of all the wild sheep, our species is about the same size, but the horns are less twisted and less divergent. The more important characteristics are, however, essentially the same, some of the best naturalists maintaining that the two are only varied forms of one species.
Word Of The Day