The mazama is entirely white, excepting its hoofs, horns, and narrow lines about the eyes and nostrils, which are black. In general, it is smaller than the bighorn, but bucks have been reported to attain a length of nearly 6 feet and a weight of some 300 or 400 pounds. Its habitat is not only higher on the mountains but more restricted in geographical extent than that of the bighorn. It is said to live about Mount Whitney, the highest summit in the Sierra Nevada, but is unknown farther south; in Colorado it is reported to have been seen on a few of the higher peaks, but its main range begins well to the north of these outlying localities, in the mountains of Montana and Idaho and in the Cascades. To the north of the United States it occurs throughout the higher ranges of British Columbia and in the mountains of southern Alaska as far west at least as Cook Inlet. It is plentiful and as yet undisturbed by hunters on the foot-hills about Mount St. Elias, where the alpine conditions congenial to it occur at an elevation of from 2,000 to 3,000 feet above the sea. Like all of the larger animals, and especially the herbivores, the bighorn and the mazama are sought by sportsmen, but on account of the ruggedness of the regions they inhabit and their wariness they are likely to survive when most other examples of "big game" shall have been exterminated. Both the bighorn and the mazama are sought by Indians for food and for their pelts, and their horns are frequently used, especially in Alaska, in the manufacture of spoons. They are practically of no economic importance to white men, although their flesh when young is excellent food, and their fleeces would be of value to the weaver if they could be obtained in sufficient quantity. They serve, however, to entice the sportsman, who is usually an ardent lover of nature, into some of the wildest and grandest regions the continent affords. Their value in this connection is not to be measured in dollars, and strenuous efforts should be made to insure their continuance. [Illustration: FIG. 31.--Bison at Silver Heights, Winnipeg. (Photograph by William Notman & Son.)] _The Bison._--Of all the larger mammals of North America, none was more numerous at the time Europeans advanced over the continent than the bison or "buffalo" (_Bos americanus_), and none more important alike to the Indian and the white man. The part played by this relative of the domestic ox in the history of the country is not only instructive, but one of the best illustrations that can be furnished of the practical extermination of a species through the greed and lack of forethought of so-called civilized man.