Tajikistan circa 1275
Marco Polo (Henry Yule and Henri Cordier 3d Edition), The Travels of Marco Polo, 1920, Chapter XXXII: Of the Great River of Badashan.
There are great numbers of all kinds of wild beasts; among others, wild sheep of great size, whose horns are good six palms in length. From these horns the shepherds make great bowls to eat from, and they use the horns also to enclose folds for their cattle at night.
Conservation status of the Marco Polo Argali Sheep: Near Threatened.
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United States [North Dakota] 1832
George Catlin, Illustrations of the Manners, Customs, & Condition of the North American Indians. With Letters and Notes, Written During Eight Years of Travel and Adventure Among the Wildest and Most Remarkable Tribes now Existing, Volume I, Chatto & Windus, London, 1876, Letter No. 10, Mandan Village, Upper Missouri.
It is along the rugged and wild fronts of these cliffs, whose sides are generally formed of hard clay, that the mountain-sheep [bighorn sheep] dwell, and are often discovered in great numbers. Their habits are much like those of the goat; and in every respect they are like that animal, except in the horns, which resemble those of the ram; sometimes making two entire circles in their coil; and at the roots, each horn is, in some instances, from five to six inches in breadth.
On the second day of our voyage we discovered a number of these animals skipping along the sides of the precipice, always keeping about equi-distant between the top and bottom of the ledge; leaping and vaulting in the most extraordinary manner from point to point, and seeming to cling actually, to the sides of the wall, where neither man nor beast could possibly follow them.
