Beside the grizzly stands the mountain sheep, or cimmaron, the most
difficult to capture of all four-footed animals, whose gigantic curved
horns are the best trophy of skill and enterprise that a hunter can
bring home with him. The sculptor has here caught him in one of his
most characteristic attitudes--just alighted from some dizzy leap on
the headlong slope of a rocky mountainside. On such a spot nothing but
the cimmaron could retain its footing; yet there he stands, firm and
secure as the rock itself, his fore feet planted close together, the
fore legs rigid and straight as the shaft of a lance, while the hind
legs pose easily in attendance upon them. "The cimmaron always strikes
plumb-centre, and he never makes a mistake," is Mr. Kemeys's laconic
comment; and we can recognize the truth of the observation in this
image. Perfectly at home and comfortable on its almost impossible
perch, the cimmaron curves its great neck and turns its head upward,
gazing aloft toward the height whence it has descended. "It's the
golden eagle he hears," says the sculptor; "they give him warning of
danger." It is a magnificent animal, a model of tireless vigor in all
its parts; a creature made to hurl itself head-foremost down appalling
gulfs of space, and poise itself at the bottom as jauntily as if
gravitation were but a bugbear of timid imaginations. I find myself
unconsciously speaking about these plaster models as if they were the
living animals which they represent; but the more one studies Mr.
Kemeys's works, the more instinct with redundant and breathing life do
they appear.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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