We soon found sheep again, but they fled on our approach to the most inaccessible rocks, where they leaped with wondrous strength and certainty from one pinnacle to another, and sometimes after a desperate leap reached a peak on which they had scarce room for their four feet. In such cases they looked round for a few minutes in their airy position, and then flew with equal strength across to the nearest precipice, frequently over dizzy abysses whose bottom was concealed by mist. After a long, tiring, and unsuccessful stalking we scaled a height, and saw below us a flock of these animals standing on a slope over which they could not leap. We had cut off their retreat, and did not consider it possible that they could find their way across the scattered peaks to a lateral valley, which was about twenty feet broad and about fifty long. We would not fire at them where they stood, as they would have fallen over the precipice, and we could not have got at them; hence we showed ourselves and shouted, on the supposition that they would dash up hill and pass us. But they no sooner saw us than an old ram leaped with an enormous bound on to a projecting stone, and thence to a second, till he reached the gorge on our right, and darted up it. We ran up to the gorge, and I toppled the ram over with a bullet. The other animals followed it leap by leap, and all reached the other side of the gorge, excepting one ram, which jumped short and fell backwards into it. We looked after it, and I felt certain that it would be killed and become our prey; but it fell on the monstrous horns which nature has given these animals as a protection in such dangers, turned over, and leaped with the lightest bounds up the gorge, where both Tiger and I missed it. We reached the dead ram by a long circuit, paunched it, loaded ourselves with the best meat and the handsome skin, and returned to camp. About a mile farther on we shot down another large sheep from a rock, and sent Owl out to bring it in.