Their resting-places seem to be chosen with reference to sunshine and a
wide outlook, and most of all to safety. Their feeding-grounds are among
the most beautiful of the wild gardens, bright with daisies and gentians
and mats of purple bryanthus, lying hidden away on rocky headlands and
canon sides, where sunshine is abundant, or down in the shady glacier
valleys, along the banks of the streams and lakes, where the plushy sod
is greenest. Here they feast all summer, the happy wanderers, perhaps
relishing the beauty as well as the taste of the lovely flora on which
they feed.
[Illustration: SNOW-BOUND ON MOUNT SHASTA.]
When the winter storms set in, loading their highland pastures with
snow, then, like the birds, they gather and go to lower climates,
usually descending the eastern flank of the range to the rough, volcanic
table-lands and treeless ranges of the Great Basin adjacent to the
Sierra. They never make haste, however, and seem to have no dread of
storms, many of the strongest only going down leisurely to bare,
wind-swept ridges, to feed on bushes and dry bunch-grass, and then
returning up into the snow. Once I was snow-bound on Mount Shasta for
three days, a little below the timber line.
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