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diff --git a/old/69774-0.txt b/old/69774-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 7611ae8..0000000 --- a/old/69774-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,6852 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of Nature's invitation, by Bradford -Torrey - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: Nature's invitation - Notes of a bird-gazer, North and South - -Author: Bradford Torrey - -Release Date: January 12, 2023 [eBook #69774] - -Language: English - -Produced by: Emmanuel Ackerman, David E. Brown, and the Online - Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This - file was produced from images generously made available by - The Internet Archive) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NATURE'S INVITATION *** - - - - - -Books by Mr. Torrey. - - - NATURE’S INVITATION. 16mo, $1.10, _net._ Postage extra. - - THE CLERK OF THE WOODS. 16mo, $1.10, _net._ Postpaid, $1.20. - - FOOTING IT IN FRANCONIA. 16mo, $1.10, _net._ Postpaid, $1.19. - - EVERYDAY BIRDS. Elementary Studies. With twelve colored Illustrations - reproduced from Audubon. Square 12mo, $1.00. - - BIRDS IN THE BUSH. 16mo, $1.25. - - A RAMBLER’S LEASE. 16mo, $1.25. - - THE FOOT-PATH WAY. 16mo, gilt top, $1.25. - - A FLORIDA SKETCH-BOOK. 16mo, $1.25. - - SPRING NOTES FROM TENNESSEE. 16mo, $1.25. - - A WORLD OF GREEN HILLS. 16mo, $1.25. - - - HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. - BOSTON AND NEW YORK. - - - - -NATURE’S INVITATION - - - - - NATURE’S INVITATION - - NOTES OF A BIRD-GAZER - NORTH AND SOUTH - - BY - BRADFORD TORREY - - “On Nature’s invitation do I come.”--WORDSWORTH. - - [Illustration] - - BOSTON AND NEW YORK - HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY - The Riverside Press, Cambridge - 1904 - - - - - COPYRIGHT 1904 BY BRADFORD TORREY - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED - - _Published October 1904_ - - - - -PREFATORY NOTE - - -Of the chapters here brought together the two longest, the first -and the last, are reprinted from the “Atlantic Monthly.” The others -were originally contributed, by way of weekly letters, to three -newspapers,--the “Evening Transcript” of Boston, and the “Mail and -Express” and the “Evening Post” of New York. - - - - -CONTENTS - - - NEW HAMPSHIRE - - PAGE - - A MAY VISIT TO MOOSILAUKE 3 - A WEEK ON MOUNT WASHINGTON 32 - ABOVE THE BIRDS 41 - MOUNTAIN-TOP AND VALLEY 50 - IN THE MOUNT LAFAYETTE FOREST 57 - ON BALD MOUNTAIN 65 - BIRDS AND BRIGHT LEAVES 72 - - - FLORIDA - - FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF MIAMI 83 - A FROSTY MORNING 89 - BEWILDERMENT 96 - WAITING FOR THE MUSIC 104 - PERIPATETIC BOTANY 111 - A PEEP AT THE EVERGLADES 120 - THE BEGINNINGS OF SPRING 128 - FAIR ORMOND 136 - A DAY IN THE WOODS 142 - PICTURE AND SONG 151 - - - TEXAS AND ARIZONA - - IN OLD SAN ANTONIO 161 - A BIRD-GAZER’S PUZZLES 171 - LUCK ON THE PRAIRIE 179 - OVER THE BORDER 188 - FIRST DAYS IN TUCSON 196 - MOBBED IN ARIZONA 205 - AN IDLE AFTERNOON 215 - SHY LIFE IN THE DESERT 224 - A NEW ACQUAINTANCE 233 - THE DESERT REJOICES 242 - NESTS AND OTHER MATTERS 251 - A FLYCATCHER AND A SPARROW 259 - A BUNCH OF BRIGHT BIRDS 266 - - INDEX 295 - - - - -NEW HAMPSHIRE - - - - -A MAY VISIT TO MOOSILAUKE - - -When a man sets forth on an out-of-door pleasure jaunt, his prayer -is for weather. If he is going to the mountains, let him double his -urgency. In the mountains, if nowhere else, weather is three fifths of -life. - -My first trip to New Hampshire the present season[1] was made under -smooth, high clouds, which left the distance clear, so that the -mountains stood up grandly beyond the lake as we ran along its western -border. Not a drop of rain fell till I stepped off the car at Warren. -At that moment the world grew suddenly dark, and before I could get -into the open carriage the clouds burst, and with a rattling of -thunder bolts a deluge of rain and hail descended upon us. There was -no contending with such an adversary, though a good woman across the -way, commiserating our plight, came to the door with proffers of an -umbrella. I retreated to the station, while the driver hastened down -the street to put his team under shelter. So a half hour passed. -Then we tried again, and half frozen, in spite of a winter overcoat -and everything that goes with it (the date was May 17), I reached my -destination, five miles away, at the foot of Moosilauke. - -All this would hardly deserve narration, perhaps (the story of -travelers’ discomforts being mostly matter for skipping), only that it -marked the setting in of a cold, rainy “spell” that hung upon us for -four days. Four sunless days out of seven was a proportion fairly to -be complained of. The more I consider it, the truer seems the equation -just now stated, that mountain weather is three fifths of life. For -those four days I did not even _see_ Moosilauke, though we were living, -so to speak, upon its shoulder, and I knew by hearsay that the summit -house was visible from the back doorstep. - -My first brief walk before supper should reasonably have been in -the clearer valley country; but if reason spoke inclination did not -hear it, and my feet--which seem to feel that they are old enough by -this time to know their master’s business for him--took of their own -motion an opposite course. The mountain woods, as I entered them, -had the appearance of early March: only the merest sprinkling of new -life,--clintonia leaves especially, with here and there a round-leaved -violet, both leaves and flowers,--upon a ground still all defaced by -the hand of Winter. Dead leaves make an agreeable carpet, as they -rustle cheerfully-sadly under one’s feet in autumn; but there was no -rustle here; the snow had pressed every leaf flat and left it sodden. -One thing consoled me: I had not arrived too late. The “bud-crowned -spring,” for all my fears, was yet to “go forth.” - -The next morning it was not enough to say that _it_ was cloudy. That -impersonal expression would have been quite below the mark. _We_ were -cloudy. In short, the cloud was literally around us and upon us. As -I stepped out of doors, a rose-breasted grosbeak was singing in one -direction, and a white-throated sparrow in another, both far away in -the mist. It was strange they should be so happy, I was ready to say. -But I bethought myself that their case was no different from my own. It -was comparatively clear just about me, while the fog shut down like a -curtain a rod or two away, leaving the rest of the world dark. So every -bird stood in a ring of light, an illuminated chantry all his own, - - And sang for joy, good Christian bird, - To be thus marked and favored. - -Strange had he _not_ been happy. To be blest above one’s fellows is to -be blest twice over. - -This time I took the downward road, turning to the left, and found -myself at once in pleasant woods, with hospitable openings and bypaths; -a birdy spot, or I was no prophet, though just now but few voices were -to be heard, and those of the commonest. Here stood new-blown anemones, -bellworts, and white violets, an early flock, with one painted trillium -lording it over them; a small specimen of its kind, but big enough to -be king (or shepherd) in such company. A brook, or perhaps two, with -the few birds, sang about me, invisible. I knew not whither I was -going, and the all-embracing cloud deepened the mystery. Soon the road -took a sudden dip, and a louder noise filled my ears. I was coming -to a river? Yes, for presently I was on the bridge, with a raging -mountain torrent, eighty feet, perhaps, underneath, foaming against the -boulders; a bare, perpendicular cliff on one side, and perpendicular -spruces and hemlocks draping a similar cliff on the other side. It was -Baker’s River, I was told afterward,--the same that I had looked at -here and there, the day before, from the car window. It was good to see -it so young and exuberant; but even a young river need not be so much -in haste, I thought. It would get to the sawmills soon enough, and by -and by would learn, too late, that it is only a little way to the sea. - -Once over the bridge, the road climbed quickly out of the narrow gorge, -and at the first turn brought me in sight of a small painted house, -with a small orchard of thrifty-looking small trees behind it. Here -a venerable collie came running forth to bark at the stranger, but -yielded readily to the usual blandishments, and after sniffing again -and again at my heels, just to make sure of knowing me the next time, -went back, contented, to lie down in his old place before the window. -He was the only person that spoke to me--the only one I met--during the -forenoon, though I spent it all on the highway. - -Another patch of woods, where a distant Canadian nuthatch is calling -(strange how I love that nasal, penetrating, far-reaching voice, whose -quality my reasoning taste condemns), and I see before me another -house, standing in broad acres of cleared land. This one is not -painted, and, as I presently make out, is uninhabited, its old tenant -gone, dead or discouraged, and no new one looked for; an “abandoned -farm,” such as one grows used to seeing in our northern country. It -is beautiful for situation, one of those sightly places which the -city-worn passer-by in a mountain wagon pitches upon at once as just -the place he should like to buy and retire to--_some_ day; in that -autumn of golden leisure of which, now and then, - - “When all his active powers are still,” - -he has a pleasing vision. Oh yes, he means to do something of that -kind--some day; and even while he talks of it he knows in his heart -that “some day” is only another name for “next day after never.” - -A few happy barn swallows (wise enough, or simple enough, to be happy -_now_) go skimming over the grass, and a pair of robins and a pair of -bluebirds seem to be at home in the orchard; which they like none the -worse, we may be sure,--the bluebirds, especially,--because, along with -the house and the barn, it is falling into decay. What are apple trees -for, but to grow old and become usefully hollow? Otherwise they would -be no better than so many beeches or butternuts. It is impossible but -that every creature should look at the world through its own eyes; and -no bluebird ever ate an apple. A purple finch warbles ecstatically, a -white-throated sparrow whistles in the distance, and now and then, from -far down the slope, I catch the upliftings of a hermit thrush. - -A man grows thoughtful, not to say sentimental, in such a place, -surrounded by fields on which so many years of human labor have been -spent, so much ploughing and harrowing, planting and reaping, now given -up again to nature. Here was the garden patch, its outlines still -traceable. Here was the well. Long lines of stone wall still separate -the mowing land from the pasturage; and scattered over the fields are -heaps of boulders, thrown together thus to get them out of the grass’s -way. About the edges of every pile, and sometimes through the midst, -have sprung up a few shrubs,--shad bushes, cherries, willows, and the -like. Here they escape the scythe, as we are all trying to do. “Give -us room that we may dwell!”--so these children of Zion cry. It is the -great want of seeds, so many millions of which go to waste annually in -every acre,--a place in which to take root and (harder yet) to keep -it. And the birds, too, find the boulder heaps a convenience. I watch -a savanna sparrow as he flits from one to another, stopping to sing a -measure or two from each. Even this humble, almost voiceless artist -needs a stage or platform. The lowliest sparrow ever hatched has some -rudiments of a histrionic faculty; and be we birds or humans, it is -hard to do one’s best without a bit of posing. - -What further uses these humble stone heaps may serve I cannot say; no -doubt they shelter many insects; but it is encouraging to consider how -few things a farmer can do that will not be of benefit to others beside -himself. Surely the man who piled these boulders for the advantage of -his hay crop never expected them to serve as a text for preaching. - -The cloud drops again, and is at its old trick of exaggeration. A -bird that I take for a robin turns out to be a sparrow. Did it look -larger because it seemed to be farther away than it really was? Or -is it seen now as it actually is, my vision not being deceived, but -rather corrected of an habitual error? The fog makes for me a newer -and stranger world, at any rate; I am farther from home because of -it; another day’s travel might have done less for me. And for all -that, I am not sorry when it rises again, and the hills come out. How -beautiful they are! They will hardly be more so, I think, when the -June foliage replaces the square miles of bare boughs which now give -them a blue-purple tint, interrupted here and there by patches of new -yellow-green poplar leaves--a veritable illumination, sun-bright even -in this sunless weather--or a few sombre evergreens. - -As I get away from the farm, the mountain woods on either side seem -to be filled with something like a chorus of rose-breasted grosbeaks. -Except for a few days at Highlands, North Carolina, some years ago, -I have never seen so many together. A grand “migratory wave” must -have broken on the mountains within a night or two. As far as music -is concerned, the grosbeaks have the field mostly to themselves, -though a grouse beats his drum at short intervals, and now and then -a white-throat whistles. There is no bird’s voice to which a fog is -more becoming, I say to myself, with a pleasing sense of having said -something unintended. To my thinking, the white-throat should always -be a good distance away (perhaps because in the mountains one grows -accustomed to hearing him thus); and the fog puts him there, with no -damage to the fullness of his tone. - -Looking at the flowers along the wayside,--a few yellow violets, a -patch of spring-beauties, and little else,--my eye falls upon what -seems to be a miniature forest of curious tiny plants growing in the -gutter. At first I see only the upright, whitish stalks, an inch or two -in height, each bearing at the top a globular brown knob. Afterward -I discover that the stalks, which, examined more closely, have a -crystalline, glassy appearance, spring from a leaf-like or lichen-like -growth, lying prostrate upon the wet soil. The plant is a liverwort, -or scale-moss, of some kind, I suppose, and is growing here by the -mile. How few are the things we see! And of those we see, how few -there are concerning which we have any real knowledge,--enough, even, -to use words about them! (When a man can do that concerning any class -of natural objects, no matter what they are or what he says about -them, he passes with the crowd for a scholar, or at the very least a -“close observer.”) But to tell the shameful truth, my mood just now is -not inquisitive. I should like to know? Yes; but I can get on without -knowing. There are worse things than ignorance. Let this plant be what -it will. I should be little the wiser for being able to name it.[2] I -have no body of facts to which to attach this new one; and unrelated -knowledge is almost the same as none at all. At best it is quickly -forgotten. So my indolence excuses itself. - -The road begins to climb rather sharply. Unless I am going to the top -of the ridge and beyond, I have gone far enough. So I turn my back -upon the mountain; and behold, the cloud having lifted again, there, -straight before me down the road and across the valley, is the house -from which I set out, almost or quite the only one in sight. After -all, I have walked but a little way, though I have been a good while -about it; for I have hardly begun my return before I find myself again -approaching the abandoned farm. Downhill miles are short. Here a -light shower comes on, and I raise my umbrella. Then follows a grand -excitement among a flock of sheep, whose day, perhaps, needs enlivening -as badly as my own. They gaze at the umbrella, start away upon the -gallop, stop again to look (“There are forty looking like one,” I say -to myself), and are again struck with panic. This time they scamper -down the field out of sight. Another danger escaped! Shepherds, it is -evident, cannot be so effeminate as to carry umbrellas. - -Two heifers are of a more confiding disposition, coming close to look -at the stranger as he sits on the doorsill of the old barn. Their -curiosity concerning me is perhaps about as lively as mine was touching -the supposed liverworts. Like me they stand and consider, but betray -no unmannerly eagerness. “Who is he, I wonder?” they might be saying; -“I never saw him before.” But their jaws still move mechanically, and -their beautiful eyes are full of a peaceful satisfaction. A cud must -be a great alleviation to the temper. With such a perennial sedative, -how could any one ever be fretted into nervous prostration? As a -matter of fact, I am told, cows rarely or never suffer from that most -distressing ailment. I have seen chewers of gum before now who, by all -signs, should have enjoyed a similar immunity. - -While the heifers are still making up their minds about their -unexpected visitor, I turn to examine a couple of white-crowned -sparrows, male and female,--I wonder if they really _are_ a -couple?--feeding before the house. I hope the species is to prove -common here. Three birds were behind the hotel before breakfast, and -one of them sang. The quaint little medley, sparrow song and warbler -song together, is still something of an event with me, I have heard it -so seldom and like it so well; and whether the birds sing or not, they -are musical to look at. - -When I approach the painted house, on my way homeward, the fat old -collie comes running out again, barking. This time, however, he takes -but one sniff. He has made a mistake, and realizes it at once. “Oh, -excuse me,” he says quite plainly. “I didn’t recognize you. You’re the -same old codger. I ought to have known.” And he is so confused and -ashamed that he hurries away without waiting to make up. - -It is a great mortification to a gentlemanly dog to find himself at -fault in this manner. I remember another collie, much younger than -this one, with whom I once had a minute or two of friendly intercourse. -Then, months afterward, I went again by the house where he lived, and -he came dashing out with all fierceness, as if he would rend me in -pieces. I let him come (there was nothing else to do, or nothing else -worth doing), but the instant his nose struck me he saw his error. -Then, in a flash, he dropped flat on the ground, and literally licked -my shoes. There was no attitude abject enough to express the depth of -his humiliation. And then, like the dog of this morning, he jumped up, -and ran with all speed back to his doorstep. - -Another descent into the gorge of Baker’s River, and another stop on -the bridge (how gloriously the water comes down!), and I am again -in the pretty, broken woods below the hotel. Here my attention is -attracted by an almost prostrate but still vigorous yellow birch, like -the one that stood for so many years by the road below the Profile -House, in the Franconia Notch. Somehow the tree got an awkward slant in -its youth, and has always kept it, while the larger branches have grown -straight upward, at right angles with the trunk, as if each were trying -to be a tree on its own account. The Franconia Notch specimen became a -landmark, and was really of no inconsiderable service; a convenience -to the hotel proprietors, and a means of health to idle boarders, who -needed an incentive to exercise. “Come, let’s walk down as far as the -bent tree,” one would say to another. The average American cannot -stroll; he has never learned; if he puts his legs in motion, he must -go to some fixed point, though it be only a milestone or a huckleberry -bush. The infirmity is most likely congenital, a taint in the blood. -The fathers worked,--all honor to them,--having to earn their bread -under hard conditions; and the children, though they may dress like the -descendants of princes, cannot help turning even their amusements into -a stint. - -And the sapient critic? Well, instead of carrying a fishing rod or -walking to a bent tree, he had come out with an opera-glass, and had -made of his morning jaunt a bird-cataloguing expedition. Considered -in that light, the trip had not been a brilliant success. In my whole -forenoon I had seen and heard but twenty-eight species. If I had stayed -in my low-country village, and walked half as far, I should have -counted twice as many. But I should not have enjoyed myself one quarter -as well. - -The next day and the next were rainy, with Moosilauke still invisible. -Then came a morning of sunshine and clear atmosphere. So far it was -ideal mountain weather; but the cold wind was so strong at our level -that it was certain to be nothing less than a hurricane at the top. I -waited, therefore, twenty-four hours longer. Then, at quarter before -seven on the morning of May 23, I set out. I am as careful of my dates, -it seems, as if I had been starting for the North Pole. And why not? -The importance of an expedition depends upon the spirit in which it is -undertaken. Nothing is of serious consequence in this world except as -subjective considerations make it so. Even the North Pole is only an -imaginary point, the end of an imaginary line, as old geographies used -to inform us, pleonastically,--as if “position without dimensions,” a -something without length, breadth, or thickness, could be other than -imaginary. I started, then, at quarter before seven. Many years ago I -had been taken up the mountain road in a carriage; now I would travel -it on foot, spending at least an hour upon each of its five miles, and -so see something of the mountain itself, as well as of the prospect -from the summit. - -The miles, some longer, some shorter, as I thought (a not unpleasant -variety, though the fourth stage was excessively spun out, it seemed -to me, perhaps to make it end at the spring), are marked off by -guideboards, so that the newcomer need not fall into the usual -disheartening mistake of supposing himself almost at the top before -he has gone halfway. As for the first mile, which must measure near a -mile and a half, and which ends just above the “second brook” (every -mountain path has its natural waymarks), I had been over it twice -within the last few days, so that the edge of my curiosity was dulled; -but, with one excuse and another, I managed easily enough to give it -its allotted hour. For one thing, a hairy woodpecker detained me five -or ten minutes, putting such tremendous vigor into his hammering that -I was positively certain (with a shade of uncertainty, nevertheless, -such as all “observers” will understand; there is nothing so true as a -paradox) that he must be a _pileatus_, till at last he showed himself. -“Well, well,” said I, “guesswork is a poor dependence.” It was well I -had stayed by. The forest was so nearly deserted, so little animated, -that I felt under obligation to the fellow for every stroke of his -mallet. Though a man goes to the wood for silence, his ear craves some -natural noises,--enough, at least, to make the stillness audible. - -The second mile is of steeper grade than the first, and toward the -close brought me suddenly to a place unlike anything that had gone -before. I named it at once the Flower Garden. For an acre, or, -more likely, for two or three acres, the ground--a steep southern -exposure, held up to face the sun--was covered with plants in bloom: -Dutchman’s-breeches (_Dicentra cucullaria_),--bunches of heart-shaped, -cream-white flowers with yellow facings, looking for all the world as -if they had been planted there; round-leaved violets in profusion; -white violets (_blanda_); spring-beauties; adder’s-tongue (dog’s-tooth -violet); and painted trillium. A pretty show; pretty in itself, and -a thousand times prettier for being happened upon thus unexpectedly, -after two hours of woods that were almost as dead as winter. - -Only a little way above this point were the first beds of snow; and -henceforward, till I came out upon the ridge, two miles above, the -woods were mostly filled with it, though there was little in the -road. About this time, also, I began to notice a deer’s track. He -had descended the road within a few hours, as I judged, or since the -last rainfall, and might have been a two-legged, or even a one-legged -animal,--biped or uniped,--so far as his footsteps showed. I should -rather have seen _him_, but the hoofprints were a deal better than -nothing; and undoubtedly I saw them much longer than I could possibly -have seen the maker of them, and so, perhaps, got out of them more of -companionship. They were with me for two hours,--clean up to the ridge, -and part way across it. - -Somewhere between the third and fourth mileboards I stopped short -with an exclamation. There, straight before me, over the long eastern -shoulder of Moosilauke, beyond the big Jobildunk Ravine, loomed or -floated a shining snow-white mountain-top. Nothing could have been more -beautiful. It was the crest of Mount Washington, I assumed, though -even with the aid of a glass I could make out no sign of buildings, -which must have been matted with new-fallen snow. I took its identity -for granted, I say. The truth is, I became badly confused about it -afterward, such portions of the range as came into view having an -unfamiliar aspect; but later still, on arriving at the summit, found -that my first idea had been correct. - -That sudden, heavenly apparition gave me one of those minutes that -are good as years. Once, indeed, in early October, I had seen Mount -Washington when it was more resplendent: freshly snow-covered -throughout, and then, as the sun went down, lighted up before my eyes -with a rosy glow, brighter and brighter and brighter, till it seemed -all on fire within. But even that unforgettable spectacle had less of -unearthly beauty, was less a work of pure enchantment, I thought, than -this detached, fleecy-looking piece of aerial whiteness, cloud stuff or -dream stuff, yet whiter than any cloud, lying at rest yonder, almost at -my own level, against the deep blue of the forenoon sky. - -All this while, the birds, which had been few from the start, ---black-throated greens and blues, Blackburnians, oven-birds, -a bay-breast, blue yellow-backs, siskins, Swainson thrushes, a -blue-headed vireo, winter wrens, rose-breasted grosbeaks, chickadees, -grouse, and snowbirds,--had grown fewer and fewer, till at last, among -these stunted, low-branched spruces, with the snow under them, there -was little else but an occasional myrtle warbler (“The brave myrtle,” -I kept saying to myself), with its musical, soft trill, so out of -place,--the voice of peaceful green valleys rather than of stormy -mountain-tops,--yet so welcome. Once a gray-cheeked thrush called just -above me. These impenetrable upper woods are the gray-cheeks’ summer -home,--a worthy one; but I heard nothing of their wild music, and -doubted whether they had yet arrived in full summer force. - -It was past eleven o’clock when I came out at the clearing by the -woodpile, with half the world before me. From this point it was but a -little way to the bare ridge connecting the South Peak--up which I had -been trudging all the forenoon--and the main summit. This, with its -little hotel, that looked as if it were in danger of sliding off the -mountain northward, was straight before me across the ravine, a long -but easy mile away. - -On the ridge I found myself all at once in something like a gale of -ice-cold wind. Who could have believed it? It was well I had brought -a sweater; and squatting behind a lucky clump of low evergreens, I -wormed my way into what is certainly the most comfortable of all -garments for such a place,--as good, at least, as two overcoats. Now -let the wind whistle, especially as it was at my back, and was bearing -me triumphantly up the slope. So I thought, bravely enough, till the -trail took a sudden shift, and the gale caught me on another tack. Then -I sang out of the other corner of my mouth, as I used to hear country -people say. I no longer boasted, but saved my breath for better use. - -Wind or no wind, it is an exhilaration to walk here above the world. -Once a bird chirps to me timidly from the knee-wood close by. I answer -him, and out peeps a white-throat. “_You_ here!” he says; “so early!” -At my feet is plenty of Greenland sandwort,--faded, winter-worn, -gray-green tufts, tightly packed among the small boulders. Whatever -lives here must lie low and hang on. And with it is the shiny-leaved -mountain cranberry,--_Vaccinium Vitis-Idæa_. Let me never omit that -pretty name. Neither cranberry nor sandwort shows any sign of blossom -or bud as yet; but it is good to know that they will both be ready when -the clock strikes. I can see them now, pink and white, just as they -will look in July--nay, just as they will look a thousand years hence. - -Again my course alters, and the wind lets me lean back upon it as it -lifts me forward. Who says we are growing old? The years, as they pass, -may turn and look at us meaningly, as if to say, “You have lived long -enough;” yet even to us the climbing of a mountain road (though by -this time it must _be_ a road, or something like it) is still only the -putting of one foot before the other. - -So I come at last to the top, and make haste to get into the lee of the -house, which is tightly barred, of course, just as its owners left it -seven or eight months ago. The wind chases me round the corners, one -after another; but by searching I discover a nook where it can hit me -no more than half the time. Here I sit and look at the mountains,--a -glorious company: Mount Washington and its fellows, with all their -higher parts white; the sombre mass of the Twins on this side of them; -and, nearer still, the long, sharp, purple crest of dear old Lafayette -and its southern neighbors. So many I can name. The rest are mountains -only; a wilderness of heaped-up, forest-covered land; a prospect to -dilate the soul. - -My expectation has been to stay here for two hours or more; but -the wind is merciless, and after going out over the broad, bare, -boulder-sprinkled summit till I can see down into Franconia (which -looks pretty low and pretty far off, though I distinguish certain of -the buildings clearly enough), I begin to feel that I shall enjoy the -sight of my eyes better from some sheltered position on the upper part -of the road. Even on the ridge, however, I take advantage of every tuft -of spruces to stand still for a bit, looking especially at the mountain -itself, so big, so bare, and so solid: East Peak, South Peak, and _the_ -Peak, as they are called, although neither of them is in the slightest -degree peaked, with the great gulf of Jobildunk--in which Baker’s River -rises--wedged among them. If the word Moosilauke means a “bald place,” -as it is said to do, then we have here another proof of the North -American Indian’s genius for fitting words to things.[3] - -Even to-day, windy and cold as it is, a butterfly passes over now and -then (mostly red admirals), and smaller insects flit carelessly about. -Insects are capable mountaineers, as I have often found occasion to -notice. The only time I was ever on the sharp point of Mount Adams, -where my companion and I had barely room to stand together, the air -about our heads was black with insects of all sorts and sizes, a -veritable cloud; and when we unscrewed the Appalachian Club’s brass -bottle to sign the roll of visitors, we found that the signers -immediately before us, after putting down a date and their names, had -added, “Plenty of bugs.” And surely I was never pestered worse by black -flies than once, years ago, on this very summit of Moosilauke. All the -hours of a long, breathless, tropical July day they made life miserable -for me. Better a thousand times such a frosty, man-compelling wind as I -am now fleeing from. - -Once off the ridge, I can loosen my hat and sit down in comfort. The -sun is good. How incredible it seems that the air is so furiously in -motion only fifty rods back! Here it is like Elysium. And almost I -believe that this limited prospect is better than the grander sweep -from the summit itself,--less distracting and more restful. So half -a loaf may be better than a whole one, if a man cannot be contented -without trying to eat the whole one. A white-throat and a myrtle -warbler sing to me as I nibble my sandwich. They are the loftiest -spirits, it appears. I take off my hat to them. - -Already I am down far enough to catch the sound of running water; and -every rod brings a new mountain into view from behind the long East -Peak. One of the best of them all is cone-shaped Kearsarge, topped with -its house. Now the white crest of Washington rises upon me,--snow with -the sun on it; and here, by the fourth mileboard, are a few pale-bright -spring-beauties,--five or six blossoms only. They have found a bit of -earth from which the snow melted early, and here they are, true to -their name, with the world on every side nothing but a desolation. If -it is time for myrtle warblers, why not for them? Now I see not only -Washington, but the mountains with it, all strangely foreshortened, so -as to give the highest peak a most surprising preëminence. No wonder -I was in doubt what to call it. In days past I have walked that -whole ridge, from Clinton to Adams; and glad I am to remember it. A -man should do such things while he can, teaching his feet to feel the -ground, and letting his heart cheer him. - -A turn in the road, and straight below me lies my deserted farmhouse. -Another turn, and I lose it. In ascending a mountain we face the path; -in descending we face the world. I speak thus because at this moment I -am looking down a charming vista,--forest-covered mountains, row beyond -row. But for the gravel under my feet I might be a thousand miles from -any human habitation. Presently a Swainson thrush whistles. By that -token I am getting away from the summit, though things are still wintry -enough, with no sign of bud or blossom. - -And look! What is that far below me, facing up the road? A four-footed -beast of some kind. A bear? No; I raise my glass, and see a porcupine. -He has his mobile, sensitive nose to the ground, and continues to -smell, and perhaps to feed, as I draw nearer and nearer. By and by, -being very near, and still unworthy of the creature’s notice, I roll -a stone toward him. At this he shows a gleam of interest. He sits up, -folds his hands,--puts his fore paws together over his breast,--looks -at me, and then waddles a few steps toward the upper side of the road. -“I must be getting out of this,” he seems to think. But he reconsiders -his purpose, comes back, sits on end again and folds his hands; and -then, the reconnoissance being satisfactory, falls to smelling the -ground as before. I can see the tips of his nostrils twitching as in a -kind of ecstasy. There must be something savory under them. Meantime, -still with my glass lifted, I come closer and closer, till I am right -upon him. If porcupines can shoot, I must be in danger of a quill. -Another step or two, and he waddles to the lower side of the road. -He is a vacillating body, however; and once more he turns to sit up -and fold his hands. This time I hear him rattling his teeth, but not -very fiercely,--nothing to compare with the gnashings of an angry -woodchuck; and at last, when I cluck to him, he hastens his steps a -little, as much, perhaps, as a porcupine can, and disappears in the -brush, dragging his ridiculous, sloping, straw-thatched hinder parts--a -combination of lean-to and L--after him. He has never cultivated -speed or decision of character, having a better defense. So far as -appearances go, he is certainly an odd one. - -There are no blossoms yet, nor visible promise of any, but once in -a while a bright Atalanta (red admiral) butterfly flits before me. -I wonder if I could capture one by the old schoolboy method? I am -moved to try; but my best effort--not very determined, it must be -confessed--ends in failure. Perhaps I should have had some golden -apples. - -At last I come to a few adder’s-tongues, the first flowers since -the five or six spring-beauties a mile and a half back. Yes, I am -approaching the Flower Garden; for here is a most lovely bank of yellow -violets, a hundred or two together, a real bed of them. Nobody ever -saw anything prettier. Here, also, is the showy purple trillium, not -so unhandsomely overgrown as it sometimes is, in addition to all the -flowers that I noticed on the ascent. A garden indeed. I pull up a -root of Dutchman’s-breeches, and sit down to examine the cluster of -rice-like pink kernels at the base of the stem. Excellent fodder they -must make for animals of some kind. “Squirrel-corn” is an apt name, I -think, though I believe it is applied, not to this species, but to its -relative, _Dicentra Canadensis_. - -The whole plant is uncommonly clean-looking and attractive, with its -pale, finely dissected leaves and its delicate, waxy bloom; but looking -at it, and then at a bank of round-leaved violets opposite, I say once -more, “Those are _my_ flowers.” Something in the shade of color is most -exactly to my taste. The very sight of them gladdens me like sunshine. -But before I get out of the garden, as I am in no haste to do (if it -was attractive this morning, it is doubly so now, after those miles -of snowbanks), I am near to changing my mind; for suddenly, as my eye -follows the border of the road, it falls upon a small blue violet, the -first of that color that I have noticed since my arrival at Moosilauke. -It must be my long-desired _Selkirkii_, I say to myself, and down I -go to look at it. Yes, it is not leafy-stemmed, the petals are not -bearded, and the leaves are unlike any I have ever seen. I take it up, -root and all, and search carefully till I find one more. If it _is_ -Selkirkii, as I feel sure it is,[4] then I am happy. This is the one -species of our eastern North American violets that I have never picked. -It completes my set. And it is especially good to find it here, where I -was not in the least expecting it. With the two specimens in my pocket -I trudge the remaining two miles in high spirits. The violets are no -newer to me than the liverwort specimens on Mount Cushman were, but -they have the incomparable advantage of things long looked for,--things -for the lack of which, so to speak, a pigeonhole in the mind has stood -consciously vacant. Blessed are they who want something, for when they -get it they will be glad. - -The weather below had been warm and still, a touch of real summer. So -said the people at the hotel; and I knew it already; for, as I came -through the cattle pasture, I saw below me a new, strange-looking, -brightly illuminated grove of young birches. “Were those trees there -this morning?” I thought. A single day had covered them with sunny, -yellow-green leaves, till the change was like a miracle. Indeed, it -_was_ a miracle. May the spring never come when I shall fail to feel -it so. Then I looked back at the summit. Was it there, no farther away -than that, that so icy a wind had chased me about?--or had I been in -Greenland? - - - - -A WEEK ON MOUNT WASHINGTON - - -I went up Mount Washington in the afternoon of August 22d, and came -down again in the afternoon of the 29th. Ten years before I had spent -a week there, in early July, and had not visited the place since. In -some respects, of course, the summit is badly damaged (I have heard it -spoken of as utterly ruined) by the presence of the hotel and other -buildings, not to mention the railway trains, with their daily freight -of bustling lunch-box tourists. Still the railway and the hotel are -indisputable conveniences; I should hardly have stayed there so long -without them; and in this imperfect world we must not expect to find -all the good things in one basket. - -As for the tourists, one need walk but a few steps to be rid of -them. As a class they are not enterprising pedestrians. In fifteen -minutes you may find yourself where human beings are as far away, -practically, as if you were among the highest Andes or on the famous -“peak in Darien.” There you may sit on a boulder, or recline on a mat -of prostrate willow, and imagine yourself the only man in the world; -gazing at the prospect, listening to the mountain silence (there is -none like it), or eating alpine blueberries, as lonely as any hermit’s -heart could wish. All this you may do, and then return to the most -obliging of hosts, the best of good dinners, and a comfortable bed. - -By the time you have been there two days, moreover, you will have -begun to enjoy the hotel, not only for its physical comforts, but as -an interesting miniature world. The manager and the clerk, the waiters -and the bellboys, the editors and the printers, the night watchman and -the train conductor, will all have become your friends, almost your -blood relations,--such intimate good feeling does a joint seclusion -induce,--and at any minute of the day in may come a group of strangers -of the most engagingly picturesque sort; having no more the appearance -of sales-ladies or women of fashion, shopkeepers or bankers’ clerks, -than of college students and professors. They are men and women. They -have put off the fine clothes and the smug appearance which society -exacts of its members; they look not the least in the world as if they -had just come out of a bandbox; their _negligée_ costumes bear no -resemblance to the dainty, immaculate rig of the tennis court or the -golf links. They are “roughing it” in earnest. For at least eight or -ten hours, possibly for as many days, they have ceased to be concerned -about the cut of their garments or the smoothness of their hair. Of -some of them the aspect is fairly disreputable. It is a solemn fact -that you may here see gentlemen with rents in their trousers and a -week’s beard on their faces. And ten to one they will brazen it out -without apology. - -The dapper clerk and the prosperous merchant and his wife, who have -ridden up in the train with their good clothes and their company faces -on, may stare if they will. It is nothing to the campers and walkers. -They are not on parade, and do not mind being smiled at. A pretty -college girl will walk about the office, alpenstock in hand, with her -hair tied in a careless knot, her skirts well above the tops of her -scratched and dusty boots, her face brown and her sleeves tucked up, -and seem quite as much at ease as if she were in full evening dress -with the drawing-room lights blazing upon her alabaster shoulders, her -laces, and her diamonds. It is heroism (or heroinism) of a kind worth -seeing. - -You are still enjoying the spectacle when two men enter the door, one -with a botanical box slung over his shoulder. It is as if he had given -you the Masonic grip, and you hardly wait for him to cross the sill -before you make up to him with a question. By which route has he come, -and what luck has he met with? Over the Crawford path, he answers, and -though the season is pretty late, and Alpine plants are mostly out of -bloom, he has found some interesting things. - -Two or three of them he cannot name, and he opens the box. His special -puzzle is a tiny, upright-growing plant, thickly set with roundish, -crinkled leaves, and bearing a few blossoms so exceedingly small as -almost to defy a common pocket-lens. Do you know what it is? Yes, to -your own surprise, you remember, or seem to remember, and you run -upstairs to bring down a Gray’s Manual. The plant is _Euphrasia_ -(eyebright), an Alpine variety. It was pointed out to you ten years -ago, near the same Crawford path, by the man who knew the Mount -Washington flora better than any one else. You recall the time as -if it had been yesterday. Your companion dropped suddenly upon his -knees, eyes to the ground. “What are you looking for?” you asked; and -he answered “Euphrasia.” It is good to see it again. You find it for -yourself the next day, it may be, in the Alpine Garden. - -And this other plant, stiffly matted and long past flowering? Your new -acquaintance supposes it to be _Diapensia_; and for that you need no -book. And this third one, with its rusty leaves, is the Lapland azalea. -You remember the day you saw it first--in middle June--when all by -yourself you were making your first ascent of the mountain, walking -alternately over snowbanks and beds of flowers. So far as the lovely -blossoms are concerned, you have never seen it since. - -Next morning your botanist bids you good-by; he is going down by the -way of Tuckerman’s Ravine; and at noon, after some indolent, happy -hours on the carriage-road and in the Alpine Garden, you are again in -the hotel office when half a dozen campers from the northern peaks -make their appearance. Dusty, travel-stained, disheveled, they bring -the freedom of the hills with them and fill the place with their -breeziness. Some of the “transients” clustered about the stove smile at -a sight so unconventional, but the manager, the clerk, and the bellboys -are better informed. They have seen the leader of the party before, and -in a minute the word is passed round. This is Mr. ----, who came up the -mountain with his son a year ago on the day of that dreadful storm, -when two later adventurers upon the same path perished by the way, and -he himself, old mountaineer that he was, with another life hanging -upon his own, had more than once been all but ready to say, “It can’t -be done.” Your traveling companion has seen him here before, though -she was not present on that memorable occasion, and presently you are -being introduced to him and his friends--a metropolitan clergyman, a -university professor, and a younger man, with whose excellent work in -your own line you are already acquainted. - -Anon the company breaks up,--the pedestrians are off for an afternoon -excursion,--and you step out upon the platform to look about you. -Against the railing are two men, one of them with what seems to be a -“collecting gun” in his hand. “An ornithologist,” you say to yourself, -and at the word you begin edging toward him. A remark or two about the -weather and you ask him point-blank if he is collecting birds. No, he -answers, his weapon is a rifle, and he shows you the cartridge. He has -brought it along to shoot squirrels with. You wonder why any one should -think it worth while to carry a gun over the nine miles of the Crawford -path for so trifling a use; but that is none of your business, and just -then the other man speaks up to say that his companion is a botanist, -while he himself is a “bird man.” This is interesting (the second -ornithologist within an hour), and you set about comparing notes. Did -he hear anything of the Bicknell thrushes and the Hudsonian chickadees -on his way up? No, he missed them both on this trip, though he has met -them elsewhere in the mountains. You drop an innocent remark about the -thrushes, and he says, “Are you Mr. So-and-So?” There is no denying -it, and when he pronounces his own name it proves to be familiar; and -a good talk follows. Then he starts down into the Alpine Garden,--you -charging him to be sure to eat some of the delicious cespitose -blueberries on the descent,--and ten minutes afterward he turns up -again at your elbow. He has left his friend, and has hurried back to -tell you of a sharp-shinned hawk that he has just seen. You may put the -name into your Mount Washington bird list, if you will. - -So the days pass--no day without a new acquaintance. If you and one of -the local editors start down the trail to the Lakes of the Clouds after -a Sunday-morning breakfast, you find yourselves going along with three -Baltimore gentlemen, who have walked up from the Crawford House the -day before (“Well, we arrive!” you remember to have heard the leader -exclaim, as his foot struck the hotel platform), and are now on their -return. - -They introduce one another to you and your companion,--Dr. This, Dr. -That, and Dr. The Other,--and you pick your way downward over the -boulders in Indian file, talking as you go. After a while you and the -oldest of the Baltimoreans find yourselves falling a little behind the -rest, and the conversation grows more and more friendly. He has come -to New Hampshire, as he does every year, for the best of all tonics, -a dose of mountain climbing. He has been somewhat overworked of late, -especially with a long task of proof-reading. A new edition of his -treatise on chemistry is passing through the press, and the moment the -last sheets were corrected he broke away northward; and here he is, -walking over high places, where he loves to be. “I am an old man,” he -says; but his strength is not abated. Far be the day! At the lakeside -hands are shaken and good-bys said. You will most likely never see each -other again, but one of you, at least, keeps a bright memory. - -It is a strange place, the Summit House. Twice a day, as on the -seashore, the tide rises and falls. But the evening flood is a small -affair. The crowd comes at noon. It registers its name, eats its -luncheon, writes a postal-card, buys a souvenir, asks a question or -two, more or less pertinent (“Can you tell me where the Tip-Over House -is?” one good woman said--for the rarified air plays queer pranks with -its victims), possibly looks at the prospect, probably snaps a camera, -and then takes the after-dinner train for the base. Evening passengers -make a longer stay. They cannot do otherwise. For them the sunset and -the sunrise are the great events. One would think that such phenomena -were never to be witnessed in the low country. They watch the clouds, -or more likely the cloud, and go to sleep with one ear open for the -sunrise bell. - -So much for the larger number of Summit House guests, the respectable -majority. A few, two in twenty, perhaps, arrive on foot; and these are -the good ones--the salt of the mountain, so to speak. This time I was -not one of them, but I had no thought of denying the superiority of -their privilege. - - - - -ABOVE THE BIRDS - - -In the course of my seven days at the summit of Mount Washington I -listed six species of birds. A few snowbirds--three or four--were to -be found almost always in the neighborhood of the stables; a myrtle -warbler was seen on the climb up the cone from the Lakes of the Clouds; -twice I heard a goldfinch passing somewhere overhead; a sharp-shinned -hawk, as I took it to be, showed itself one day, none too clearly, -flying through the mist; and the next afternoon, as I sat in the rear -of the old Tip-Top House waiting for the glories of the sunset, a -sparrow hawk shot past me so near as to display not only his rusty -tail, but the black bands on the side of his neck. Here are five -species. The sixth was one that, rightly or wrongly, I should not have -expected to find in so treeless a place. I speak of the red-breasted -(or Canadian) nuthatch. On two mornings, as all hands were out upon the -platform at sunrise, we heard the characteristic nasal calls of this -northern forester, and saw two birds scrambling about the roofs of the -buildings; and more than once at other times I noticed one or two on -the wing. The species is very common this season in Franconia,--where -it was extremely scarce a year ago,--and I was pleased at the summit -when a lady standing near me remarked to her husband, “Why, that is the -note we have been hearing so continually at the Rangeleys.” It was so -incessant there, she told me, as to be almost a trouble. Let us hope -that this autumnal abundance in New Hampshire foreshadows a nuthatch -winter in Massachusetts. - -The all but total absence of birds at the summit was a most striking -thing. It helped greatly to intensify the loneliness and the silence; -that wonderful mountain silence--no leaf to rustle, no brook to murmur, -no bird to sing--which, wherever I walked, I was always stopping to -listen to. I should love to praise it, but language for such a purpose -would need to be found on the spot, the stillness itself suggesting the -words; and I came down from the summit more than a week ago. It must -have been, I think, something like that apocalyptic “silence in heaven.” - -As for the birds, I should have felt their absence more disagreeably -but for the fact that I had a novel and absorbing occupation with which -to enliven my walks, and even to beguile effectually what otherwise -might have been the idle odds and ends of the day. For the nonce I had -turned entomological collector. My search was for rare Alpine insects. -Not that I knew anything about them; it would have been all one to me -if most of what I saw had been created out of nothing the day before; -but I was in learned company and needed no science of my own. My part -was to carry a “cyanide bottle” and put into it any beetle, moth, fly, -or other insect--ants and spiders excepted--on which I could lay my -ignorant fingers. The possessor of the learning--enough and to spare -for the two of us--has made many collecting visits to the summit; her -list of Mount Washington species numbers more than sixteen hundred, if -I remember the figures correctly, and no inconsiderable proportion of -them are honored with her name. A proud lot they would be, if they knew -it. But the end is not yet; there are many winged mountaineers still to -be pinned, and in the prosecution of such an enterprise, so she gave me -to understand, two bottles are better than one, no matter who carries -the second one. Her language was rather encouraging than complimentary, -it might have seemed, but I did not mind; and for seven days I was -never without a bottle about my person except when I lay in bed. - -If I went down to the Lakes of the Clouds, for example, the -poison-bottle went with me; and the looker-on, had there been one,--as -luckily there wasn’t,--might have seen me on my knees, with hands -outstretched over the water, struggling to snatch from the surface a -poor, unhappy “skater,” or a “lucky-bug” (it really was lucky, for it -got away while the skater perished), as a possible prize for my lady’s -cork-lined box. On all my jaunts down the carriage-road (and they -were many, longer or shorter, that route offering the readiest means -of escape from the frequent summit-capping cloud) the same scientific -vial was my companion. If a grasshopper jumped (not the common one with -banded legs, of which I saw a superfluity, but a handsome, rare-looking -green fellow, making me think of Leigh Hunt’s “green little vaulter in -the sunny grass”), I stole murderously after him, and with a reckless -clutch at the stunted bush on which he had settled I gathered him -in and put him to sleep. (This was well done, for he was really of -a wingless Alpine species, and only my employer’s third specimen of -his kind.) If a “daddy-long-legs,” prayerless friend of my childhood, -crawled across the way, he, too, hapless creature, with legs so -superfluously numerous and elongated that he could not hurry, even to -save his life, fell a victim to my uninstructed zeal. He died easily, -for all his undevout habits, but the sacrifice was useless. He proved -to be no longer among the entomologist’s desiderata, though he also is -Alpine, and it is not many years since she herself discovered him here, -an insect till then unregistered by human science. - -All caterpillars I was bidden to bring in alive; and so, of course, -I did, rolling them up in scraps of soft paper and committing them -tenderly to a pocket. My chief business, however, after I had breathed -the air, eaten my fill of mountain blueberries (“Happy,” said I, -“is the mouth that feeds on such manna”), and looked my fill at -the northern peaks,--for I was not employed by the day, but by the -piece, and could steal an hour to myself now and then with a clear -conscience,--my principal occupation, I say, was to pry under the -boulders for beetles. “Leave no stone unturned,” the entomologist had -said, with her fine gift of laconic quotation; but she could not have -intended the commission to be taken literally. The stones were too -many, and human existence is too brief. She meant no more than that I -should use a reasonable diligence; and so much I surely did, till the -ends of my fingers were in danger of being skinned alive. Down on all -fours I got, lifted a stone quickly, fastened an eagle eye upon the -exposed hollow, and if a dark object, no matter how small or how large, -was seen to be scurrying to its burrow, I thrust my fingers into the -dirt in frantic efforts to seize it. I knew not which were common and -which rare; my only course was to let none escape. But many were too -swift for me, with all my efforts, and of all that I captured in this -manner I am not sure that one was “worth mounting.” I quote those last -two words partly by way of emphasis. They stood for the lowest round -in the ladder of my entomological ambition. What I most of all desired -was to discover a new species; next I coveted a species new to New -England; after that a species new to Mount Washington; and last of all -a specimen worth saving, or, as my employer said, “worth mounting”--in -short, worth a pin. - -My most productive field, like her own, was about the front of the -hotel itself. In warm afternoons flies, beetles, moths and what not are -known to drop out of the invisible, from nobody can tell where, upon -the windows or the white clapboards of the house. Here, not once, but -with something like regularity, insects have been captured, the like -of which have never been seen elsewhere except in the West Indies or -Mexico, in Greenland or among the Rocky Mountains. How such wanderers -come, and why, are among the things that no man knoweth. Enough that -they are known to come. And who could tell but one might have come -for me? Here, at all events, was my golden opportunity. Let me not -miss it. If by chance, therefore, the lady herself stepped inside for -a minute or two, I hastened to take her place. Tourists by the dozen -might be watching me curiously, or even derisively, my equanimity was -undisturbed. Science is a shield. Vial in hand (my _vade-mecum_ I -called it, Latin being in the air), I walked along the platform, with -my eyes upon the glass and the paint, and woe to the unlucky insect -that was there taking the sun. The yawning mouth of a bottle was -clapped over him, the world swam before his eyes, and long before he -knew it he was on his way to be a specimen. Strange things happen to -insects, though they are not the only ones who have found perdition in -a bottle. - -Sometimes I climbed the stairs to the upper floors of the observatory. -No matter how high I went, the higher the better. In the warm hours -of the day the air at the very top was almost a cloud of tiny wings. -“Excelsior” is the insects’ watchword. Once, in the upper room, I -bottled carelessly a small black-and-white moth. Its appearance was -ordinary enough; no doubt it was common; but it was an insect, and hit -or miss I took it in. And in due course it went into the entomologist’s -hands with the rest of the catch. She emptied the vial, and passed an -unexciting comment or two upon the few flies and beetles it contained; -perhaps she remarked that one of them might be worth mounting--I do -not remember precisely; it was a way she had of egging me on; but the -next morning she said: “You didn’t tell me anything about the lovely -moth you took yesterday.” I was obliged to stop and think. “Oh, that -little black-and-white thing,” I said. Yes, that was the one--“new to -the summit.” If I was not proud, then pride does not dwell in earthly -minds. This, I confide, was not my only contribution to the fauna of -our highest New England mountain; I seem to remember a short-winged -beetle also; but the moth, being in the Lepidoptera, is my especial -glory. I wish I could recall its name, that I might print it here for -the reading of future generations. - -With such pursuits did I improve the spare hours of my Mount Washington -week. I have no thought of boasting. At least I would not seem to -do so. It was little enough that I accomplished, or could hope to -accomplish, hampered as I was by my ignorance. Probably I shall -never have a beetle, much less a moth, named after me; but with that -precious black-and-white rarity in mind I feel that even in the way of -entomology I have not lived altogether in vain. - -Scientific studies apart, the best hours of the week (after some spent -along the carriage-road, resting here and there upon a boulder to enjoy -the magnificent, ever-shifting prospect, and some--not hours, alas, but -minutes--spent in eating the ambrosial, banana-savored, soul-satisfying -berries of _Vaccinium cæspitosum_)--my best hours, I say, were perhaps -those of a certain wonderful evening. The air was warm, no breath -stirring, the sky clear, and the half world below us, as we walked the -hotel platform, lay covered with white clouds, on which the full moon -was shining. The stillness, the mildness, the brightness, the sense of -elevation, and the bewitching, unearthly scene, all this was like an -evening in fairyland. For the time being, it is to be feared, even the -rarest of moths would have seemed a matter of secondary importance. -Such is the power of beauty. So truly was it born to make other things -forgotten. - - - - -MOUNTAIN-TOP AND VALLEY - - -Nothing heightens appreciation like a contrast. After a week at the -summit of Mount Washington, where we lived in the clouds and above -them, in a world above the world, we returned to the lowlands. The -afternoon was sultry, and before the descent was half accomplished--by -the train--we wished ourselves back again on the heights. How can -men live in such an atmosphere, we asked each other; so stifling, so -depressing, so wanting in all the elements of vitality. Our condition -seemed like that of fishes out of water, and we began to think of -angling as a cruel sport. It grieved us to see the trees growing -taller. Even the laughing young Ammonoosuc was looked upon with -indifference. “I wish I were back,” said one; and the other responded, -“So do I.” - -At Fabyan’s the crowd surged about us like a sea. Baggage must be -found and checked, our train was waiting, and the baggage-master, true -railway “official” that he was, was not to be hastened. His steps were -all taken by rule, and every movement of his hands was set to slow -music. When he spoke, which was seldom, it was in a muffled voice and -with funereal moderation. In the midst of all that bustle he was calm-- - - “Calm as to suit a calmer grief.” - -You might say what you pleased to him, be urgently argumentative, -or plaintive even to wheedling, it was all one. Your eloquence was -wasted. It was like nudging a graven image, or crying haste in -the ear of Death. Not a feature of his countenance altered, not a -muscle quickened. Who ever knew the hands of a clock to accelerate -their pace in response to human impatience? Time and tide--and a -baggage-master--hurry for no man. - -“Two trunks for Bethlehem,” you say. No answer. By and by, meekly -insistent, and thinking that by this time your turn must surely have -come, you repeat the words. No answer. But the man is taking down -checks from their peg, and in due time, stepping as to the measure of -a dirge, he marches with them down the platform. “These are mine,” -you say, keeping an uneasy pace or two in advance and pointing to the -trunks on the truck. No answer--not so much as a look. Nor is there -need of any. You are silenced. That implacable manner carries all -before it. You could not speak again, even to claim your soul. But -finally the man himself speaks. You are relieved to know he can. He is -addressing you. The minute hand is at twelve and the clock strikes. -“These are yours?” he asks. You reply in the affirmative, as best -you are able. “For Bethlehem?” he asks, and you answer “Yes.” And -then, after one more set of machine-like motions, the mighty work is -accomplished. The checks are yours. Fortunately, the train has not yet -pulled away, though it is past the time, and at the last moment you see -the trunks on board. - -Trifles like these would have been as nothing, of course, to ordinary -travelers; but to us, innocent Carthusians, fresh from the unearthly -quiet of a mountain-top, they were little short of tragical. And how -intolerably hot and close the car was! Things were growing worse and -worse with us. Should we live to reach Bethlehem, with nothing but this -blast out of Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace in our nostrils? Why had we not -remained where existence was not a struggle, but a dream of pleasure; -where the air had not to be gasped for, but came of itself to be -sweetly inhaled? Nevertheless, we survived the passage,--the conductor -helping to pass the time by stopping in the aisle to make inquiries -touching a little flock of puzzling birds, crossbills, perhaps, lately -seen in his apple orchard,--and at Bethlehem the carriage awaited us. -This was a welcome change, but even so we still found it difficult to -draw breath; and when the horses started, what a dust they set flying! -Truly, between the heat and the drought, this lower world was in an -evil case. It was a road of sighs all the six miles to Franconia. - -Once there, however, and supper eaten, I stepped out upon the piazza -and looked westward. Venus was bright just above the near horizon -(the _near_ horizon!), and against the sunset sky stood a line of low -woods, with detached pine trees towering over the rest. And in that -sight I discovered anew, all in a moment, the charm of this valley -world. I had seen nothing like this from the mountain-top. Yes, good -as the summit prospect was, this was in some respects better. If that -was more magnificent, more soul-expanding, this was more home-felt and -beautiful. And as I looked and looked, while the light faded out of the -sky, I was conscious of a new contentment. Mountain-tops for visits, I -said, and may I enjoy them often; but the valley to live in. - -The next morning I was no sooner abroad than this happy impression was -renewed and deepened. It was a comfort to the feet to be going neither -uphill nor downhill, and it rested the eyes to be looking not at remote -peaks and dimly discovered sheets of water, but into green branches -so near that the leaves could be seen, and the blue sky through them. -How sweetly the ripple of the brook came to my ears as it ran over -its stony bed just beyond the velvety, smooth meadow! And the cawing -of a dozen or two of crows, who were talking politics among the pines -on the hillside, affected me most agreeably. There was something of -real neighborliness about it. I would gladly have taken a hand in the -discussion, if they would have let me. When a song sparrow started out -of the hedge at my elbow it gave me a start of surprise. I had become -so unused to such movements! A robin’s sudden cackle I thought almost -the sweetest of music; the careless warble of a bluebird was nothing -less than a voice from heaven; and a squirrel sputtering defiance from -the stone wall set me laughing with pleasure. None of these sounds, nor -anything akin to them, was to be heard on the desolate, boulder-covered -top of Mount Washington. - -Now the trees interlaced their branches over my head. Nothing could be -prettier; and the effect was so novel! I stopped short to admire it. -And anon, as the road made a little ascent, scarcely noticeable to one -fresh from the steepness of a mountain cone, I found myself gazing down -upon one of the most engaging scenes in the world; a sequestered valley -farm, thrifty-looking, snugly kept, nestled among low hills, with a -mountain river winding along the farther side of it, between the meadow -and the woodland, now lost to sight, now shining in the sun. I had -known the place for years, as I had known the worthy man who owns it; -and I had looked at it many times from this very point; but I had never -seen it till this morning. A pleasant thing it is when an old picture -or an old poem, or both in one, is thus made new. If our eyes could but -oftener be anointed! - -The softness of the meadow, freshly sprung after the summer mowing, -the glistening of the corn leaves, the narrow road,--a brown ribbon -laid upon the green carpet,--that runs to the door and stops (for -nothing goes by--nothing but the river, the clouds, and the birds), -the shade trees clustered lovingly about the house, the whole pastoral -scene, I saw it all with the vision of one who had been looking at a -vaguely defined, far-away world, over which the eye wandered as the -dove wandered over the face of the waters, and now had come suddenly in -sight of home. - -Yes, distance is a good painter, but nearness is a better one. So I -felt for the time being, at all events, falling in with the mood of the -hour; for it is well that moods alter, as it is well that the earth -goes round the sun and season gives place to season. Man was not made -to see one kind of beauty, or to believe in one kind of goodness. The -whole world is hid in his heart. All things are his. The small and the -great, the near and the far, light and darkness, good and evil, the -intimacies of home and the isolations of infinite space, all are parts -of the Creator’s work, and equally parts of the creature’s inheritance. - -For to-day, then, I praise the valley. I am for having the hills close -about me, rather than afar off and far below. I like to see the trees, -and the leaves on them, rather than leagues on leagues of barely -discernible forest; and a lonely pool of still water at my feet, with -alders reflected in it, is more in my eyes than Lake Umbagog itself, -hardly better than a blur upon the landscape, fifty miles away. -To-morrow I may feel differently, but for to-day let me listen to the -breeze in the pine branches and the brook pattering over stones, rather -than to the eternal silences of the bare mountain-top and the brooding -sky. - - - - -IN THE MOUNT LAFAYETTE FOREST - - -It is one of the cool mornings that descend rather suddenly upon our -White Mountain country with the coming of autumn; cool mornings that -are liable to be followed by warm days. I was in doubt how to dress as -I set out, and for the first mile or two almost regretted that I had -not taken an extra garment. Then all at once the sun broke through the -clouds, and even the one coat became superfluous and was thrown over my -arm. This state of things lasted till I had crossed the golf links and -entered the woods. At that point the sun withdrew his shining, and now, -between the clouds and the shadow and dampness of the forest, I have -put on my coat again and buttoned it up; and what counts for more, I am -driven to walk less slowly than one would always prefer to do in such a -place. - -A fresh breeze stirs the tree-tops, so that I am not without music, let -the birds be as silent as they will. Nearly or quite the only voice I -have so far heard was that of an unseen Maryland yellow-throat, some -distance back, who sprang into the air and delivered himself of a song -with variations, all in his most rapturous June manner. Why the fellow -should have been in anything like an ecstasy at that precise moment -is quite beyond my guessing. Possibly it would be equally beyond his, -if he were to stop to think about it. Some sudden stirring of memory, -perhaps. Natural beings seldom know just why they are happy. I recall -the fact, unthought of till now, that I have not heard a yellow-throat -sing before for several weeks, though I have seen the birds often. -They are among the late stayers, and at this season have a more or -less lonesome look, being commonly found not as members of a flock or -family, after the manner of autumnal warblers in general, but here -and there one, dodging about in a roadside thicket, or peeping out -curiously at a casual passer-by. - -Just as I am remarking upon the unusual silence my ear catches in the -far distance the song of a white-throated sparrow. So very far off it -is that the sound barely reaches me. Indeed, I do not so much hear it -as become vaguely conscious that I should hear it if the bird were ever -so little nearer. Yet I am sure he sang--as sure as if I had seen him. -Probably experienced readers will divine what I mean, although I seem -unable to express it. - -The road is bordered with the dead tops of trees, thrown there in -heaps by the road-makers. They form an unsightly hedge, which birds of -various kinds resort to for cover. At this minute two winter wrens, -pert-looking, bob-tailed things, scold at me out of it. My passing -is a trespass, they consider, and they tell me so with emphasis. For -the sake of stirring them up to protest even more vigorously (such an -eloquent gesticulatory manner as they have), I stand still and squeak -to them. Few birds can be quiet under such insults; and the winter wren -is not one of them. There is nothing phlegmatic about his disposition. -He is like some beings of a higher class: it takes very little to set -him in a flutter. So I squeak and squeak, and the pair vociferate _tut, -tut_, till I have had enough and go on my way laughing. Touchy people -were made for teasing. - -I have hardly started before a hairy woodpecker’s sharp signal is -heard, and within a minute a sapsucker on the opposite side of the way -utters a snarling note, which by a slight effort of the imagination -might be taken for the voice of an angry cat. To my ear it is not in -the smallest degree woodpeckerish. I see the bird a moment later as he -flies across the road. - -In a mountain-side forest like this, near the mountain’s foot, the -traveler, if he is not climbing the slope but crossing it transversely, -is certain to come now and then upon a brook. I am on the edge of one -now, and as the sun at this moment shines out between two clouds I -stand still to enjoy the warmth while it lasts, and at the same time -to hear the singing of the water. Good music, I call it, and fear no -contradiction. It has the quality of some of the best verse--liquidity. -It is broken unevenly into syllables, yet it is true to the beat, -and it flows. In short, it is smooth, yet not too smooth--with the -smoothness of water, not of oil. It speaks to every boulder as it -passes. I wish my ear were more at home in the language. - -There is seldom a minute when, if I pause to listen, I cannot hear -from one direction or another the quaint, homely, twangy, countryfied, -yet to me always agreeable voice of Canadian nuthatches. At frequent -intervals one or two come near enough so that I see them creeping -about over the trees, bodies bent, heads down, always in search of a -mouthful, yet keeping up, every one, his share of the universal chorus. -As well as I can judge, all the evergreen forests of this Northern -country are now alive with these pretty creatures; for they really -are pretty. In fact, there are few forest birds for whom I cherish a -kindlier feeling. It is too bad they do not summer in our Massachusetts -woods, though possibly I should care less for them if they made -themselves neighborly the whole year long, like their relatives, the -white-breasts. - -A goldfinch is passing far above, dropping music as he goes. He is one -of the high-fliers. Wherever you may happen to be, at the summit of -Mount Washington or where not, you will pretty often hear his sweet -voice as he wanders under the sky, dipping and rising, dipping and -rising, voice and wing keeping step together. - -Here and there one or two clouded-sulphur butterflies (Philodice) take -wing as I disturb them. They have been most extraordinarily abundant -of late. A fortnight ago we drove for almost a whole forenoon through -clouds of them, bunches of twenty or more constantly rising from damp -spots of earth by the wayside; and in a meadow all bespangled with -purple asters they were so thick as almost to conceal the flowers. -Twinkling in the sunlight, they looked a thousand times more like stars -than the asters themselves. Even the entomologists of the valley, in -whose company I was driving, had never seen the like. Here in this -shaded road such lovers of the sun are naturally less numerous. In -truth, the wonder is that they should be here at all. And yet the -wonder is not so very great; they wander at their own will, and the -will of the wind. Only last week, I am told, in the midst of a driving -snowstorm, one took shelter in the Summit House on Mount Washington. -After all, a butterfly is not exactly a fool; it knows enough to go -into the house when it snows. - -Now I come upon a few snowbirds, hopping in silence about the twigs -of a brush-heap, snapping their tails nervously, as if proud to show -the white feather; and shortly beyond are two or three white-throated -sparrows. They also are silent. Perhaps they perceive that a red -squirrel close by is talking enough for them and himself too. He says a -good many things, some of which I feel sure would be highly interesting -to a competent listener. Among forest folk, as among church folk, the -rule is, “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.” As for me, I can -only lament my deficiency. A solitary vireo is chattering sweetly (with -him music is its own reward), and all the while, whoever else speaks -or keeps silence, the nuthatch chorus goes on. Taking New England -together, we may safely say that just at present hundreds of thousands, -yea, millions of _ank-anks_ go up to heaven every minute of every day, -from sunrise to sunset. - -I walk but a few rods farther before I am delighted by the sight of -four winter wrens in an overturned tree-top. In my experience it is -something extremely out of the common course to see so many together, -and--as I did with the two a quarter of a mile back--I work upon this -quartet’s sensibilities till they fairly dance with curiosity and -indignation. I wonder if they are a family group. - -I bethink myself that I am saying nothing about the forest itself. -Its presence is felt rather than seen, a grateful solemnity; but the -temperature will not suffer me to sit down and enjoy it as a Christian -should. And just here I emerge into territory over which a fire has -swept within a few years. Under these dead trees I get the sun again, -and can go slowly. Nothing in the way of physical comfort is more -grateful than warmth after coolness, unless it be coolness after -warmth. A pine siskin calls, the first for some weeks, and another -hairy woodpecker shows himself. Not a warbler has been seen since I -entered the woods. Of the flycatchers, too,--olive-sides and wood -pewees,--which were always conspicuous in this burning in August and -early September, there is neither sight nor sound. Their season is -done. Crossbill notes lead me to look upward, and I see four birds -flying past. Restless, nomadic souls! Like the saints, they have “no -continuing city.” - -Another half-mile in the leafy forest, and I reach the foot of Echo -Lake, where as I pass a cluster of balsam firs I am saluted by the -busy, hurried calls of golden-crowned kinglets. A wren is here also, -irritable as ever, and hearing a chickadee’s voice, I whistle and -chirp to him. If I can set him to scolding, all the birds in the -neighborhood will flock this way to ascertain what the trouble is. The -device works to a charm; in half a minute the excitement is intense. -Nuthatches, white-throats, chickadees, kinglets, and wren, all take a -hand in vituperating the intruder, and a youthful redstart comes from -the opposite side of the way to satisfy his more gentle curiosity. One -creature, strangely enough, remains neutral: a red squirrel, who sits -on end at the top of a stump and gazes at me in silence. He holds one -hand upon his heart, like an opera singer, and looks and looks. “You -sentimental goose!” I say; “who taught you that trick?” and I laugh at -him and pass on. This is near the corner of the old Notch road, and as -I round it and face the cold northerly wind I button my coat about me -and start homeward at a quicker pace. - - - - -ON BALD MOUNTAIN - - -“Four inches of snow at the Profile House:” such was the word brought -to us at the breakfast table, the driver of the “stage” having -communicated the intelligence as he passed the hotel an hour or two -earlier. We were not surprised. It rained in Franconia night before -last, and yesterday, when the clouds now and then lifted a little, the -sides of the mountains were seen to be white. This morning (October 7), -although even the lower slopes were veiled, the day promised well, and -at the first minute I set out for the Notch. - -It was evident almost immediately that at some time within the last -forty-eight hours there had been a great influx of migrating birds. -Song sparrows, white-throated sparrows, snowbirds, bluebirds, and -myrtle warblers were in extraordinary force. Soon I began to hear the -wrennish calls of ruby-crowned kinglets,--which have been very scarce -hitherto,--and presently more than one was heard rehearsing its pretty -song. What with bluebird voices, song sparrows’ warblings (no set tune, -but “continuous melody”), the cackle of robins, and the croaking of -rusty blackbirds, the air was loud. To these travelers, as to me, the -weather seemed to be changing for the better, though the sun did not -yet show itself, and finding themselves in so delectable a valley, they -were in exuberant spirits. - -Just above the Profile House farm the road took me into a flock of -birds that proved to be the better part of half a mile in length. -The wayside hedges were literally in a flutter, snowbirds being the -most abundant, I think, with white-throats and myrtle warblers not -far behind. Hermit thrushes, winter wrens, chipping sparrows, song -sparrows, and ruby-crowns were continually in sight, and an unseen -purple finch was practicing niggardly, disconnected, vireo-like -phrases, as the manner of his kind is in the autumnal season. - -Then, when the older forest was reached, there came an interval of -silence, broken at last by the distant, or distant-seeming, voice of a -red-breasted nuthatch and the cheerful notes of chickadees. Soon two -hermits showed themselves, facing me on a low perch, and lifting their -tails solemnly in response to my chirping; and not far away were a -winter wren or two, and a flock of white-throats and snowbirds. I had -never seen the dear old road birdier, even in May, though of course I -had often seen the number of species very much larger. - -At the height of land I came upon the first snow, a ragged fringe left -on the shady side of the way. I made a snowball, for the sake of doing -it (or, as I said to myself, suiting the boyish act with a boyish -word, “for greens”), and decided all at once not to go down into the -Notch, but up to the top of Bald Mountain. From that point, if the -sky cleared, as I felt hopeful it would, there would be sights worth -remembering. - -The mountain is only a little one, but it is steep enough--the upper -half, at all events--to give the eager pedestrian a puff for his money. -For myself, I had time to spare, and, fortunately or unfortunately, -had been over the path too often to be subject to the state of mind -(I know it well) which we may characterize as climbers’ impatience. -Unless something unforeseen should happen, the summit would wait for -me. Halfway up, also, a flock of blue jays, five or six at least, who -were holding a long and mysterious confabulation close by the path, -afforded me a comfortable breathing spell. For a moment I suspected the -presence of an owl, against whom the rascals were plotting mischief; -but their voices were much of the time too soft, too intimate-sounding, -too lacking in belligerency. Some of the birds might even have -been communing with themselves. Their whole behavior had an air of -preternatural gravity and cunning, and their remarks, whatever the -purport of them, were in the highest degree varied. One fellow was a -masterly performer upon the bones (jay scholars will understand what -I mean, and I should despair of explaining myself in a few words to -any one else), while another furnished me with a genuine surprise by -whistling again and again in the manner of a red-tailed hawk. - -Well, the conspirators dispersed, the solitary climber pocketed his -curiosity, and in a few minutes longer his feet were at the top. -The rocky cone of Lafayette was still densely capped, but under the -fringed edges of the cloud there was plenty of snow in sight. All the -upper slopes of Kinsman, Cannon, and Lafayette were covered with it, -except that the deciduous trees (broad patches of yellow) stood bare. -Apparently the snow had stuck only upon the evergreens, and the effect -at this distance was very striking, the white over the green producing -a beautiful gray. I could never have imagined it. The hotel and its -cottages, nestled between the mountains, all had white roofs, but the -landscape as a whole was anything but wintry. Everywhere below me the -great forest still showed an abundance of bright hues,--red, yellow, -and russet,--a piece of glorious pageantry, though many shades less -brilliant than I had seen it two days before. - -So I am saying to myself when suddenly I look upward, and behold, -the cap is lifted from Lafayette, and the mountain-top is clear -white, shining in the sunlight against the blue sky; a vision, it -seems; something not of this world; splendor immaculate, unearthly, -unspeakable. I feel like shouting, or tell myself that I do; but for -some reason I keep silence. Clouds still hang about the mountains, -their shapes altering from glory to glory with every minute. Now a band -lies clean across Lafayette, immediately below the cone, detaching the -white mass from everything underneath, and leaving it, as it were, -floating in the air. - -A sharp-shinned hawk sails past me, nuthatches call from the valley -woods, a snowbird perches on a dwarf spruce at my elbow, a red squirrel -breaks into sudden spluttering, and then, with hands uplifted, sits -silent and motionless. I mention these details, but they are nothing. -What I really see and feel is the world I am living in: the sunshine, -the stillness, the temperate airs, the bright encircling forest, in -which my little hilltop is cradled, and the white peak yonder in the -sky. The snow lends it lightness, airiness, buoyancy. As I said just -now, it seems almost to float in the ether. - -I remained with this beauty for an hour, divided at the last between -the luminous, snowy peak above me and the soft--ineffably soft--world -of leafy tree-tops below. Then, as I had done only day before -yesterday, I bade the place good-by. Probably I should not come this -way again till next summer, at the soonest. Good-by, old mountain. -Good-by, old woods. No doubt you have many worthier lovers, but let me -be counted as one of the faithful. - -I was still on the cone, making my way downward, when a grouse -drummed and in a minute or two repeated himself. The sound struck me -as curiously wanting in resonance, as if the log were water-soaked -(though I do not believe he was striking one), or his breast not -fully inflated. Perhaps he was a young fellow, a new hand with the -drumsticks, and so excusable. Certainly the difficulty lay not in the -matter of distance, for between two of the performances I turned a -sharp corner, effectively triangulating the bird, and it was impossible -that he should be more than a few yards away. On all sides the -little nuthatches were calling to each other in their quaint childish -treble. I love to hear them, and the goldcrests also; but here, as -on the heights above, the birds were less than the forest. I was in -a susceptible mood, I suppose. The mere sight of the tall, straight -trunks, with the lights and shadows on them, gave me a pleasure -indescribable. Though the friend who had been my walking companion for -a week past (and no man could wish a better one) is sure to read this -column, I cannot refrain from saying that solitariness has its merciful -alleviations. I was no longer tempted to babble, and the wise old trees -took their turn at talking. If I could only repeat what they said! - - - - -BIRDS AND BRIGHT LEAVES - - -After the red maple trees and the yellow birches are mostly bare, and -the greater part of the sugar groves have passed the zenith of their -brilliancy, then the poplars come to the rescue. The hills are all -at once bright again with a second crop of color, an aftermath of -splendid sun-bright yellow. I knew nothing about this beforehand, and -am delighted over the discovery. From my Franconia window I am looking -at as pretty an autumnal wood as any man need wish to see, and it is a -wood the seasonable glories of which were ended, I thought, more than -a week ago. As I look at it I feel sorry for my last week’s companion, -who went home too soon. Since his departure the days have been outdoing -one another in the softness of their airs and the beauty of their -lights. Mother Earth has been in her most amiable mood. Nothing is too -good for her children. I have never seen fairer weather; though some, I -dare say, might criticise it as a few degrees too warm. It is hard, I -admit, for a walker to keep a coat on his back, far along as the season -is getting, when the sun wrestles with him for it. - -An interesting thing to me has been the tardy brightening of individual -maple trees. It is one more manifestation, I assume, of Nature’s gift -of versatility, her faculty of variation, to which, all but universal -as it is, scientific men attribute so much potency in the evolving of -so-called species. What I notice just now is that, as some bushes and -trees mature their fruit later than others of the same kind, living -apparently under the same conditions, so some maple trees are a week or -two behind their immediate neighbors in ripening their foliage. I have -passed within a day or two both sugar maples and red maples that were -just donning their gay robes. Well done, I am moved to say, as my eye -lights on them. They and the poplars, together with certain extensive -maple groves on the higher levels, still keep the world arrayed in a -really barbaric splendor. Two weeks ago I should have prophesied that -before this time the landscape would be stripped for winter; and so it -would have been, perhaps, if a cold storm had supervened instead of -this period of summery brightness and calm. Great is weather. There -is nothing like it. It makes a man--and a tree, too, for aught I -know--glad to be alive. - -That it makes the birds happy is beyond dispute. You can see it with -half an eye. Many of them are gone, it is true, but many others are -left; and wherever you take your walk you may have joy of them. You -will need to be blind and deaf, or of a hopelessly sour temper, not -to catch a little of their cheeriness. Three days ago (it was an -anniversary with me, and I was early abroad) I went into the kitchen -garden before breakfast, as I have been doing frequently of late, to -see what birds might be there. For a month and more, as the coarse -grasses and weeds have ripened their crop (the garden, luckily for me, -having been allowed to go untended), the place has been a favorite -resort of sparrows. There I saw the Lincoln finches in their time,--on -September 5 and subsequently,--and there for a fortnight past I have -always been able to begin the day with a few white-crowns. - -Well, on the morning in question one of the first things I heard was a -brief, uncharacteristic, autumnal-sounding ditty which, being too short -for a song sparrow’s work, I at once credited to a white-crown; and, to -be sure, when I looked that way, there the bird stood on a top stone -of the wall, a young fellow, not yet “crowned,” practicing his first -musical exercises. The morning was cool,--the ground had stiffened -overnight,--and every time he opened his mouth to sing, a tiny cloud of -vapor could be seen rising from it. It was visible music. Again and -again I watched him. The dear little chorister! Nobody’s birthday was -ever more prettily honored. He “sang to my eye” indeed--in a daintily -literal sense such as the poet never thought of. I wonder if any one, -anywhere, ever saw and heard the like. - -The white-crowns have been surprisingly musical (the weather, no doubt, -being a provocation), but I have not once heard their spring song, or -anything which to my ear--none too well accustomed to it--has seemed -to bear any relation thereto. Song sparrows, on the other hand, while -mostly contenting themselves with incoherent, _sotto voce_ twitterings, -have now and then--almost daily, I think--varied the programme with -more or less successful attempts at a fuller-voiced and more formal -melody. As for the vesper sparrows, they have mainly kept silence, but -on one or two bright mornings have sung as sweetly as ever they do in -May. Indeed, I might truthfully say more than that; for at this season, -when all bright things are taking leave, a strain of wild music is more -grateful to the ear than by any possibility it can be when every newly -green bush is part of the universal choir gallery. - -To us who have been in the habit of coming to this valley in -bright-leaf time nothing is more characteristic, as nothing is more -welcome, than the continual familiar presence of bluebirds. This year, -because I have stayed later than usual, it may be, they have seemed -uncommonly abundant. Their voices are sure to be among the first to be -heard as I step out of the door in the morning, and wherever I walk--in -the open country--I find myself surrounded at frequent intervals by a -larger or smaller flock. Two days ago I counted forty in sight at once; -and a bunch of forty bluebirds--well, there may be pleasanter sights -for a bird-lover (a flock of sixty, for example), but it is a sight to -raise low spirits, especially for a man who remembers the time--after a -cruel winter--when the vision of a single bird was accepted by all of -us as an event to talk about. - -Myrtle warblers (yellow-rumps) are still more numerous, and if a -bluebird quits a perch and takes wing it is almost an even chance that -a yellow-rump, who has been sitting near at hand, waiting for this to -happen, will be seen dashing in pursuit. You may go down the village -street and watch the trick repeated half a dozen times within half a -mile. To my walking companion and myself the sight has come to be part -of a Franconia autumn. If you are pretty close to the birds you may -hear a bill snapping (the warbler’s, I think), as if in anger, but on -the whole I am inclined to believe that the thing is no more than -an innocent, though one-sided, game of tag. All young creatures must -have something to play with, somebody to make game of. So it is with -yellow-rumps, I dare say; but why should they so universally pitch upon -the inoffensive bluebird, I should like to know. It is to be added, -however, to make the story truthful, that if there are no bluebirds -handy, the warblers take it out by a free chasing of each other. To -watch them, one would think that life, by their apprehension of it, -were all a holiday. - -And while I am talking of bluebirds I ought to mention their habit of -hanging about bird boxes in these last days of their Northern season. -Only this forenoon, since the foregoing paragraphs were written, -I passed a box perched upon a pole beside a house, and at least -six bluebirds were sitting upon its platform, or investigating its -different apartments. Sometimes a pair (so they looked, one bright -colored, the other dull) sat side by side before a door, like married -lovers. Sometimes one would go inside, sometimes both, while out of the -next door another bird would be peeping. The box was very unlikely to -have been their home; the countryside is overrun with bluebirds, too -many by half to have summered hereabout; but evidently the sight of -it had suggested family pleasures. Perhaps they were living over the -past, perhaps forecasting the future. Bluebirds have their full share -of sentiment, or both voice and behavior are rank deceivers. Concerning -this aspect of the case, however, the frivolous yellow-rumps cared not -a farthing. They sat in a small apple tree conveniently near, and as -often as a bluebird ventured upon the wing, one or two of them started -instantly in pursuit. If he alighted upon a fence-post, down they -dropped upon the next rail and waited for him to make another sally. -Once I heard a bluebird utter a pretty sharp note of remonstrance, but -that, we may guess, only made the fun the greater. Birds will be birds. - -My morning stroll (it is October 13, my last day in Franconia) showed -me, in addition to the birds already named, one lonesome-mannered -hermit thrush, a few robins, two or three ruby-crowned kinglets, one of -them running over with his musical _twittity, twittity, twittity_, -a single yellow palm warbler (this and the myrtle have been the only -warblers of the month), a red cross-bill, going somewhere, as usual, -and leaving word behind him as he went, a small flock of pine siskins, -a strangely few song sparrows, one vesper sparrow, one white-crown, -a multitude of snowbirds, a purple finch or two, a goldfinch, and a -grouse, with the inevitable crows, jays, chickadees, and red-breasted -nuthatches. Had my walk been longer and into a more varied country, I -should have found gold-crested kinglets, winter wrens, brown creepers, -titlarks (perhaps), white-throated sparrows, field sparrows, chippers, -tree sparrows (probably), and three or four kinds of woodpeckers. - -And speaking of woodpeckers, I must allow myself to boast that within -the last few days I have had exceptional luck with the big fellow of -them all, known in books as the pileated. On the 9th I saw one and -heard the halloo of another, and on the 11th I saw two (together) and -heard a third. One of those seen on the 11th shouted at full length, -and at the top of his voice while flying. - -The pileated woodpecker is a splendid bird. A pity he cannot find -himself at home in our Massachusetts country. To see him here in New -Hampshire one might imagine that he belonged with the mountains and -would be homesick in other company; but if you would see him oftener -than anywhere else, you may go to a land where there is scarcely so -much as a hillock--to the peninsula of Florida. There or here, he is a -great bird. The brightest maple leaf that ever took color was not so -bright as his crest. - - - - -FLORIDA - - - - -FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF MIAMI - - -It is Sunday, the 19th of January. A week ago I was sitting before a -fire, watching the snow fall outside, in winter-bound Massachusetts. -This forenoon I am reclining in the shade of a cocoanut palm, looking -across the smooth blue waters of Biscayne Bay to a line of woods, I -know not how many miles distant, broken in the midst by a narrow cut or -inlet (Norris Cut, a passer-by tells me it is called), through which is -to be seen the open Atlantic. The air is motionless, the sky cloudless, -the temperature ideal. “This is the day the Lord hath made,” I repeat -to myself. He has seldom done better. - -I left Boston Monday morning, spent that night and the next day in -Washington, slept in St. Augustine Wednesday night, and on Thursday -took the long, all-day ride down the east coast of Florida, past miles -on miles of orange groves and pineapple plantations, to the terminus of -the railroad, the new and flourishing city of Miami. - -My visit, it must be owned, began rather inauspiciously. It was -nobody’s fault, of course, but the “magic city” did not put its best -foot forward. Friday morning the mercury stood at forty-five, and -although the day was abundantly warm out of doors,--so warm that a -walker naturally took off his coat,--an oil stove proved a comfort at -nightfall. In short, the day was exactly like a White Mountain day in -late September, hot in the middle and cool at both ends. Yesterday, -however, was a piece of Massachusetts June, while this morning is so -perfect that every one, visitor or resident, passes comments upon it. -Perfection of any kind is a rare and precious thing,--in this world, -at least,--and though it be merely a bit of weather, it should never -go unspoken of. So I say to myself as I lie in the shade, and look and -breathe. - -In truth, I can hardly feel it credible that I was in the midst of -snowstorms less than a week ago. For a long two days winter has seemed -a thing utterly past and forgotten. Only now and then it comes upon me, -with the shock of unexpected news, that this is not summer, but January. - -The bay, for some reason to me unknown, is almost without birds. The -only one just now in sight is a cormorant pretty far offshore, diving -and swimming by turns. I imagine him to be a loon till suddenly he -takes wing, with outstretched neck, and after a long flight comes to -rest, not in the water, but at the top of a stake. Somewhere behind me -a flicker is shouting as in springtime, and on one side a mockingbird -is calling (“smacking” is the word that comes of itself to my pencil), -and a blue-gray gnatcatcher utters now and then a fine, thread-like -ejaculation. - -The stillness is really a relief, even to my ornithological ears; for -though they had been starved for two or three months in Massachusetts, -they have been so dinned with bird voices for the last two days -that a brief period of silence is grateful. The centre of the town, -where I have taken up my abode, literally swarms with fish crows -and boat-tailed grackles, every one trying, as it seems, to outdo -its rivals in noisiness. I remember the day, eight or nine years -ago, when in the flatwoods of New Smyrna I spent an hour of almost -painful excitement in taking observations upon the first boat-tail -I had ever seen. It would have been hard at that moment for me to -imagine that so clever and interesting a bird could ever become a -nuisance. Fortunately, both crow and grackle retire to roost early and -are comparatively late risers; otherwise the people of Miami might -be driven to violent measures, as against a plague. As things are, -the birds have no fears. They alight in the shade trees before the -windows, or gather about the kitchen door, crows and blackbirds alike -(and the male blackbirds, with their overgrown tails, are almost or -quite as large as the crows), as fearless as so many English sparrows. - -After them the abundant birds hereabout, so far as I have yet -discovered, are buzzards, carrion crows (black vultures), blue jays, -catbirds (which I have never seen half so plentiful), palm warblers, -myrtle warblers, and blue-gray gnatcatchers. Less numerous, but still -decidedly common, are flickers, red-bellied woodpeckers, mockingbirds, -Florida yellow-throats, hummingbirds, ground doves, and phœbes. Day -before yesterday a long procession of tree swallows straggled past me -as I wandered along the bay shore, and in the same place a flock of -masculine red-winged blackbirds were holding a vociferous mid-winter -convention in a thicket of tall reeds. White-eyed vireos are well -distributed, and sing as saucily as if the month were May instead of -January. Solitary vireos are present likewise, but I have seen only -one, and he was not yet in tune. - -Out in the pine lands I came upon a single group of pine warblers and -half a dozen bluebirds, both singing freely. What a voice the bluebird -has! It does a Yankee’s heart good to hear it. I have yet to see a -robin or a chickadee. - -All in all, notwithstanding the woods are alive with wings, there -is surprisingly little music. The season of song is not yet come. -Phœbes, for some reason, form a bright exception to the rule, and now -and then a cardinal grosbeak whistles with a sweetness that beggars -words. Twice, I think, I have heard a distant mockingbird singing, and -yesterday, in front of the hotel, I stopped to watch a pair that seemed -to be in what I should call a decidedly lyrical mood, though they were -silent as dead men. They stood on the pavement a foot or so apart, and -took turns in a very original and pretty kind of dance. One and then -the other suddenly hopped straight upward for an inch or two, both -feet at once. Between whiles they stood motionless, or sometimes one -(always the same) moved a little away from its partner. Plainly they -were much in earnest, and without question the ceremony, simple, and -almost laughable, as it looked, had some deep and perfectly understood -significance. Ritualism is not confined to churches. Everywhere the -heart speaks by attitude and gesticulation. - -A noble concert it will be when all these thousands of song-birds -recover their voices. May I be here to enjoy it. For the present I am -contented to wait. It is sufficient just now to be in so strange a land -in so lovely a season, with acres of morning-glories and moon-flowers -all about, roses and marigolds in the gardens, birds in every bush (not -an English sparrow among them), airs gratefully cool from the sea, and -bright summer weather. For a winter-killed Yankee, this is what old -Omar would have called “Paradise enow.” - - - - -A FROSTY MORNING - - -There is nothing like weather. It is man’s comfort and his misery; more -important still, perhaps, it is his prosperity and his ruin. Indeed, -it has almost divine prerogatives. It wounds and it heals; it kills -and it makes alive. And this, which in good degree is true everywhere, -is especially true in a country like southern Florida, the Mecca at -once of pleasure-seeking winter vacationers, health-seeking tourists, -and livelihood-seeking settlers. For all these, Florida is what it is -because of its climate, that is to say, its weather. Speak with whom -you will, weather is the topic that naturally comes uppermost. - -Yesterday (January 22) was one of the most delightful days imaginable; -for a pedestrian, I mean to say. I know an insect collector, a gentle -soul, little used to complaining against the order of the world, who -pronounced it “horrid.” For the successful prosecution of her industry -there lacked a few degrees of warmth. Florida insects, it appears, are -much less hardy than their Northern cousins, keeping indoors, and so -out of the net, in temperature such as a Yankee butterfly or beetle, -thicker-skinned or thicker-blooded, would scorn to be afraid of. But -if yesterday was perfect, to-day, by my reckoning, at least, has been -finer still--perfection heaped upon perfection. Yet every one hereabout -is more or less unhappy, and with more or less reason. In the night -between these two perfect days an air from the North descended suddenly -upon us, and the temperature took an alarming drop, some say to 38°, -some to 31°--a drop which meant discomfort to all, and disaster to -many. When I put my head out of doors at seven o’clock this morning, on -my way to the post office, I was startled. My first thought was to run -back for an overcoat. Instead of that I put on steam. - -Breakfast over, I betook myself to the pine lands, my rule being to -improve cool days in that sunny region, leaving the shady hammock -woods for hotter weather. It was cold enough for overcoat and mittens. -In Massachusetts, with anything like the same temperature, I should -certainly have worn them. Here, however, it was not so plain a case. -I was to be on foot till noon, and I felt sure that long before that -time the lightest outer garment would become intolerable. So I buttoned -my one coat tightly about me, stuffed my hands into my pockets, and -hastened my steps. For a mile, perhaps, I kept up the pace. By that -time the sun had begun to make itself felt. At the end of the second -mile the temperature was nothing less than summer-like, and before the -third mile was finished my coat was on my arm; and as I came down one -of the city streets, on my return at noon, and met two Seminole Indians -walking abroad dressed, after their airy fashion, in nothing but -waistcoat and shirt, the sight of their comfortable uncivilized legs -was calculated to make a perspiring man envious. - -By nine o’clock, indeed, the weather was superb; but presently I came -to an opening in the woods. Here was a field of tomato plants in front -of a new, unpainted house. Some recent settler had cleared a piece of -ground and established a home in this land of perpetual summer. And -to support himself and his family he had “gone into early tomatoes.” -So much was to be seen at a glance. And yes, there stood the man -himself in the midst of his plantation. I went near and accosted him, -expressing my hope that the frost (for by this time it was plain there -had been one) had not damaged his crop. He had been badly frightened -in the night, he confessed, but thought he had mostly escaped harm. -“I was glad,” he said, dwelling upon the verb with a pleasant foreign -accent, “when I saw the thermometer” (pronounced etymologically, with -the accent on the penult). I fear he was worse hit than he knew. At -all events there were many acres of wilting tomato plants only a mile -away on the same road. One man, whom I saw looking over his field, -was calling the attention of a solicitous neighbor to the fact that a -certain part of the plantation had fared better than the rest. A few -burning stumps had happened to be left smouldering on one edge of the -field overnight, and the wind had drifted a light blanket of smoke -across that corner. - -But even in unprotected gardens the different parts had not fared -alike. Here the tender plants were wilting as the sun shone on them, -and yonder, only five or ten yards away, there was no symptom of -blight. So true is it of tomato vines, as of nobler creations, that -one shall be taken and the other left. The frost is like the wind, it -striketh where it listeth, and thou seest the effect thereof; and the -poor man suffereth with the rich. - -Such are the cruel uncertainties of truck farming in this sub-tropical -region, far down toward the very tip of Florida. Like the speculator in -copper or in oil, the farmer goes to bed rich and gets up poor. But, -like the dabbler in “shares,” the farmer is not easily discouraged. -Though he has moved from one point to another, farther and farther -down the peninsula, the frost pursuing him, he will still try again. -There is one thing to be depended upon (let us be thankful to say -it)--a sanguine man’s hope. - -So much for tillers of the soil. For the rest of us, mere idlers and -wayfarers, concerned only with questions of sight-seeing and momentary -comfort, a day like the present needs no bettering. My own course, -as I have said, lay through the pine woods--sunny, spacious, not in -the least like anything that a New Englander would call a forest. At -short intervals the road, white and hard, ran past a small clearing, -generally with a house upon it. Here would be orange trees, mango trees -(just now in bloom), splendid hibiscus shrubs, pineapples, perhaps, -with other novelties pleasant for Northern eyes to look upon, or, -quite as likely, a field of tomatoes (the fruit nearly grown), or a -sweet-potato patch. - -Near one of the houses the loud cries of some strange bird troubled -my curiosity. The opera-glass showed me nothing, and I was none the -wiser till beside a second house I heard the same voice again. This -time I put aside my scruples and made a set attempt to solve the -mystery. A woman before the door was inquisitive about the stranger, -but the stranger was still more inquisitive about the bird; and by -and by, on a lower perch than I had thought, there the fellow stood -at the top of a shrub, directly before my eyes, a Florida jay. It was -nine years since I had seen a bird of his kind, and the sight was -welcome accordingly. Perhaps he knew it. At any rate, whether for my -pleasure or his own, he held his ground and kept up his harsh, shrikely -vociferations. - -The Florida jay (a crestless bird, not at all the same as the Florida -blue jay, which abounds everywhere and is everywhere noisy, especially -in the villages) is strictly a bird of the peninsula, being found -nowhere else--a remarkable instance of extreme localization. I ran upon -still another individual before reaching the end of my jaunt,--on the -outskirts of Lemon City,--and all three were in dooryards. Oak scrub -(where you may look out for rattlesnakes) and human neighborhood, -these, as I read the signs, are the Florida jay’s desiderata. - -In general, as compared with the hammock woods, the pine lands are -nearly birdless. An occasional sparrow hawk (another strangely trustful -creature, very common in this country[5]), an occasional mockingbird -(more than once in splendid song), a shrike now and then, a flock of -myrtle-birds, and another of palm warblers, a good many white-breasted -swallows and turkey buzzards overhead, with a bunch of silent sparrows -skulking beneath the dwarf palmettoes,--these are what I now remember. - -Birds or no birds, flowers or no flowers, I should have enjoyed the -eight miles. The bright sunshine, the temperate, genial warmth, the -endless, widely spaced woods, the blue sky, and on one side the blue -expanse of Biscayne Bay,--summer in winter,--I am not so long from -snowy Massachusetts but that these things are enough to make for me a -kind of perpetual fiesta. As I said to begin with (and it is as true of -thoughts and feelings as of the tenderest of garden crops), there is -nothing like weather. - - - - -BEWILDERMENT - - -If any untraveled Northern botanist wishes to be puzzled, hopelessly -confused, clean put out of his reckoning, let him come to Miami. -His knowledge will drop away from him till not a rag is left. Let -him arrive, as I did, after dark, and in the morning take the road -southward to Cocoanut Grove. The distance is only five miles, and the -walking excellent. I should like to go with him, and listen to his -exclamations and comments. - -The cocoanut palms before the hotel, as he leaves the piazza, he -has no need to inquire about; such things he has at least seen in -pictures. And the parti-colored crotons, likewise, are nothing new; -he has seen the like in hot-houses, if nowhere else. And the scores -of big, round hibiscus bushes, each with its score or two of regal -scarlet blossoms,--these, or poverty-stricken imitations of them, he -has admired before now in the Boston Public Garden and elsewhere. The -acalypha shrubs, also, he will perhaps recognize upon a second look, -though he has never before seen them growing as a hedge, carefully -squared, three or four feet high, and as many feet thick. Yonder -euphorbia bush, too (_Poinsettia_), with its flaring, flaming rosettes -of scarlet floral leaves at the tips of the stems--this, like the -crotons, he is more or less familiar with under glass. All these are -cultivated plants, pleasant to look upon out of doors in mid-winter, -but of themselves not especially interesting, perhaps, to a botanist. - -But now, at the foot of Thirteenth or Fourteenth Street, less than a -quarter of a mile from the hotel, we come to some vacant lots. Here are -a few dingy live-oaks (still with last year’s leaves on), and in their -shadow, sprawling over the tangled undergrowth, a wilderness of gadding -morning-glory vines. How lovely the flowers are--pink and blue! Unless -it be the ubiquitous fish crow, there is nothing else so common in this -Miami country as the morning-glory; and the vines, acres on acres, hold -in bloom, one kind and another, so I am given to understand, almost or -quite the whole year round. - -Now we leave the sidewalk and are in the pine woods. The -trees--long-leaved pines--our botanist knows well enough, the train -having brought him past a thousand miles of such, on his way hither; -though, even so, he might be puzzled to tell to which of two related -species (_Palustris_ and _Elliottii_) they belong. From the rude -bridge, as we cross the Miami River, he admires the myriad-footed, -glossy-leaved mangrove thickets that line the banks, especially as -he looks up the stream. Just beyond are ancient live-oaks, the huge -spreading branches of which support a profusion of air-plants (poor -relations of the pineapple), with here and there an orchid. I should -like to show him an _Epidendrum_ such as I secured ten days ago--an -open spray of a dozen blooms, handsome enough to grace the finest -of hothouse collections; but I have not been able to find a second -specimen, with all my searching. However, a smaller, one-flowered -species is common enough, and if he is sufficiently enterprising he -will climb one of the trees for it, or--as I did--cut a stick by means -of which, with more or less hard work, he can pry the bulbous root from -its foothold. - -“What is this yellow flower?” he asks, as we go on. - -“I don’t know,” is my answer. “Some member of the pulse family.” - -My companion knew as much as that already. - -“And this bush, with its strangely contorted pods?” - -Here I am more at home, and proud to show it. The plant is -_Pithecolobium Unguis-Cati_, I tell him. Small wonder the pods are -twisted. - -With this we come to more live-oaks, on which are more air-plants and -orchids, and just beyond is a confusion of thick-leaved trees and -shrubs. - -“What is this?” he asks; “and this? and this?” - -I have no idea, I am obliged to answer. But the tall tree a little -farther on is _Ficus aurea_, I hasten to remark, with a show of extreme -erudition. - -“A fig-tree?” he answers, in a tone of surprise; for, being a botanist, -he knows, of course, that _ficus_ is fig. - -Yes, I assure him, it is a _kind_ of fig (rubber tree, it is otherwise -called), though the leaf is small and, as botanists say, “entire,” not -in the least resembling the modest fig-leaf of convention. I know the -tree’s name, as I know that of the shrub before mentioned, because I -was told it yesterday. One’s knowledge (of names) increases rapidly -under favorable circumstances, in a country like this. - -Yonder very noticeable shrub, bearing large globular bunches of small -bright-purplish berries (no eye could miss them), is the French -mulberry, so called (_Callicarpa Americana_); and the larger and -leafier bush near it, set along the branches with more loosely disposed -orange-colored berries, is _Trema micrantha_, a plant which Chapman’s -Flora credits to but one place in the United States,--“Shellmounds -in Lastero Bay, South Florida,”--though hereabout it is one of the -commonest of the common. Both it and the French mulberry are prime -favorites with various kinds of birds. Mockingbirds and catbirds are -feasting on the berries at this moment. - -And yes, here is a tree that I knew would excite my companion’s -curiosity. No stranger ever drove over this road (and the first drive -of every newcomer to Miami is taken this way) without asking his driver -about it: a large tree, all its leafy branches far above the ground, -with a strangely conspicuous mahogany-colored bark, the outermost -layers of which peel off in loose papery flakes, after the manner -of the canoe birch. On my first jaunt into the hammock I heard more -than one driver pronounce its eloquent name--gumbo-limbo. The two or -three men of whom I made inquiries could tell me nothing more, till -my host, who professed no botany, modestly suggested a reference to -the dictionary. There, sure enough, I found the clue I was seeking. -The tree is _Bursera gummifera_, or Jamaica birch, one of two Florida -representatives of the tropical torch-wood family. It is among the -chief of my South Florida admirations, especially for its color. It and -the Seminoles should be of kindred stock. In the lobby of the hotel, -the other evening, I heard one man rallying another (who had been -fishing and playing golf bareheaded) upon the magnificent complexion he -had put on. “Your face reminds me of the gumbo-limbo,” the joker said. -The comparison was obvious. I had been thinking the same thing. - -Our course takes us through a brief tract of pine land largely occupied -by bayberry bushes, about which there are always many myrtle warblers -(which is the same as to say bayberry warblers); and presently we -are in a dense tropical forest. This is the place I have desired my -companion to see; and here, after a few minutes of silent wonderment, -his curiosity begins to play. “What is this? What is this? What is -this?” His interrogations come in crowds; and to every one my answer -is ready--“I don’t know.” I am in the case of the poor fellow whose -sarcastic French instructor promised to teach him in one sentence how -to answer correctly every question he might be asked. Like him I have -only to respond, “_Je ne sais pas._” Trees, shrubs, and vines are all -far out of my range. During the fortnight that I have been here, to be -sure, I have begun to distinguish differences among them, and even to -recognize individuality; but as to what they are, and what their names -are, I know absolutely nothing. - -It is a strange sensation, so delightfully, tantalizingly strange -that I can hardly keep away from the place. Day after day, in spite -of the dust and (sometimes) the scorching heat, my steps turn in this -direction. “Where have you been?” my new acquaintances say to me at the -dinner table; and I answer, almost of course, “Down in the hammock.” - -Here and there, wherever there is a favorable opening, I venture a -few steps into the jungle; but sometimes I cannot stay. A feeling of -something like superstitious terror comes over me, the wood is so -dense and dark and strange. I am glad to get back into the dusty road. -My supposititious companion will be braver than I, I dare say, but -he will be with me in confessing how confusingly alike all the trees -look, and how utterly unavailable all his previous knowledge proves to -be. On this point I have talked with two botanists, and they have both -assured me that, although they had lived much in upper Florida, they -found themselves here in a world they knew nothing about. With me, who -am not a botanist, or only the sheerest dabbler in the science, it is -literally true that in this sub-tropical forest I cannot guess at so -much as the family relationship of one plant in twenty. - - - - -WAITING FOR THE MUSIC - - -I am impatient for the concert to begin. It is the 7th of February. For -three weeks I have been in Miami; birds are plentiful; the country, -one may almost say, is full of them; the weather, mostly a few shades -too warm for a pedestrian’s comfort, seems to be all that birds could -wish; but thus far there has been scarcely a sign of the grand vernal -awakening. Warm or cold, for the birds it is still winter. Phœbes, to -be sure, have sung ever since my arrival, I cannot help wondering why; -and the same is true of white-eyed vireos. It is impossible to walk -through the hammock woods without getting somewhat more than one’s -fill of their saucily emphatic deliverances. For aught I can see, they -are quite as loquacious now as they will be two or three months hence. -Once in a while, hardly oftener than once a week, I should say, I have -heard a mockingbird letting himself loose, and rather more frequently, -especially during the last few days, cardinal grosbeaks have sweetened -the air with their whistle; but for much the greater part the birds are -dumb. On the morning of February 1, as I stepped out upon the piazza, -a house wren sang from a live-oak by the kitchen door. I remembered the -date. “Good!” said I to myself, “the time of the singing of birds is -come.” But I was too much in haste. Since then I have heard plenty of -wren chattering, but not another note of wren music. - -Still the opening of the annual concert cannot be much longer delayed. -When I was in Florida nine years ago, mockingbirds were in free song at -St. Augustine, before the middle of February; and at this point, three -hundred miles and more farther south, the season must be earlier rather -than later. - -Some of the more distinctively Southern of the birds about me I am -especially desirous of hearing--the Florida yellow-throats, for -example, a local race of the Maryland yellow-throat, so called. They -are everywhere in sight (the dark brown of the flanks distinguishing -them readily), and as their music is said to be very unlike that of -their familiar Northern relative, I am naturally desirous of adding it -to my (memorized) collection. It will be nothing great, presumably, but -it will be something new. - -Still more interesting will be the song of the painted bunting, or -nonpareil, a beauty of beauties that I had never seen (a wild one, I -mean) until this winter. About Miami it is decidedly common, though -the green females show themselves ten times as often as the red, -blue, and yellow-green males. What a superbly dressed creature the -masculine nonpareil is! And he carries himself as if he knew it. “Dear -me,” he seems always to be saying; “this Joseph’s coat of mine makes -me so conspicuous! Some day it will be my undoing.” My readers will -most likely have seen the gorgeous little creature in cages (I found -one many years ago in the Boston Public Garden, I remember), though -the chances are that they have never seen him in anything like his -brightest and liveliest feather. A bird, like a butterfly, was born -to be looked at out of doors with the sunlight on him. So far I have -heard no note from the nonpareil except his rather soft chip. The birds -frequent weedy tangles in open grounds, showing special fondness for -patches of the white bur-marigold, and seem to be well scattered over -the country. - -Day after day I walk down through the hammock (I have spoken of it -before, and most likely shall do so again) between Miami and Cocoanut -Grove. Indeed, so constant are my peregrinations thither that I begin -to find my innocent self treated as a kind of mysterious personage--one -of the “features” of the place, so to speak, an “object of interest,” -like the gumbo-limbos, the air-plants, and the blossoming lime trees. -Three times, at least, I have overheard a driver describing me to -his fares as “the man who comes down through this hammock _every -day_”--with strong emphasis on the last two words. One passenger was -good enough to surmise, quite audibly, that I might be a botanist, -while another loudly proclaimed his belief that I must be “a sort of a -bird fiend.” So much for being useful in one’s day and generation. The -tourist mind--like the tourist stomach--abhors a vacuum. It must have -something to browse upon. And the drivers know it. It is a bad day for -the cow when she loses her cud. - -In sober truth the hammock is well worth a daily visit; and almost as -often as I am here it comes over me what a glorious concert hall it -will be when all these thousands of birds find their voices, if they -ever do; for it may be, I know, that the great majority will start -on their journey northward before that happy day arrives. Here--to -name only some of the more common species--here are mockingbirds, -catbirds, cardinals, house wrens, Carolina wrens, ruby-crowned -kinglets, palm warblers, myrtle warblers, parula warblers, prairie -warblers, black-and-white warblers, Florida yellow-throats, oven-birds, -blue-gray gnatcatchers (a host), white-eyed vireos (another host), -solitary vireos, chewinks, painted buntings, phœbes, crested -flycatchers, and blue jays. What a chorus there would be if the spring -should get into all their throats at once! Might I be here to listen! -Then, indeed, I could make a list, with the hearing to help the -eyesight. Now I follow the road, and find only such birds as happen to -be near it at the moment when I pass. Then it would be another story. I -should need a stenographer. The names would crowd upon the pencil. - -It is really an astonishing, unnatural-seeming thing--this multitude -of birds, in this cloudless summer weather, with mating-time so close -at hand, and no impulse to sing. Yet that expression is a trifle too -strong, or at least too sweeping. This forenoon I heard a gnatcatcher -warbling softly, as if to himself, tuning his instrument, it may be, -or, more likely, dreaming. The cardinals, too, are certainly growing -amorous. I see the bright males quarreling among themselves here and -there (they are constantly in the road), and not infrequently, as I -have said, they whistle with all sweetness. At that work there is -no bird to excel them. How any female heart can resist such appeals -is more than any bachelor’s heart can imagine. I rejoice in their -numbers. I should love to walk through the hammock and hear them all -whistling together, a chorus a good mile in length and no rod without a -bird. - -Loggerhead shrikes are paired or pairing. The other day I saw one fly -up from the ground and feed another perched on a telegraph wire. He was -doing no more than was meet, her cool-appearing, unresponsive manner -seemed to say. Mockingbirds, also, though singing little, are beginning -to manifest symptoms of jealousy. If all the mockers and all the -cardinals should break into voice at once, the air itself would hardly -contain the music. - -Two pileated woodpeckers that I see every few days at a particular spot -in the hammock have already come to an understanding, or so I fancy -from certain bits of conduct that I have been privileged to witness. -This morning I stood watching the female as she hammered to pieces a -decayed branch close by me, when all at once her mate called in the -distance. Instantly she held up her head, as much as to say, “Hark! -Was that he?” and the next moment she was gone. Then I heard low -conversational notes, followed presently by loud drumming on a resonant -stub or branch. I thought of what I have heard preachers say, that -Heaven is a state, not a place. - -Pileated woodpeckers are birds good to look at, and, wild as they -look, it is pleasant to find them so approachable. But in fact, this -is most productive woodpecker country. Here are flickers in abundance, -red-bellies almost as many, and along with them the red-headed, the -red-cockaded (in the pine lands), the yellow-bellied (least common of -all), the downy, and the hairy; all, in short, that could be expected, -with the exception of the ivory-billed; and (such is human nature) I -would give more to see him than all the rest together. - -Well, I will not wish time away, as the saying is. I begin to perceive -that I have none to spare. But I shall rejoice when some morning I go -out and find the conductor’s arm lifted, and the chorus minding the -beat. - - - - -PERIPATETIC BOTANY - - -When I called upon my friend the entomologist, a few evenings ago, -she informed me that she had passed a very exciting day. While out on -her usual insect-collecting expedition, along the bay shore, she had -come suddenly upon an unknown plant growing among the mangrove bushes. -A glance at the blossom showed that it must belong to the mallow -family, and on getting back to the hotel and consulting the manual, she -determined it at once as _Pavonia racemosa_,--“Miami and Key Biscayne.” -Every collector knows the pleasure of discovering a plant or other -specimen, the known habitat of which is entitled to this kind of exact -specification. - -“Very good,” said I, when she had finished the story, “I shall go down -to-morrow and look at _Pavonia racemosa_ for myself.” - -The next afternoon, therefore, saw me at the place; but it appeared -that I had not sufficiently attended to my friend’s instructions. -At all events, I could find nothing that looked like a _Malva_. In -a country so richly and strangely furnished as this, however, a -visitor cannot turn his eyes in any direction without putting them -upon something he never saw before; and so it happened that while I -hunted vainly for one thing I found another and better; or if it was -not better in itself, it was more unexpected and interesting. This -was a shrub, or small tree, bearing large, glossy, coriaceous leaves, -clustered near the ends of the branches, from which depended long, -smooth, pear-shaped or gourd-shaped buds. More careful search revealed -a few faded flowers and a large pendent green fruit. And then, ten -minutes afterward, as I was starting away, my eyes fell upon a clump of -the rare _Pavonia_. - -With that, of course, there was no room for difficulty. I had only to -compare the specimen with the printed description, and check the name. -But as for the strange shrub, of which I had bud, blossom, fruit, and -leaf (what more could a man desire?), with that I was fairly beaten. -Even a methodical, schoolboyish use of the “key” was without result. -The signs brought me, or seemed to bring me, to the Bignonia family, -and there came to nothing. - -Happily a professor of botany in one of our great universities had -arrived in town within the last twenty-four hours, and after supper I -invited him to my room to help me with the puzzle. He set about the -work just as I had done, only after a more workmanlike fashion, and -him also the key led to the _Bignoniaceæ_, but no farther. As the -common saying is, the trail had “run up a tree.” In short, with all the -facts before us,--leaves, buds, blossom, fruit,--we were stumped. “It -is some representative of the Bignonia family not included in Chapman’s -Flora,” was the professor’s final verdict. - -The next forenoon we had agreed to spend together in the big hammock, -through which I had been sauntering by myself for the past five weeks. -We should pass the Agricultural Experiment Station on the way, and I -determined to carry the troublesome specimen along and submit it to -the professor in charge. So said, so done; but as we stopped at the -post office, there stood the man himself at the door. “What is this?” -I asked, scarcely waiting to bid him good-morning. “_Crescentia_,” -he answered promptly, “a plant of the Bignonia family.” So the other -professor had been exactly right. - -And now for the more dramatic part of the story. The day before--at -noon of the day on which I found the plant in question--I received a -letter from a Boston friend, himself a university professor of botany, -to whom I had written, begging him to quit his desk, like a reasonable -man, and join me in this botanical paradise. He replied that he could -not come, and furthermore, that he wasn’t so very sorry. New England -winter is to him a constant refreshment and exhilaration, it appears. -Happy New Englander! “To-day is simply perfect,” he wrote, “and you -can’t beat it in Miami.” As to that point I reserve my opinion. “How -changed the place must be from what it was when I was there in the -’80’s,” he continued. “No railroad then within hundreds of miles, and -none of your modern improvements. It is a great place for plants. I -shan’t forget how delighted I was to find _Crescentia cucurbitina_ in -flower. I had searched the whole range of Keys for it in vain.” - -This very plant, of the existence of which I had never before heard, -I had found, without knowing it, within two hours after receiving my -friend’s letter.[6] - -Winter botanizing by newcomers, in a country so foreign as this, -where much the greater part of the shrubs and trees are West Indian, -with no better help than Chapman’s Flora, is carried on under almost -discouraging difficulties. “If we only had the blossoms!” the professor -is continually exclaiming. And his pupil responds, “Yes, if we only -had!” As it is, we content ourselves with finding out a few things -daily, guessing at characters and relationships (no very bad practice, -by the way), running down all sorts of clues, real or imaginary, like -detectives on the hunt for a murderer, and even asking questions -freely of chance passers-by, especially of the numerous class known -by the white people hereabout as “Bahama niggers.” They, rather than -their pale-faced superiors, seem to be observant of natural things. -It is likely, too, that they or their forbears may have brought some -traditionary knowledge of such matters from the islands where the -plants are more at home. At all events, it is pleasant to notice how -ready even the black children are, not only to answer questions, but to -ask them as well, about any flowers that one happens to be carrying. - -The other day I came suddenly upon a bush, the like of which I had -seen and wondered over a hundred times since my arrival in Miami, -remarking especially the highly peculiar, almost perpendicular carriage -of its innumerable thick, brightly varnished leaves, a device, as the -professor had suggested, for protecting them against the vertical -rays of the sun. I had never seen either fruit or blossom, but here, -on this particular plant, my eye fell upon a few scattered purplish -drupes. Now, then, here was something to go upon. Now, possibly, with a -sprinkling more of good luck, I might find the name of the bush. I was -a mile or two from town, on the road to Alapattah Prairie, where there -are many truck farms. A white man came along, one of the “truckers,” -driving homeward from the city. - -“Do you know what this is?” I inquired, showing him the specimen. - -“No, sir,” he answered. - -Soon I met another man, and proposed to him the same question, with the -same result. A third attempt was no more successful. Then I overtook -two colored men talking beside a quarry. - -“Excuse me,” I said, “but can you tell me the name of this plant?” - -“Yes, sir, it is cocoa plum,” answered one of them; and the other said, -“Yes, cocoa plum.” - -And so it was; for on referring to the manual I found the bush fully -described under that name. - -Another experiment in this kind of putting myself to school, it is fair -to add, was less in the Bahama colored man’s favor. A tourist whom I -happened upon resting beside the hammock road held in his hand two or -three twigs, from each of which depended a large, stony, pear-shaped -fruit, and seeing me curious about the novelty, he kindly offered me -one. This, also, I forthwith carried into the city, stopping passengers -by the way--like a natural-historical Socrates--to ask them about it. -No one, white or black, could tell me anything till in a fruit shop -I questioned a white boy. “It’s a seven-year apple,” he said. “Some -foolish local name,” I thought. At all events it could do me no good, -since it was not to be found in Chapman’s index. But that evening, on -my showing the specimen to the entomologist, and telling her what the -boy had said, she replied, “Certainly, that is right. The plant is -_Genipa_, or seven-year apple.” And under the word “Genipa” I found it -so spoken of in the Standard Dictionary. There the fruit is said to -be edible, which seems to disprove the conjecture of another lady to -whom I had shown it, that it derives its name from the fact that it -would take an eater seven years to digest it. Apples, like men, are not -fairly to be judged in the green state. - -I have said that this guessing at characters and relationships is not -a bad discipline. And no more is it the worst of fun. Of this I had -only two days ago a strikingly happy proof. Everywhere in the hammock -there grows a tall tree, noticeable for the peculiar color of its bark -and its channeled and often fantastically contorted trunk. The leafy -branches are always far overhead (a necessity in so crowded a place), -and I had seen the purplish, globular drupes only as they had dropped -one by one to the ground. At every opportunity I had made inquiries -about the tree, but had received no light, nor, after much searching, -had either the professor or myself been able to hit upon so much as a -plausible conjecture as to its identity. Well, two days ago, as I say, -we were walking together on the outskirts of the city, when we came to -a tree of this kind growing in the open, the fruit-bearing branches of -which hung within reach. We pulled one of them down, and I exclaimed at -once, “Why, this should be related to the sea-grape!”--a most curious -West Indian tree (_Coccoloba uvifera_, a member of the buckwheat -family!) which grows freely along the shore of Biscayne Bay. “See the -fruit,” said I, “for all the world like a bunch of grapes.” With that -we began a detailed examination, and, to make a long story short, the -tree proved to be another species of _Coccoloba_--_C. Floridana_. - -That was pretty good guessing, based as it was on nothing better than -an “external character,” as the professor rather slightingly called it. -For five weeks my curiosity had been exercised over the puzzle, and in -five seconds I had found the needed clue. Who will say that this was -not better and more interesting, and withal more instructive, than to -have been told the tree’s name on the first day I saw it? - - - - -A PEEP AT THE EVERGLADES - - -My first stroll in Miami was taken under the pilotage of a lady -who had already spent several winters here. In the course of it we -came suddenly upon a colored man lying face downward in the grass, -under a blazing sun, fast asleep. It was no uncommon happening, my -friend remarked; she was always stumbling over such dusky sleepers. -But in this Southern clime the luxury of physical inactivity is not -appreciated by black people alone. I was walking away from the city -at a rather brisk pace, one morning, when I passed a lonesome shanty. -A white man sat upon the rude piazza, and another man and a boy stood -near. - -“Are you going to work to-day?” asked the boy of the occupant of the -piazza. - -“No,” was the answer, quick and pithy. - -“Why not?” - -“I ain’t got time.” - -I laid the words up as a treasure; I do not expect to hear the -philosophy of indolence more succinctly and pointedly stated if I live -a thousand years. - -But though we Northern visitors may sometimes envy our Southern -brethren their gift of happy _insouciance_, it is not for our -possessing. We were born under another star. Our lack is the precise -opposite of theirs; even in our vacation hours we have seldom time to -sit still. - -So it happened that on a sultry, dog-day morning, with a south wind -blowing, the sky partly clouded,--a comfort to the eyes,--the professor -and the bird-gazer, after an early breakfast, set forth upon a -reconnoissance of the Everglades. We took each a boat and an oarsman, -planning to go up the Miami River, or rather its south branch, till we -were among the “islands”--small pieces of hammock woods scattered amid -the wilderness of saw-grass. - -As each of us had his own boat, so each had his own errand, one -botanical, the other lazily ornithological. The professor expected to -see and learn much--especially about the adaptation of plants to their -surroundings; his associate expected to see and learn little--little or -nothing; and according to each man’s faith, so it was unto him. - -For the first mile or so--as far as the tide runs, perhaps--the river -is densely beset on either side by a shining green hedge of mangrove -bushes, every branch sending down “aerial roots” of its own, till -landing among them is an adventure hardly to be thought of. After the -mangroves come taller hedges of the cocoa plum, leafier still, and -equally shining. - -“Aren’t you glad you know what this bush is?” I shouted downstream to -the professor. - -“Indeed I am,” he shouted back. - -Without this knowledge, which we had acquired within a few days, by a -kind of accident, as before related, our present state of mind would -have been pitiable. We were surprised to find the plant so fond of -water, having noticed it heretofore in comparatively dry situations. -Another example of the extreme adaptability of tropical plants, the -professor remarked. - -By and by we came to the first cypress trees, the only ones I have seen -in this all but swampless Miami neighborhood; beautiful in their new -dress of living green. I rejoiced at the sight. Under one of them we -landed, admiring the “knees” that its roots had sent up till the ground -was studded with them. These, the professor tells me (it is nothing -new, by his account of the matter, but it is new to me), are believed -to serve as breathing or aerating organs, supplying to the tree the -oxygen for lack of which, standing in water, as it mostly does, it -would otherwise drown. All visitors to Florida are impressed by the -beauty and majesty of the cypress, and many have no doubt puzzled -themselves over the meaning of these strange, apparently useless -protuberances--as if nature had attempted something and failed--that -are so constantly found underneath. “They never do grow to be trees,” -my boatman said. - -It was at this point, as nearly as I remember, that the stream grew -narrow and shallow at once, till behold, we were laboring up what might -fairly be called rapids. Here, between the awkward crowding of the -banks and the swiftness of the current (it was good, I said to myself, -to see water actually _running_ in Florida), the men were certainly -earning their money. Fortunately, both proved equal to the task. Then -a bend in the stream took us away from the neighborhood of the trees -(not until, in one of the cypresses, I had remarked my first Miami -nuthatch--a white-breast), and into the very midst of the saw-grass. -This densely growing, sharp-edged, appropriately named grass, higher -than a man’s head, standing to-day in two or three feet of water, is -said to cover the Everglades. It must render them a frightful place in -which to lose one’s way. “I should rather be lost at sea in a rowboat,” -my oarsman declared. - -All this while, of course, I had kept a lookout for birds, but, as I -had expected, to comparatively little purpose. No doubt there were many -about us, but not for our finding. The shallower and quieter edges of -the river were covered here and there with broad leaves of the yellow -lily, among which should have been at least a chance gallinule, it -seemed to me; but neither gallinule nor rail showed itself. Here, -as everywhere, buzzards and vultures were sailing overhead. Many -white-breasted swallows, too, went hawking over the grass, and once a -purple martin passed near me. Better still, he allowed me, in one brief -note, to hear his welcome voice. Like the new leaves of the cypress, it -prophesied of spring. - -At intervals a heron of one kind or another started up far in advance. -One was snow-white, but whether I was to call it an immature little -blue heron or a white egret was more than could be made sure of at -my distance. I recall, too, a flock of ducks, a cormorant or two, -speeding through the air after their usual headlong manner, a solitary -red-winged blackbird, astray from the flock, and the cries of killdeer -plovers. Kingfishers were not infrequent, two or three ospreys came -into sight, and once, at least, I made sure of a Louisiana heron. A -lean showing, certainly, for what might have been thought so promising -a place. - -And now, as the grass grew shorter, so that we could survey the world -about us, the water of a sudden turned shallow. The professor’s -flat-bottomed boat still floated prosperously, but my own heavier, -keeled craft speedily touched bottom. The rower put down the oars, took -off his shoes and stockings, rolled up his trousers, and proceeded to -lighten the boat of his weight, and drag it forward. This expedient -answered for a rod or two. Then we stuck fast again, and the passenger -followed his boatman’s example and took to the water. So we followed -along, the water now deeper, now shallower, the bottom hard and slimy, -till after a little we were at the end of our rope. If we were to go -farther we must leave the boat behind us. - -This was hardly worth while, especially as even in that way we could -not hope to proceed far enough to see anything different from what we -had seen already. “We will go back,” I said, “drifting with the current -and stopping by the way.” And so we did, my boatman and I, leaving the -professor--who, as it turned out, went but a few rods beyond us--to -pursue his investigations unhindered. - -After all, in spite of our indolent intentions, the return was faster -than the upward journey, as almost of necessity happens, whether one is -descending a river or a mountain. The time for loitering is in going -up. One good thing we saw, nevertheless, though it was only for an -instant. - -“What’s that?” my man suddenly exclaimed, in the eagerest of tones. -“Look! Right there!” - -“Oh, yes,” I said; “a least bittern.” - -It stood crosswise, so to speak, halfway up a tall reed, for all the -world like a marsh wren. Then away it went on the wing, and was lost in -the grass. It was a good bird to see, besides counting as “No. 91” in -my Miami list. - -“I never did see a bird like that,”[7] the boatman said. “Such a little -fellow!” he called it. It was a pleasure to find him so enthusiastic. - -The best thing of the whole trip, notwithstanding, was not the sight -of any bird, but our lazy, careless, albeit too rapid gliding down the -stream, with the world so bright and calm about us and above. Here -and there, for our delight, was a tuft of fragrant white “lilies” -(_Crinum_) standing amid a tuft of handsome upright green leaves. More -than once, also, we passed boatloads of fishermen (and fisherwomen), -white and black. One elderly and carefully dressed, city-coated -gentleman I especially remember. He sat in the stern of the boat (his -African boatman with a line out, also), watching the fluctuations of -his bob as earnestly, I thought, as ever he could have watched the -fluctuations of the stock market. His whole soul was centred upon that -bit of cork and the possible fish below. He actually had a nibble as -we passed! What cared he then for “coppers” or “industrials”? He must -at some time or other have been a boy. The lucky man! By the look on -his face he was happy. And happiness, if I am to judge by what I see, -is one of the main things, in Florida. At all events, it was the main -thing that I found in the Everglades. - - - - -THE BEGINNINGS OF SPRING - - -Manifold are the perils of journalism. A few weeks ago I filled a -letter with the praise, most sincerely felt, of a certain tropical -hammock on the road from Miami to Cocoanut Grove, a place full of -birds, and destined, so I hoped, to be equally full of music. This -eulogy, it transpires, was read by a bird-loving enthusiast from New -England, sojourning for the winter at the Hotel Ormond; and what should -he do but send me word, a stranger, that he had packed his trunk and -was coming down straightway (two hundred and fifty miles or more) to -inspect the wonder. - -In due course he arrived, and as soon as possible I led him out of the -city, across the river, through a stretch of blazing sunshine, and at -last into the heart of the hammock. It was a long jaunt, much longer -than he was prepared for, the afternoon was hot, and to make matters -worse the hammock showed almost no sign of that profusion of avian -existence, with the anticipation of which my glowing periods had filled -him. - -Fortunately for my reputation, I had forewarned him that such would -be the case. The birds, I explained, either because the season -had advanced, or for some other reason, had pretty nearly deserted -the jungle of West Indian trees, shrubs, and vines,--for such this -particular hammock is,--and had betaken themselves to the more open -country, especially to certain groves of newly clad live-oaks, whose -sturdy, wide-spreading, rival-killing, trust-creating, monopolistic -arms, by the time the trees are of middle age, have made for themselves -a relatively sunny clearing. - -I had been growing aware of this change in the face of things for a -week or two, and now, when the newcomer has been three or four days in -Miami, the reality of it is conclusively established. On two mornings -of the present week, for example, I found in a few minutes’ stroll -before breakfast a highly interesting flock of perhaps twenty kinds -of birds in the live-oaks and other scattered trees on the very edge -of the city, within a hundred rods of my own doorstep: fish crows, -boat-tailed grackles, crow blackbirds, red-headed woodpeckers, downy -woodpeckers, red-bellied woodpeckers, flickers, catbirds, mockingbirds, -house wrens, cardinals, palm warblers, myrtle warblers, parula -warblers, prairie warblers, black-and-white warblers, yellow-throated -warblers, solitary vireos, yellow-throated vireos, blue jays, phœbes, -ground doves, blue-gray gnatcatchers, ruby-crowned kinglets, a male -nonpareil, a Baltimore oriole, a crested flycatcher, a hummingbird, and -a hermit thrush. A varied bunch of feathers, and no mistake. - -In the tropical hammock, on the other hand, during the same forenoons, -I saw, as well as I remember, nothing but white-eyed vireos, phœbes, -catbirds, cardinals, palm and myrtle warblers, crested flycatchers, -nonpareils, and gnatcatchers. So completely has the condition of things -been reversed with the change of season. - -Other signs are not lacking that March has brought the spring. -Mockingbirds are daily becoming more rhapsodical. The other afternoon, -out among the cabins of the black suburb, I stood still while three -sang at once on different sides. They are friends of the poor, as -well as of the rich. This morning two yellow-throated vireos sang, -chattered, and whistled; and a most delicious trilled whistle theirs -is, soft, musical, full of sweet and happy feeling. Better still, -almost (because more of a novelty), a yellow-throated warbler sang his -dreamy tune over and over. This is one of the most exquisite birds ever -made; of quiet, modest colors, bluish-black and white, with a single -bright jewel to set them off--a gorget of brilliant yellow. To-day I -have seen as many as ten such beauties, I think. Their feeding habits -and their movements, as well as their black-and-white stripes, are -surprisingly like those of the black-and-white creeper,--to which they -ought to be more nearly related than the systematists allow,--while -their song is in the manner of the indigo-bird. - -Now, if the nonpareil buntings would only fall into line! Thus far they -have not favored me with a note, and indifferent musicians as I know -them to be, I believe there is no other bird in Miami that I am so -desirous of hearing. Such feathers as they wear! Once in a while, of -late, a male has been good enough to take a somewhat lofty perch and -display himself. If there is a more gorgeous bird in the United States -I should like to see him. Just now there are at least three enthusiasts -in Miami--a Kentucky lady, a Rhode Island man, and a Massachusetts -man--who are doing their best daily to get their fill of his loveliness. - -Phœbes have sung much less of late than they did in January. Then they -seemed to find existence a perpetual jubilee. Red-bellied woodpeckers, -too, are far less talkative than they were a month ago. Most likely -they are busier. And by the by, the Kentucky enthusiast above mentioned -pleased me by calling this woodpecker the “checkerback,” a felicitous -name, in common use in Kentucky, it appears, and perhaps elsewhere. I -am happy to adopt it and pass it on. - -If there were words wherewith to describe the indescribable, I should -like to tell of a bluebird that I saw a week ago about one of the -vegetable gardens out on the prairie. The blue of that creature’s back -and wings is not to be imagined. The bluest sky never matched it. I -would wager that he was Florida born. No Northern bird ever owned such -a coat. In my recollection he will stand as one of the sights of the -country, along with the “banyan trees,” the snaky green vanilla vines, -and the tropical jungle. - -These letters are of necessity written piecemeal. In this hospitable -Southern country, where the weather and so many things beside are -continually calling, “Come forth and enjoy us,” one cannot stay indoors -very long at once. So it happened that at the conclusion of the last -paragraph I put down my pencil and started out for another few minutes -among the live-oaks. As I approached them I descried a man sitting upon -a heap of coal-ashes dumped along the railway. He might have been Job -himself, to look at him, but at a second glance I perceived that he -was not actually sitting in the ashes, but on a board, and instead of -bewailing his afflictions or his sins, was peacefully minding the New -Testament injunction, “Behold the fowls of the air.” In short, he was -the gentleman from Ormond, with his glass, as it happened, focused upon -a handsome prairie warbler. - -We passed the time of day, after the bird had flown,--for the field has -its courtesies, and we respect them,--and he told me that in spite of -the unfavorable north wind (one of our periodical cold spells is upon -us, with the mercury in the forties) he had ventured out, and had been -liberally rewarded. He had seen yellow-throated warblers, a parula, -a prairie, and I forget what else, and, to take his word for it, was -living in clover. - -Presently a hawk swooped among the trees, and every small bird -became invisible as if by magic. Then my companion proposed taking -a turn beyond the fence. This we did, and just as we came suddenly -upon a huge watch-dog (a great Dane, I suppose he would be called), -formidable-looking and chained, but fawning upon us so eagerly that -there was nothing for it but to pat him on the head and call him a good -fellow--just as we approached him, I say, I nudged the second man to -stop. There, straight before us, side by side on the rim of an iron -kettle of water set under the trees for the dog’s benefit, stood a -male cardinal and a male nonpareil. Perhaps they were not a glorious -pair! Them also I shall remember, along with the miraculous bluebird. - -Less brilliant, but even more memorable, was my one Bachman’s warbler. -I had stopped under a live-oak,--on a return from the big hammock,--and -was putting my glass upon one bird after another feeding among its -blossoms (parulas, yellow-throats, ruby-crowns, gnatcatchers, and -myrtle-birds), when in the very topmost spray I sighted a spot of -coal-black set in bright yellow. Here was something new. From twig to -twig the stranger went,--rather deliberately, for a warbler,--the glass -following, till after submitting for perhaps ten minutes to my eager -inspection he slipped away, as birds have a knack of doing, without -my seeing him go. However, he had shown himself perfectly--the jet -breastplate, the yellow forehead, the black crown, the lustrous olive -of the upper parts, and the yellow patch upon the wing. He was a bird -that I had never expected to see. Comparatively few ornithologists have -been so happy. - -This was on March 7. For two days we had noticed indications of a -migratory movement, especially among parulas and yellow-throated -warblers. Probably the Bachman had come from farther south. My thanks -to him for treating me so handsomely, though he might have doubled the -obligation, at no cost to himself, by singing me a tune. - - - - -FAIR ORMOND - - -After nearly two months in the extreme south of Florida I have turned -my face northward, and here I am at Ormond, fair Ormond-on-the-Halifax. -No more bewildering jungles of nameless West Indian trees and climbers, -no more cocoanut palms, no more acres of wild morning-glory vines. It -gave me a start of pleasurable surprise when, somewhere on this side -of Palm Beach, I do not remember where, I saw from the car window -a stately sweet-gum tree all freshly green. It had not occurred to -me till then that I had found nothing at Miami of this handsome and -characteristic Southerner, always one of my favorites. - -Indeed, I have come to a different world. I am no longer in a foreign -country. Here are lordly magnolias, not yet in blossom, to be sure, but -proudly beautiful in the leaf. Here, too, are Cherokee roses, loveliest -of all flowers, just coming into their kingdom. At sight of the first -glossy-leaved bush, which happened to stand near a house, I made up to -the door, not stopping twice to consider, and asked the privilege of -picking a flower and a bud. The householder was generous, and the bush -even more so. “Take another, and another,” it seemed to say, catching -me again and again by the sleeve; “I have enough and to spare.” It was -hard work for me to get away. Here, also, is the yellow jessamine, -only less beautiful than the rose, hanging the tall forest trees full -of golden, fragrant bells. And here, sprinkled along the wayside, are -stores of blue violets. None of these things are to be seen on the -shores of Biscayne Bay. Yes, I am glad to be here. - -And the phlox, likewise, the pretty Drummond’s phlox of our Northern -gardens, dear to me of old, let me not forget that. It is not -indigenous to the country, I suppose, but, like the garden verbena, -being here it makes itself most comfortably at home, delighting to -overrun forsaken orange groves and similar unoccupied waste places. -How sweetly it looks up at us with its innocent child’s face! Just -now one of the guests of the hotel came in with a broad market-basket -loaded with it, a good half-bushel, at the very least. “I have counted -twenty-six varieties,” he said (he was thinking of diversities of -color), and there must be somewhere near that number in the crowded -vase that he has sent down to brighten my writing-table. - -Here, too, is the Atlantic beach. In ten minutes I cross the peninsula -and am on the sands; or, if I stroll up or down the river shore,--on -the western side of the peninsula,--I can hear all the while the -pounding of the surf. - -I have been in Ormond two days,--two perfect days of temperate summer -weather,--and have walked hither and thither, up the river, down -the river, across the river, and on the beach, seeing comparatively -little of the country as yet, but enough to be able to say that I have -never found any place in Florida where a walking man should be better -contented. There are paths and roads everywhere,--a convenience not to -be taken for granted in this Southern country,--and be his states of -mind never so variable, he may here suit the jaunt to the mood. - -A visit to Ormond was not in my plans for the winter, and I left Miami -with regret. Migratory birds were arriving, and I seemed to be running -away just when there was most to detain me; those tropical plants, too, -were certain to become more and more interesting as the season grew -older; but, like the verbena and the phlox, being here I am thankful. -If I have taken leave of some splendid birds (those painted buntings -are in my eye as I write), I have found some old friends in their -place. It is good to see brown thrashers again, with song sparrows, -white-throats, and chickadees. One of a bird-loving man’s strangest -sensations at Miami is the absence of chickadees and tufted titmice. I -had never been in such a place before. (For eight weeks, let me say in -passing, I have seen no English sparrows. Unfortunately I have not yet -forgotten how they look.) - -In my two days here I have counted but fifty kinds of birds. A goodly -number that I know to be present, and even common, I have so far -happened to miss. But in the middle of March even fifty birds make -something like a festival. Mockers, cardinals, and Carolina wrens--the -great Southern trio--are tuneful, of course. Even as I write, a wren -is whistling an accompaniment to my pencil. If I could only put the -music on the paper! If it would only “modulate my periods!” as Charles -Lamb said. When I sit in the shade of a moss-hung live-oak, letting the -sea breeze fan me, and listen to an assembly of red-winged blackbirds -rehearsing their breezy _conkaree_ among the reeds along the Halifax -(though it is not a simple _conkaree_, either, but _conkaree-dah_, -the old tune with a new coda), I think of swamps in far Massachusetts -where on this very 12th of March other redwings are opening the musical -season in a very different atmosphere. - -Chewinks of both kinds (red-eyes and white-eyes, Northerners and -Southerners) are calling and singing. Blue yellow-backed warblers are -musical after their manner (they hardly need to be singers, being -so exquisite in color, form, and motion), and white-eyed vireos are -numerous enough, though nothing like so plentiful as at Miami. Here, as -there, they have no thought of hiding their light under a bushel. - -It is like old times to see Florida jays sitting on the chimney-tops of -the summer cottages along the dunes behind the beach. Thus it was that -I saw them first, at Daytona, nine years ago. As a friend and I stopped -this morning to rest in the shade of a piazza, one came and stood upon -the railing and eyed us long and curiously. “Have you nothing edible -about you?” he seemed to say. If we had had anything to offer the -beggar, I am confident he would have hopped upon our knees.[8] As it -was, he approached within five or six feet while we chirped and talked -to him. Florida jays are strange creatures for tameness, and if it were -thought worth while could readily be domesticated. - -It seemed natural, also, to see pelicans flying in small flocks up -the beach, just over the breakers, so that half the time they were -invisible, lost in the trough of the sea; moving always in Indian -file, flapping their wings and scaling by turns. And still another -remembrancer of my previous visit to this part of Florida was the -sight of a bald eagle robbing a fishhawk. The hawk made a stubborn -defense, dodging this way and that, rising and falling, but in the end -the eagle, an old white-headed fellow, was more than a match for his -victim; for though they were far away, the motions of the contestants -showed plainly enough how the struggle terminated. - -On the beach, halfway to his knees in water, stood a great blue heron, -leaning seaward, waiting for a fish. He might have been standing -there for nine years. At all events I left him in the same position -that length of time ago. “Ay, and you,” he might rejoin, “you haven’t -changed, either. You have still nothing better to do than to go -wandering up and down the earth, shooting birds with an opera-glass?” -True enough. Heron and man, after nine years each is the same old -sixpence. “The thing that hath been it is that which shall be, and -there is nothing new under the sun.” Well, so be it. Only let me find -new pleasure in the old places and the old pursuits. - - - - -A DAY IN THE WOODS - - -I was well within the truth when I said, a week ago, that there could -not be many places in Florida where a walking man would find his wants -so generously provided for as at Ormond. Here he may spend a half-day -in idling over a round of a mile or two,--sea beach, river bank, and -woodland,--or he may foot it as industriously as he pleases from -morning till night; and the next day and the day after he will have -plenty of invitations to “fresh woods,” though hardly to “pastures -new.” Pastures, whether new or old, he may look for elsewhere. - -But at Ormond a man may not only walk, he may drive; and this forenoon -(March 19) a pair of horses have taken me over such a road as I do not -expect soon to find the like of, either in Florida or anywhere else; -a course of twelve or fifteen miles, the whole of it (as soon as the -bridge over the Halifax was crossed) through most beautiful forest. The -road was wide enough for the carriage and no more; soft as a carpet, so -that the wheels made no noise, with big trunks of pines, palmettoes, -oaks, sweet-gums, magnolias, and what not crowding upon the track so -closely that we could almost put out our hands and touch them as we -passed. In the whole distance, to the best of my recollection, we met -neither carriage nor foot-passenger. - -We drove as we pleased, stopped as we pleased, talked or kept silence, -listened to the birds, admired the flowers and the new leafage (there -are no words wherewith to intimate its freshness and beauty), and -withal dreamed of the time when all the land about us was the scene of -busy labors, when sugar and rice and cotton were cultivated here by -hundreds of slaves, and those who owned the land, as they imagined, had -no thought of a day when the forest should again claim all their fair -possessions. We drove to Mount Oswald, so called, near the mouth of the -Tomoka River, thence over the famous old causeway, set with palmettoes, -to Buckhead Bluff, at which point the King’s road to St. Augustine is -supposed (or known) to have crossed the river a hundred years ago. I -was glad to see the river (I shall see more of it, if I live a day -or two longer), but the great thing was the forest, with its present -beauty and its whisperings of past romance. - -Now it is afternoon, and I am in the same woods. No lover of wild life -ever drove over a beautiful country road for the first time without -saying to himself again and again, “I must come this way on foot.” -A carriage is well enough in its place, but really to see things a -man must be on his own legs. Immediately after luncheon, therefore, -with a merry company of golfers (a flourishing sect in Florida), I -took the little one-horse street-car to the railway station, and now, -having crossed a narrow field and left the golfers at their afternoon -devotions, I am in the Volusia road, in the noblest of hammock woods. - -The first half-mile of the way I have walked over more than once -already, and having in mind the shortness of the afternoon I quicken my -steps. The doing so is no hardship. For the last forty-eight hours the -wind has blown from the north; during the night the mercury settled to -38°; and though it is considerably warmer than that now, a pretty brisk -movement is still not uncomfortable. - -Here I pass a mournful sight--an old orange grove, of which nothing -remains but the sandy soil and a few blackened stumps. The “great -freeze” of six or seven years ago killed the trees to the roots. -Nearly opposite, to add to the forlornness of the impression, stands -a deserted house; and not far along is another, that looks only less -unthrifty and disconsolate, with an old woman smoking a pipe on the -piazza. It would be a strict moralist who should grudge her that one -comfort. - -Now I have left the last human habitation behind me, and in front -stretches the narrow road arched with greenness, running away and -away till it runs out of sight. What lofty oaks and sweet-gums! And -what beautiful lichens cover them with wise-looking hieroglyphics! If -we could only decipher their meaning! I note especially the ribbed, -muscular-seeming trunks of the hornbeams, one of which, the largest, -is riddled with uncountable perforations, the work of some sap-loving -woodpecker; and I turn about more than once to admire the proportions -of a magnificent magnolia, one of the largest I have ever seen. My -thanks to the highway surveyor who went a few feet out of his way to -leave it standing. A rod or two more, and I stop to look up at some -exceptionally tall pines and live-oaks, a noticeable group, in the -altitude of which I have before found a pleasure. - -How they soar, as if to see which shall go highest! And as high as the -oak branches go, so high the gray moss follows. - -Now I am at the fork of the road. My course is to the right. “Old -Stage Road to Buckhead Bluff on the Tomoka River at the crossing of -the ‘old King’s road’ to St. Augustine.” So the guideboard reads, with -commendable particularity. “Old” is the word. Even the wind in the -tree-tops seems to be whispering stories of things that happened long, -long ago. And the trees answer, “Yes, so the fathers have told us.” To -think of all those busy people! And every one of them dead! - -Here is a bit of clearing where the sun strikes in. It feels good. -This is the right kind of outdoor weather--shade not uncomfortable -and the sun’s heat welcome. A white-eyed chewink, happy Floridian, is -whistling from the brush. Holly trees are common, and the sweet-bay is -everywhere. Its shining leaves are of a most salubrious odor, as if -they might be for the healing of the nations. I am continually plucking -them and rolling them in my fingers. - -And yonder is the maker of the clearing--a colored man, standing beside -a woodpile. I hail him to remark that it is a fine day, and he answers, -“Yes, very nice.” Strange that when two men meet for the only time in -their lives they should find nothing more important to communicate than -that it rains, or that the sun is shining. But weather is the thing, -after all, especially in Florida. Perhaps it deserves all that is said -about it. Anyhow, the woodcutter and the stroller have expressed a -feeling of neighborliness and have told each other no lies. - -With every rod the wood changes from glory to glory. I remark with -special joy a grove of tall, slender, smooth-barked water-oaks, every -one in new leaf. Height rather than girth is their aim. “We must have -the sun,” they say, “and we climb to get it.” How good the sun is, let -their leaves testify; those millions on millions of shining leaves, -every one new. Yes, every one new. I cannot write the word too often. -And many times as I write it, the Northern reader will have but an -insufficient sense of its meaning. Such freshness and greenness! -Neither memory nor imagination can body it forth. Happy are the eyes -that behold the miracle twice in a single spring. It is like doubling -one’s year. - -A Carolina wren whistles, near at hand, but invisible (invisibility -is the wren’s trick), and a red-eyed vireo, farther away, has begun -his reiterative, summer-long exhortation. I was taken by surprise, -two or three days ago, when I heard the first of his kind in this -same hammock; I was not looking for him so early. His irrepressible -cousin, the white-eye, has been abundantly vocal for at least two -months. At this very minute one is rehearsing a strain with a pretty -and decidedly original quirk at the end. And, by the by, I notice -that many white-eyes hereabout practice a deceptive imitation of the -crested flycatcher’s loud whistle, while others, or perhaps the same -ones, sometimes begin with a broken measure, such as I think I never -heard from a Massachusetts white-eye, strongly suggestive of the summer -tanager. Call him pert, saucy, a chatter-box, Old Volubility, what you -will, the white-eye is indisputably a genius. - -But for to-day, and for me, none of the birds sing quite so feelingly -or so well as the wind in the tree-tops. I stop again and again to -listen to it, and would stop oftener still but for the brevity of the -afternoon and the uncertainty I am in as to the length of the walk -before me. - -Hickory nuts, split in halves and lying blackened in the sand, lead me -to look upward. Yes, there are the trees, still with bare boughs. Their -tender leafage does well to be late in sprouting, even in this Southern -country. There is no tree but knows a thing or two. Every kind has a -wisdom of its own. _Experientia docet_ is true of them as of us. - -And now I suddenly find myself nearing the railroad, and having -consulted my watch conclude to go back over the sleepers. It will be my -shortest course, and will have the further advantage of taking me past -a swamp, on the edge of which I caught glimpses of sora rails a few -days ago. This time I will be more cautious in my approaches. - -A cardinal is whistling, a checkerback is chattering, many warblers are -in the sunny tree-tops, and from somewhere in the depths of the forest -comes the deep, oracular voice of an owl, though the sun is at least -half an hour high. _Whoo, whoo, who-who_, he calls. I love to hear him. -On the wire fence is a yellow jessamine vine, still sporting a few last -blossoms, and for rods together the sandy railway embankment is draped -with exquisite white “bramble roses,” the flowers of the creeping -blackberry. Later comers will find berries on the vines, but perhaps I -have the better part of the crop. - -I am well satisfied, at all events, and am still feasting upon the -sight when out of the tall grass on my left hand comes a rail’s -voice--the voice of one crying in the wilderness. I am drawing near -the swamp, and make haste to cover with my field-glass the spaces of -open water among the dead flags. Yes, there are birds--one, two, three, -four. But they are not rails. I see as much as that before I have -finished my count. Three of them are swimming. They are gallinules; and -when one of them turns, and the sunlight strikes him, I see the red -plate on his forehead. They are Florida gallinules, my first ones for -nine years. My glass follows their movements jealously till the thunder -of an approaching train startles them and they fly to the shelter of -the tall grass. I shall come this way again, and not only see but hear -them. Their language is various and interesting, though most of it has -the accent of the barnyard. - -A pileated woodpecker crosses the track just before me, with all his -colors flying, a pair of bluebirds sit in their accustomed place -upon the telegraph wire, and from the neighboring pines I catch the -finch-like twitters of a brown-headed nuthatch. This is close upon the -railway station and the golf links. My afternoon is done, but the golf -players are still making the most of daylight. I blush to confess it, -but there are some enthusiasms with which even that of a strolling -naturalist will hardly endure comparison. - - - - -PICTURE AND SONG - - -What seek we in Florida? The same that we seek everywhere--sensations. -Life is made of them. In proportion as they are lively and pleasurable -we find it good. The higher their quality, the nobler the part that -feels them, the less physical they are, the less they have to do with -eating and drinking and being clothed, the more truly we are alive and -not dead. - -Most of the people that we meet in Florida are vacationers like -ourselves. At home they may be in the wool business, in shoes, or in -dyestuffs; here they have no occupation but to amuse themselves. In -the daytime they fish, play golf, drive, or lounge upon the hotel -piazza. In the evening they sit in the lobby, listen (possibly) to -the music, admire (or not) the gowns and jewels of the ladies (the -self-sacrificing creatures are all on parade, like so many Queens of -Sheba), take a hand at cards, or gossip about something or nothing -with a traveling companion or a chance acquaintance. At the worst they -dawdle over a newspaper or a novel, and consume the hour in smoke. To -judge by appearances their sensations are not poignant, though the -anglers and the golfers, and even the shuffle-board players, no doubt -have their exciting moments; but on the whole the winter passes rather -quickly. When there is nothing else to do, and the time drags, one can -always cheer one’s self by thinking how intemperate the season is at -home. The most refreshing parts of the Northern newspapers are their -reports of snowstorms and blizzards. - -For my own part, I admire the ladies’ gowns (in one sense or other of -the word, who could help it?), but what my untutored mind is most taken -with is the beauty of the natural world, the world as God made it, -rather than as man, even the man-milliner, has improved it. I love to -look up or down the moss-hung vista of the river road (I am still at -Ormond), or, turning my head, to gaze across the smooth water at the -freshly green, happy-looking oak woods and the overtopping pines. These -are pictures that I hope never to forget. - -The other day an old friend, a settler in these parts, rowed me down -the river a few miles. There we took an untraveled road through the -forest, and by and by came suddenly to a clearing, in the middle of -which stood an abandoned house. The place had once been an orange -orchard, I suppose; and even now, although there was hardly so much -as a stump left to tell the tale, it remained in its own way a -paradise of beauty. From end to end the five or six sandy acres were -thickly overgrown with Drummond’s phlox, all in fullest bloom, a rosy -wilderness. - -It was a pretty show. We exclaimed over it, and gathered handfuls of -the lovely flowers, but as we rowed homeward we were favored with a -spectacle to which it would be a profanation to apply such epithets. -The afternoon, which began doubtfully, had turned out a marvel of -perfection. The wind had gone down, the river was like glass, and -the level rays of the sun touched all the shore woods to an almost -unearthly beauty. And withal, the sky was full of the softest, most -exquisitely shaded, finely broken clouds. It was an hour such as comes -once and is never repeated. In my mind the memory of it has already -taken its place beside the memory of a sunset seen many years ago from -a Massachusetts mountain-top. These are some of the “sensations” of -which I spoke. They are the sufficient rewards of travel, though now -and then, the Fates favoring, we may have them at home also, without -money and without price. - -The next day, or the next but one, I strolled about two miles up the -river northward, to the house where, on my first day at Ormond, I had -seen a Cherokee rosebush just breaking into flower. This time it was at -the top of its glory, such a glory as I have no hope of describing. At -a moderate calculation the mound of leafy stems must have borne four or -five thousand roses, every one the very image of purity and sweetness. -Those who are familiar with the Cherokee rose will perhaps be able to -imagine the picture of loveliness here presented; and such readers -will be glad to know that a lover of beauty (not an idle, time-killing -tourist, but a man at home and at work), having heard my report of the -bush, walked four or five miles on purpose to see it, and declared -himself amply repaid for his labor. “The poetry of earth is never -dead;” and there is never wanting some poet’s soul to enjoy it, and so -to make it twice alive. - -Though it is near the end of March there is comparatively little sign -of bird migration. Chuck-will’s-widows--Southern whippoorwills, if one -chooses to call them so--have arrived and are abundantly in voice. -The nights are scarcely long enough for all they have to say. I hear -of a cottager who is awakened by one so persistently and so early in -the morning that he is devising means to kill it. I hope he will not -succeed, although if the bird is close to his open window and begins to -unburden himself at half-past two, as one does within hearing from my -bed, I cannot very seriously blame him for the attempt. He goes out in -his night-clothes, I am told, and tries to “shoo” it away; but the bird -has a message, as truly as Poe’s raven, and is bound to deliver it, -whether men will hear or forbear. - -On the morning of March 26, in an ante-breakfast stroll, I found -among the pines immediately in the rear of the hotel the first summer -tanager of the season. The splendid creature, bright red throughout, -was flitting from tree to tree, singing a measure or two from each. He -acted as if he were happy to be back in Ormond, and I did not wonder. -A red-eyed vireo was singing on the 15th, and since then birds of the -same kind have become moderately common. Considering that the red-eye -is not supposed to winter anywhere in the United States (I saw nothing -of it at Miami), and arrives so late in New England, it seems to have -reached Ormond surprisingly early. - -For some time the woods have been alive in spots with busy crowds of -warblers. Parulas especially have been present in enormous force, -and have sung literally in chorus. I have seen many yellow-throated -warblers also, and many myrtles, with a fair sprinkling of prairies -and black-and-white creepers. But the birds that have sung best--after -the mocker and the thrasher, perhaps--are not spring comers, but our -faithful winter friends, the cardinal grosbeak and the Carolina wren. -Indeed, of all Southern songsters I believe that the cardinal stands -first in my affections. Sweetness, tenderness, affectionateness, and -variety, these are his gifts, and they are good ones, even if they are -not the highest. - -Out in the flatwoods, a few days ago, we suddenly heard, coming from -a thicket of dwarf palmetto on the edge of water, a quite unexpected -strain, a loud, short trill. “What was that?” asked my companions, as -we looked at one another; for there were three pairs of field-glasses -in the carriage. “It sounded like a swamp sparrow,” said I, with doubt -in my voice. At that moment the measure was given out again, prefaced -this time by a peculiar indrawn whistle. Then the truth flashed upon -me. It was the song of a pine-wood sparrow. I had not heard it for many -years. In the same place meadow larks were in tune, bluebirds warbled, -and pine warblers and brown-headed nuthatches were in voice among -the pine trees. Here, too, I was glad to hear, for the first time in -Florida, the caw of a real crow, a bird with a roof to his mouth and a -voice that sounded like home. - -Such are some of a bird-loving man’s early spring pleasures in this -Southern country. I do not mean to praise the season unduly. New -England can beat it when the time comes; at least, I know one New -Englander who thinks so; but not in March. - - - - -TEXAS AND ARIZONA - - - - -IN OLD SAN ANTONIO - - -After three days and four nights in a sleeping-car it is good to -breathe air again. Not that I mean to speak ill of the modern necessity -known in railway offices as a “sleeper”; it has done me too many a -service; but, for all that,--though it is a bridge that has carried me -over,--well, as I said, it is a luxury to breathe air again. - -So I thought this January afternoon as I sat upon the top rail (a -pretty thin board) of a tall fence at the summit of what I take to -be one of the highest elevations (it would be exceeding the truth, -perhaps, to call it a hill) in the immediate neighborhood of this -venerable but young and vigorous Texas city, known in geographies and -gazetteers as San Antonio, but among railroad men, with whom time and -breath are precious, as “San Antone.” - -The city itself lay all before me, and an excellent showing it made, -with its many stately and handsome buildings and its general air of -prosperity; but for the most part my eyes traveled beyond it, or in -other directions. The landscape was wide, whichever way I turned, and -the transparency of the atmosphere, of a kind never enjoyed in New -England except on some half-dozen days in a year, made it the wider -and more alluring. It surprised me to see imposing public buildings -scattered about over the country. The nearest must have been several -miles from the town, and each, so far as I could see, stood entirely by -itself. Here and there, also, miles apart, were fine dwelling-houses, -with outbuildings and windmills; each, like the public institutions -just mentioned, standing alone, as if its proprietor were also the -proprietor of the entire tract of country roundabout. Rich men’s -ranches, they should perhaps be called. All these, or most of them, -would have been invisible from my fence-rail perch, but for the fact, -which really made the strangeness of the whole spectacle to a New -England man’s eyes, that the rolling land is all unwooded--a broad -landscape, stretching away and away, north, south, east, and west, -and no forest! The slopes look, at a little distance,--just as the -one on which I was now sitting had looked to me half a mile back,--as -if they might be planted with young peach orchards. They are really -covered loosely with wild shrubs ten or fifteen feet high, now budded -and in pale green leaf (Huisache, I understand their Mexican name -to be,[9] though I may err in the spelling), with lower shrubs of -different sorts, mostly thorny, scattered loosely among them, the whole -constituting (or so I suppose) what is known in this part of the world -as chaparral; which is very like what in our Northern country we speak -of, less respectfully, as “scrub.” - -It is a godsend to a man on my errand, that chaparral, as it grows -about San Antonio, at all events, is not a dense thicket. It can be -walked through or ridden through in all directions with perfect ease, -though one cannot keep a straight course for more than a rod or two -together. - -I had been strolling over exactly such a hill half an hour before, -circling one cluster of shrubs after another, opera-glass in hand, on -the alert for any bird that might show itself (it was likely as not to -be a stranger), when all at once--how it came about I shall never be -able to tell--there, just before me on the ground, twenty or thirty -feet away, stood one of the birds that I had most desired to see in -this novel Southwestern world--a road-runner. I have found some puzzles -since my arrival at San Antonio, three days ago, but this was not one -of them. As our good common saying is, the fellow looked “as natural -as life.” Mr. Fuertes’s drawing had stepped out of the book. I could -have shouted with pleasure. - -The bird was true to his name. There was no road, to be sure, but he -knew what was expected of him, and started off at once at a lively -trot; then, within ten or fifteen feet, he stopped short, lifted -his ridiculously long tail till it stood at right angles with his -body,--the white “thumb-marks” at the ends of the feathers making -a brave show, in spite of the almost indecent absurdity of his -attitude,--and after a moment started on again. Two or three times he -repeated these manœuvres; and then, without my knowing how he did it, -he escaped me altogether, although the bit of shrubbery into which he -had vanished was only a few feet in diameter. “Never mind,” I thought, -“I have seen him.” And he was every whit as oddly behaved a piece as my -fancy had painted him. - -The road-runner, it should be said, is an overgrown member of the -cuckoo family. Its length from the tip of its bill to the end of -its tail is about two feet. It wears what may be described as a -frightened-looking crest, its plumage is conspicuously mottled, and, -what gives it its special character, its tail is a foot long. As Mrs. -Bailey well says, it is “one of the most original and entertaining of -Western birds. The newcomer is amazed when the long-tailed creature -darts out of the brush and races the horses down the road, easily -keeping ahead as they trot, and when tired turns out into the brush and -throws his tail over his back to stop himself.” - -My bird’s performance was less theatrical than that, perhaps because I -was on foot, perhaps because the day was Sunday, perhaps because of the -absence of a thoroughfare; but I was well pleased. - -It is noticeable how birds, not less than men, tend to become -specialists. To accomplish one thing supremely well,--that is -certainly the way to make one’s self famous. And that is what the -road-runner does. He has chosen a hobby, and he rides it. His legs are -proportionally no longer than other birds’, but that does not matter. -Such as they are, he will make the most of them. - -He is like a certain Maine farmer of whom I have heard, a plain tiller -of the soil, who feels, nevertheless, that he was born for better -things; not for a cart-horse, if you please, but for a race-horse. He -may be working on his farm, at the plough, we will say; suddenly the -impulse comes upon him, as inspiration is said to come upon a poet; -there is nothing for it but he must start and run; and so he does. -Once every summer he travels from Maine to Mount Washington, for -the great event of the year. When he appears at the Summit House, -every one knows what is to happen. So-and-so is going to run down the -mountain. The daily newspaper chronicles his arrival and announces the -hour of the annual event. Then, at the minute agreed upon, all hands -gather before the door, a man appointed for the purpose holds the -watch and gives the signal, and down the steep road starts the farmer, -his invariable “tall hat” on his head, and his coat-tails flying. -At the Half-Way House, and again at the base, his time is taken. If -it is shorter than last year’s, so much the more glory. If it is -longer,--well, he has run; and presumably, like Cincinnatus before him, -he goes back to his plough contented. - -The road-runner, I suspect (the running cuckoo!), is subject to the -same irresistible ambulatory impulses, and by a curious coincidence -he, too, wears what we may term a “tall hat.” I should like to see him -racing down the Mount Washington road, putting on the brakes now and -then, at the sharper turns, by a sudden cocking of his tail! - -The temperature here--for temperature must always be mentioned in -writing of one’s travels--has thus far been pretty comfortable for a -walker, though not without something of the contradictoriness which -seems to belong to weather conditions everywhere and always: roses in -all the gardens, and steam in the radiators; children, black and white, -paddling about in the mud barefooted and barelegged, and gentlemen with -heavy overcoats on, and, not unlikely, collars turned up. Concerning -such things, here in “San Antone,” you take your choice. For myself I -have compromised the matter, keeping my boots on and wearing, except -when the sun has been more than commonly persuasive, the lightest of -spring overcoats. - -The great drawback to a walking man’s comfort, and just now the most -impressive “feature” of the city,--more impressive by far than the old -Spanish missions, the most famous of which, the Alamo, is directly at -my door,--has been the mud; deep and black, and more adhesive than -glue. If you go outside the city your shoes gather it as a rolling -snowball gathers snow (“to him that hath shall be given,” you repeat -to yourself), and it is like one of the labors of Hercules to get it -off. I walk about, scuffing and kicking, with pounds of it on either -overshoe, like a dark fringe, and fancy I know how it feels to drag -a ball and chain. However, conditions are bettering in this respect, -and in any case, things might easily be worse. Yesterday morning, -seeing the sky clouded, I remarked to the elevator boy on my way -down to breakfast, that I believed it was going to rain; and I added, -sententiously, “More rain, more mud.” “Yes,” said the boy, quick to -resent an imputation upon the climate of Texas, “and the more rain, -the better crops.” The State, it appears, has suffered greatly from -drought for the past few seasons, and no doubt its people can well -afford to play the mud-lark for a week now and then in winter. It makes -a difference whether you are a selfish, pleasure-seeking tourist, -thinking only of to-day’s comfort, or a man with his living to make out -of a cotton plantation or a market garden. - -For the present, if the tourist wishes, as I do, to walk in the -country, he may do worse than betake himself to one of the numerous -railroad tracks.[10] These have carried me into good places and -shown me many interesting birds; but they would be more convenient -if they were not walled in, mile after mile, except as a highway or -a plantation road crosses them, by an excessively high and close -barbed-wire fence. Yet even this hateful obstruction has served me one -slight good turn. - -A man of something like my own age and build was trudging along -the track in front of me, a day or two ago (by his gait and general -appearance he was used to trudging), when I saw him approach the fence -as if he meant in some way to force a passage. “You’ll never do it,” -I thought. Really, there seemed not to be space enough between the -wires, even if they had not been barbed, for a human body to squeeze -through; but to my astonishment the fellow slipped between them without -the slightest fumbling or hesitation, and without so much as a barb’s -touching him. He must have been a specialist, I am sure. I could not -have followed suit without tearing my clothing to tatters, if all the -wealth of the East, “barbaric pearl and gold,” had been spread out -before my itching fingers on the farther side. I have not yet ceased -wondering at the rogue’s address. Such practice as he must have had! -I hope he was never in jail. It was like the neatest of Japanese -jugglery, or the famous passage through the eye of a needle. Behold, -said I, the compensations of poverty. No rich man could have done it. - -The greater part of the passengers that one meets in such -out-of-the-way places are short, swarthy Mexicans. Usually they are -able to bid you “good-morning,” or to ask how you “do,” but now -and then you will hear a “_buenos dias_.” In the city one finds -them at every corner selling peculiar-looking confections. Whether -one likes their wares or not,--and for myself, I must confess that -“my own particular lip” has not yet made up its mind to try the -experiment,--their presence gives one an agreeable sense of being far -from home. Two days ago I was wandering about San Pedro Park at noon, -and noticed for the first time a few butterflies on the wing. Most of -them were much like our common yellow one,--evidently some species of -Colias,--but by and by I noticed a dark one, showing a touch of red as -it flew. I took chase, and came up with it just as it dropped to rest -directly in front of two Mexicans seated upon the grass. I stepped -near to see it (a common red admiral, for aught I could discover), -and perceiving that the men were inquisitive, I pointed to it with my -finger. One of them imitated the gesture, as much as to say “That, -do you mean?” I nodded, and he said, with a smile, “_Mariposa_.” -“Yes,” said I, “a butterfly.” That was beyond him, and he repeated -his incomparably prettier word, “_mariposa_.” “Very good,” said I to -myself, “I am glad to find that I understand Spanish when I hear it -spoken!” A solitary traveler, of all men, should know how to amuse -himself with trifles. - - - - -A BIRD-GAZER’S PUZZLES - - -The days of my youth have come back to me. I am again at the foot of -the ladder, a boy in the primary school, a speller of a-b-abs. The -experience is pleasant, but not unmixedly so; it is sweet, with a -suggestion of bitter. I am finding out daily that one is never too old -to be mistaken. I knew it before, of course; but I am still finding it -out; for the two things are not incompatible. One may know a thing, -and still have need to learn it. It is possible that the most erudite -scholar has never more than begun to apprehend his own ignorance; nay, -that he would never make more than a beginning in that salutary study -were he to burn the midnight oil for a thousand years. In that time he -might square the circle and discover the philosopher’s stone, but he -would not discover how little he knew. In that respect, in respect to -what we do not know, human capacity is unlimited. Finite creatures that -we are, we are endowed with a kind of negative infinity. And, for one, -I wish to make the most of my greatest gift. It shall not be “lodged -with me useless,” if I can help it. - -I saw a strange warbler the other day. That is to say, I thought I -saw one. I had been wandering for a whole forenoon amid the chaparral -just outside the city of San Antonio, and had enjoyed a good number of -novel sensations, when suddenly (such things always come suddenly, but -it seems necessary to repeat the word) a tiny bird moved in a low bush -directly before me. “A gray warbler with no wing-marks,” I said; and -the next instant I saw that its crown was light yellow. It moved again, -and the forward parts came into view. Its throat also was yellow. At -that moment it was eating a yellow berry. Its ground color was near the -shade worn by a juvenile chestnut-sided warbler, and the yellow of the -crown and throat was very lightly laid on over the gray, so to express -it, just as it is in the chestnut-side’s case. - -Now what kind of warbler can this be? I asked myself: a gray warbler -with a yellow crown and a yellow throat, and no other adornments. -And with the question there came into my mind, as by the effect of -immediate inspiration, the word Calaveras. Whether it was Calaveras or -something else, there could be no doubt of my being able to clear up -the question, once I should have a book in my hand. - -I resumed my peregrinations, therefore, the bird having moved on, -as birds do, being provided with wings for that very purpose, and by -and by, walking at a venture round one clump of bushes after another, -I came again upon the stranger, who, it should be said, was of a -peculiarly unsuspicious disposition, and this time was swallowing -piecemeal what seemed to my New England mind a very unseasonable -caterpillar. And now I made a further discovery: the shoulder of the -bird’s wing was edged with a line of pretty bright red, of a shade -between chestnut and carmine! Surely, it was only a matter of surviving -to reach the hotel and the mystery would be solved. Calaveras or what -not, it was impossible that there should be two warblers marked in this -singular manner. - -Well, I got back to my room, and sure enough, not only were there not -two warblers thus marked, there was not even one. Calaveras was nothing -to the purpose. My inspiration must have come from the wrong place. At -any rate, it was unprofitable for instruction. It wasn’t far to go, you -may say, but I was at my wits’ end. - -That evening I had occasion to answer a letter from an eminent -ornithologist, who has herself worked much in the Southwest, and -besides has at her elbow the best of American bird collections. She -would be able to help me out of my difficulty. In all innocence, -therefore, I stated my case. It was possible, I admitted (thrice lucky -admission--it is always politic to seem modest, however one may feel), -that the bird was not a warbler, after all, though, if it were not, I -had no idea what it could be. - -Well, the next day I was out in the country again, this time in a -pecan grove, with tall seed-bearing weeds standing by the acre under -the tall, leafless trees (a paradise for sparrows), when I heard a -chickadee whistling his four notes in the distance. “How closely his -music resembles that of his relative as we hear it in Florida,” I said -to myself. And this reflection set me asking, “Where is that odd little -titmouse, the verdin, that was said to be common about San Antonio at -all seasons?” And then, like a flash, came the answer: “Why, man, that -was a verdin you saw yesterday, out in the chaparral, and mistook for a -warbler.” And so it turned out. Red shoulder-strap and all, everything -suited. The verdin, by the by, is a distinctively Southwestern species, -not _Parus_, but _Auriparus_. My bird had been a female, I suppose, -showing less yellow than her mate would have done. Perhaps if I had -seen him instead of her, I should not have been so befooled. - -No sooner was the puzzle thus satisfactorily solved, than I began to -meditate, with something less of satisfaction, upon the letter I had -written the evening before. I thought, too, of the many more or less -foolish letters that I had myself received (and sometimes smiled at, -I fear) in the past twenty years, letters in which eager searchers -after ornithological knowledge had confided to me marvelous accounts -of the wonders they had seen afield, and by an unhappy fate could find -no description of when they returned to the study. Not many of these -correspondents, as well as I could now remember, had ever mistaken a -titmouse for a warbler! I must dispatch a postscript to my letter by -the earliest mail. And so I did, ostensibly, of course, to save my -friend the trouble of a reply, but really to prove to her that, though -I was capable of blundering, I was also capable of a second thought. - -And now, having made my confession, I am bound to add that some who -may laugh at me would possibly have been little wiser than I, had they -stood in my shoes; for the verdin does not look the least in the world -like anything that goes by the name of titmouse or chickadee up in our -Northern country. I hope to see more of it, and especially to hear its -song, which is said to be of surprising volume. - -Really (and this is why I have told this not very exciting tale at -such length), it is the chief delight of bird-gazing in a strange -country that one has to begin, as it were, all one’s studies over -again; as I have seen a professor of botany in similar circumstances -fingering the leaves of the manual like the veriest schoolboy, as for -the time being he was. It is not the proudest way of renewing one’s -youth, but it will answer. And conditions being as they are, nothing -else will answer. - -Such is my present case here in Texas. Even now, in the dead of winter, -with the number of species greatly reduced, the novelties seen in one -walk are so many that the man who uses no gun, and so can take no -specimens home with him for inspection, is often put to his trumps -when he comes to run over his day’s notes. Though he may have done his -best, he is certain to have overlooked or forgotten some detail which, -with the book before him, turns out to be all important. What a pity -he did not note with more exactness the proportion of white on the -tail feathers, or the position of a certain black spot on the side of -the head! He must go out again, and--if he is fortunate enough to find -the bird--secure a stricter and more intelligent observation. It is -plaguing fun, but it is fun, nevertheless, and good practice, besides; -and withal, it leaves work for to-morrow. - -It must be admitted, moreover, if the truth is to be told,--and it is -sometimes better to tell it,--that no amount of observation in the -field will be likely, in a month or two, at any rate, to settle all -the nice questions that confront the student in a new region in these -latter days; especially if the region happens to be, like this about -San Antonio, one in which Eastern and Western forms of the same species -are to be found overlapping each other. It was very well for Emerson -to speak, poetically, of naming all the birds without a gun. He lived -before the day of trinomials; or if that be not quite true, before our -younger brood of ambitious closet ornithologists had set themselves -so zealously at the work of dividing and subdividing. Time was when a -song sparrow was a song sparrow, and there was an end of it. Now to -call a bird by that name is only the beginning of sorrows. What kind -of song sparrow is it? My Western handbook enumerates about fifteen -sub-species, and the differences, I suspect, are many of them almost -too fine for opera-glass determination. For what I know, a microscope -might be more to the purpose. - -The man who refuses a gun must accept the limitations that go with that -refusal. Time and repeated observation will do much; a good ear will -help--in some cases it will do the larger half of the work; but he -must not expect to accomplish with a glass and patience exactly what -another man accomplishes with powder and shot and a pair of dividers. -In the study of ornithology, as elsewhere, there are diversities of -operations, and possibly not the same spirit. - -If I cannot be certain whether the vesper sparrows I saw to-day were -light-colored enough to pass for _Poœcetes gramineus confinis_, or were -probably nothing but plain _Poœcetes gramineus_, I must put up with my -ignorance, distressing as it is. Possibly, if I were to see species and -sub-species side by side, even in the field, I could tell them apart; -possibly I could not. Whether their songs differ, is a point concerning -which my book, after the manner of books, has nothing to offer; and as -the birds are now dumb, there is nothing for me to do but to call them -vesper sparrows, and await developments. - -And some things can be settled, even in Texas, with no weapon but a -field-glass. I know, for example, that I have to-day seen Mexican -goldfinches, and Arctic towhees, and red-shafted flickers. That is more -than half a loaf, by a good deal, and several times better than no -bread. - - - - -LUCK ON THE PRAIRIE - - -A well-groomed hobby will carry its rider comfortably over many a -slough. - -I was on my way westward to El Paso, and knowing that the train was due -there before daylight, I left my berth early, and had gone out upon the -porch of the observation car to catch a bite of fresh air and enjoy -the first faint flushes of the dawn, when a train-hand, passing in the -semi-darkness, informed me that the wreck of a freight train was on -the track in front of us, and that we should probably not be able to -move for eight or nine hours. I had noticed that we were standing still -upon a “siding,” but such halts are not infrequent on a single-track -road, and having my mind upon pleasanter themes, I had passed the -circumstance by without further thought. - -The news of our trouble spread, as one passenger after another made -his unhandsome, half-civilized appearance from behind the curtains, -and though we proved to be a pretty philosophical company, as -transcontinental travelers have need to be, the general run of comment -was not hilarious. - -A turn outside, as it grew lighter, showed that we were at a station -called San Elizario (a pleasing name, surely), some three thousand two -hundred feet above sea-level. The westerly breeze was a refreshment, -and three or four ranges of jagged mountains glorified the horizon. If -we must be delayed, the Fates had chosen a favorable place for us. - -I, for one, soon began to feel reconciled to the turn affairs had -taken, and went back to the car for an opera-glass. It must be a dull -day in Texas when a tender-footed bird-gazer cannot find at least one -novelty, and till the “first call for breakfast” I would be out trying -my luck. - -An adobe building, windowless and unoccupied, stood not far off, and -near it was a cottonwood tree, still holding, in spite of all those -Texas winds, part of its last season’s crop of dry leaves. I walked -in that direction, and at the moment three birds, with musical, -goldfinch-like twitters, flew into the tree. A glance showed them to be -not goldfinches, but small birds of the purple finch group, very bright -and rosy (the two males), and thickly streaked underneath. “The house -finch!” I exclaimed. - -This is a Western beauty, greatly beloved for its color, its music, and -its engaging familiarity, by all to whom it is a neighbor. I had read -of its charms, and had freshly in mind an enthusiastic eulogy of it by -an old friend, now a resident of Colorado, whom I had chanced to fall -in with a fortnight before in a railway car. With those three lovely -creatures talking to me, I felt that the day was saved. - -A Say’s phœbe was near by, in a pear orchard (for the piece of prairie -land on which we so unexpectedly found ourselves was under irrigation), -and as I had met it first only forty-eight hours before--at Del Rio--I -was glad to see more of its very demure and pretty habits, especially -of its clever trick of hovering at considerable length just over the -grass. The rather bright buff of its under-parts is one of its striking -characteristics, and now, when I caught sight of it in the distance, I -had for a moment thoughts of some unfamiliar kind of oriole. - -There was barely time to pay my respects to the phœbe before a flash of -blue wings made me aware of something more interesting still, a bevy -of bluebirds. It would be good fortune, surely, if they should turn -out to be of one of the several Western forms that I had never seen. I -drew near, therefore, with all carefulness, and needed but one look to -assure myself that such was indeed the case. Their backs were not blue, -but of a chestnut shade. The blue of the wings, moreover, was not -quite the same as that of our common Eastern _Sialia_. - -Whatever they were, the color of the backs would probably be enough to -name them, and I returned to the car for breakfast and, first of all, -to make sure of my new birds’ identity. A consultation of the handbook -showed it to be reasonably certain that they were of the sub-species -_Sialia mexicana bairdi_, the chestnut-backed bluebird; but I had -failed to observe one important mark: the throat should have been -“purplish blue.” I wished very much to see them again, but they had -disappeared. Doubtless they were migrants or stragglers, and by this -time were far away. A pity I had not been more painstaking while I had -the opportunity. The one safe rule is to note everything, though it is -a rule more easily laid down than lived up to, to be sure, especially -in a new place, with many distractions. Anyhow, the birds must be of -the chestnut-backed sub-species, I reassured myself, for the sufficient -reason that it was impossible, here in western Texas, that they should -be anything else. - -Allaying my scruples thus, I started across a field toward a farmhouse, -and on the way noticed a crow flying over. It was the first one I had -seen since reaching San Antonio,--the chaparral country not favoring -birds of the crow-jay tribe,[11]--and I remarked it with pleasure. And -then, remembering something I had lately read of Arizona, I thought, -“But is it a crow, after all? Isn’t it one of the white-necked ravens -that are set down as so common and familiar in this part of the world?” -And, in fact, it was; for the next moment it began calling in a voice -that put the possibility of its being a common American crow, the only -one that could possibly be met with in all this region, quite out of -the account. Another new bird! The third within half an hour! Surely -this was better than getting into El Paso on schedule time. Let El Paso -wait. It would probably last the day out. - -But the story was not yet done, for after a little the meadow larks, of -which there were many in the fields (with large flocks of horned larks, -also), began singing. I was disappointed in the song, of the beauty of -which I had formed the most exalted expectations, but consoled myself -with believing that the birds were not Western meadow larks proper, -but the Texan sub-species; otherwise I must conclude that their voices -were still somewhat winter-bound, or at least, not yet keyed up to -concert pitch. - -A sparrow hawk beside the farmhouse before mentioned allowed me -to stand almost under his low tree before he took wing, and when -at last he did so I had a feeling that he was rather surprisingly -long. I thought nothing more of the matter at the moment, but later, -discovering by a reference to the handbook that a variety of _Falco -sparverius_, somewhat larger and with a longer tail, had been described -from this region, I concluded it probable, not to say certain, that -my impression had been correct, and that the bird was not my old -acquaintance of the East, but _Falco sparverius deserticola_. That -would make the new birds of the morning four instead of three. - -All this while, it must be understood, there was always the possibility -that the train might start at any moment, no positive information upon -that point being obtainable, so that I could move about only within -a narrowly limited area. For a man thus tethered I was doing pretty -well, whatever my unornithological fellow-travelers might think of my -peculiar movements and attitudes. And to increase my enthusiasm, as I -turned to go back to the train for dinner, in crossing an irrigation -ditch (now dry), bordered with a dense thicket of low shrubs, I caught -the tinkle of junco voices and presently a glimpse of white tail -feathers. Now, then, since luck was the order of the day, it was as -likely as not that these were not simple _Junco hyemalis_ such as I had -found at San Antonio, but one of several Western kinds that might, for -aught I was aware, be looked for hereabout. - -And so it proved. The birds were amazingly shy and secretive, but -with patience I had three or four of them under my glass one after -another; and they were noticeably different from our Eastern junco, and -belonged, as the book’s description made clear, to the variety _Junco -hyemalis connectens_, the intermediate junco, so (not very poetically) -called. - -I went to dinner with an excellent appetite, and afterward, the delay -of the train still continuing, though with rumors that its end was -near, I took one more turn in the field, and this time happened upon -still another stranger, the handsomest of the day, so wonderfully -handsome, though “handsome” is too cheap a word, that a man would have -to go far to beat it--an Arizona _Pyrrhuloxia_; a bird--related to the -cardinal grosbeak group--having no representative in the East. It would -be a shame to attempt a description of it here at the end of a hurried -sketch, but it made a glorious sixth in my list of the day’s findings. -I shall see more of it, I trust, when I reach the territory to which it -more distinctively belongs. - -One other piece of good fortune I must not fail to chronicle, though I -have omitted to do so in its proper place. Late in the forenoon, after -I had given the bluebirds up for lost, I discovered them sitting, the -six together, a lovely company, among the leaves of a cottonwood tree, -as if they had taken shelter from the wind; and the book’s description -was borne out: their throats were “purplish blue.” - -The nine hours--for so long the embargo lasted--passed all too soon. If -I could have had two or three hours of free wandering, who knows what -other bright names I might have brought back? I went so far, indeed, -as to inquire of the postmaster and variety storekeeper--a genial, -smiling German--whether there was any place in the neighborhood where a -stranger could be put up for the night; but he thought not, and advised -me, not at all inhospitably, to stick to the train. And possibly, after -all, I had found more rather than less for being compelled to beat a -small space over again and again, instead of ranging farther afield. At -all events, I had discovered a new use for ornithological enthusiasm, -and I might almost add for railway accidents. I do not expect to find -many birdier places, no matter where my wanderings take me, than that -piece of dry, winter-bleached prairie about San Elizario. - - - - -OVER THE BORDER - - -On my first morning at El Paso, where, by good luck, as already -explained, I arrived nine or ten hours behind time, I made an early -start for Juarez, the Mexican city on the opposite bank of the Rio -Grande. As I waited for the car at the corner of the street, a rosy -house finch stood on the top of a telegraph pole overhead, singing -ecstatically. The pretty creature, it is evident, is very much at home -in this bustling city, at least in winter, for I was hardly in my room -on the afternoon of my arrival before I heard its warble, and looking -out of the window beheld the bird perched upon the eaves of a building -across the way, where more than once since then I have heard and seen -it. I am sorry to add that the English sparrow, its most unworthy -rival, is here also, though for the moment in small numbers. - -When the car came along, it proved to be an open one. - -“A rather cold morning for open cars,” I said to the youthful conductor. - -“Oh, we run open cars all winter,” he answered. “But I suppose we -don’t mind the cold so much,” he continued, emphasizing the pronoun, -“because we are out of doors all the time.” - -A Northern tenderfoot might naturally be less inured to frigidity, -he seemed to imply; but I remarked that he wore the heaviest of -overcoats with the collar up. Warm days (much like New England June), -cool nights, clear skies, constant winds, dryness and dust--such is -the January climate of El Paso, if my four days have given me a fair -impression of its quality. - -Presently we crossed a short bridge. - -“Was that the river?” I asked my seatmate, a minute afterward, a sudden -suspicion coming over me, though it seemed so absurd that I was half -ashamed to betray it. - -“Yes, sir; that was the Rio Grande. You’re in Mexico now,” he answered. - -Yes, and that must have been the Mexican Custom House officer whom I -had seen step out of the door of a small building on the southern bank -of the river and salute our conductor so politely. None of us looked -like smugglers, I suppose. At all events, the car was not “held up,” as -happened at the other end of the bridge, a day or two later, while two -rather boisterous young fellows on the rear seat made themselves merry -over the attempt of Uncle Sam’s official representative to collect a -duty. International travel, even in an electric street-car, is liable -to complications. - -As for the river, it was practically dry. Pedestrians were crossing -it--to save toll--on a few small stepping-stones at a point where the -current could not have been ten feet wide nor more than half of ten -inches deep. My seatmate explained that so much water was drawn off -above this point for irrigation purposes that the river had little left -for its own use; and in fact, more than once afterward I saw its bed -absolutely dry, so that even the stepping-stones had for the day gone -out of business. Yet it is a real _rio grande_, for all that, and the -life of a long, long strip of Texas. - -Drought is the mark of this country. A friendly citizen (of whom, in my -ignorance, I had inquired about “suburban trains”!) warned me earnestly -against wandering far out of the town. If some Mexican did not kill me -“for the sake of the clothes I had on” (an ignoble death, surely), I -might get lost (an easy matter, by my adviser’s tell), in which event, -if nothing more serious happened to me, I should infallibly perish of -thirst. - -The car took me through the compact little _ciudad_ (a five-minute -passage, perhaps), and I struck out for the country, along the line -of the Mexican Central Railroad, in the direction of the mountains, -heading my course for a cemetery out on the slope, in the midst of -the chaparral. White-necked ravens were foraging beside the track, as -little disturbed by human approach as so many English sparrows might -have been. “How soon the strange becomes familiar!” I thought. I had -never seen a white-necked raven (there is no whiteness visible,[12] -the bird being a very imp of darkness to look at it) till less than -twenty-four hours ago, and already I was passing it with something -like indifference. I was far from indifferent, however, two afternoons -later, when for the first time I watched a flock of several hundred -soaring in mazy circles high overhead, after the manner of buzzards or -sea-gulls. - -No other birds showed themselves till I drew near the cemetery gate, -when suddenly the bushes just in front, straight between me and the -sun, were alive with sparrows. My eyes, dazzled as they were by the -sunshine, caught sight of one lark bunting as the flock took wing. I -must see more of it,--it was my first one,--and started eagerly in -pursuit. But the creatures were timid beyond all calculation, and -though I pursued them with cautious haste for some distance, I could -never come up with them. Wherever I looked, there was nothing but -white-crowned sparrows; handsome birds, the sight of which is almost an -event in Massachusetts, but so abundant in Texas at this time of the -year--as Lincoln finches are, also--that I have begun to turn away from -them as almost a nuisance. It becomes vexatious to a man in search of -novelties when even an old favorite keeps itself too persistently under -his glass. As the proverb has it, there is reason in all things. - -While I was beating the chaparral over, still in search of those -missing white wing-patches, I noticed a funeral procession coming -from the city. Heading the cortege was what in a Massachusetts town -would be called a “depot carriage.” It served the purpose of a hearse, -I suppose, and in it sat two men bareheaded. It seemed a neighborly -and Christian act to accompany a brother mortal to the grave in this -fraternal manner. The second carriage was an open buggy, drawn by a -white horse. - -These things I took note of while the procession was still a long way -off (a military band, still farther away, at the barracks, no doubt, -was playing a march), and meantime I went up to the cemetery fence and -looked over. The monuments were mostly, if not wholly, wooden crosses, -with the ordinary run of affectionate epitaphs. A man, who appeared to -be the keeper of the place, came out of the one house near at hand, and -asked me something in Spanish, to which I replied in English. We were -unable to communicate with each other till finally I said, “_No sabe._” -It was not precisely what I intended to tell him; but it was all one. -He saw for himself that I spoke no Spanish, and with that left me to -myself. - -I returned to El Paso on foot, and as I reached the northern end of the -bridge, walking, as it happened, on the far side of the road, with my -overcoat on my arm, as careless as could be, I was hailed by an officer -in uniform. I halted, and he approached. Then he waited. It was my -place to speak first, as it seemed, and I began: - -“Do you wish to inspect me?” - -“Well, what did you buy in Mexico?” he asked. - -“A postal-card, and mailed it.” - -“Was that all you bought?” - -“Yes.” - -“All right.” - -The souvenir postal-card industry, though comparatively infantile, -is not “protected,” it appears, although, if I had brought the -five-cents’ worth away with me, I might, for aught I positively know, -have been called upon for duty. The rights of American laboring men -must by all means be looked after. To think what ruin might befall -this great republic if its people, with all the rest of their freedom, -should in some fit of madness insist upon the freedom to buy and sell! - -That was three days ago. Since then I have been to Juarez twice, -pushing a little farther each time into the country southward. On -both visits I found lark buntings in plenty. They move about--and sit -about--in peculiarly dense flocks. One such, that I saw this morning, -might have numbered a thousand birds. If disturbed, they rise in a -cloud, and on coming to rest again every one seems to desire a perch -at the very tip of a bush. As they must all alight in the same one or -two bunches of scrub, however, though there are hundreds of others -exactly like them all about, there are by no means top seats enough -to go round, and there is a deal of preliminary hovering, accompanied -by a grand confusion of formless twittering, during which--the white -patches of the quivering wings and outspread tails showing through--the -spectacle is most animated and pleasing. - -As for the city itself, it is squalid, but well worth a visit; having -so strange and other-worldish a look that one seems to have crossed at -least an ocean rather than a trickling streamlet. The white church; the -little shops, with their curious wares; the game cocks in the street, -tethered each by a yard of cord to a peg driven into the ground on the -edge of the sidewalk, crowing defiance to each other, and regarded -proudly by their owners, who now and then take them up in their arms, -caressing them fondly, or shaking one in the face of another, to see -the feathers of their necks bristle; the bust of Bonito Juarez in the -fenced plaza, the bust itself of a size to adorn a parlor mantel, while -the marble pedestal is ten or fifteen feet high and at least ten feet -square at the base; the Spanish signboards and placards; best of all, -the people themselves, men, women, and children--the children, some -of them, half naked, even on a cold, windy forenoon, while the men -saunter about, or lean against an adobe wall in the sun, wrapped in -thick, bright-colored blankets (I shall think of a Mexican, as long as -I live, as leaning against the side of a house)--all these go to make a -memorable picture for a Yankee on his travels. - - - - -FIRST DAYS IN TUCSON - - -What is more fickle than New England weather? Nothing, perhaps, or -nothing inanimate, unless it be the weather of some Southern winter -resort, say in Florida or Arizona. - -I reached Tucson in the evening of January 31, a stop at El Paso having -saved me from participation in a railroad accident, as a result of -which many passengers (nobody knows how many) were burned to death. The -first of February was bright and warm; so that in a long forenoon jaunt -over the desert a very light overcoat quickly became burdensome. The -next morning, therefore, it was left at home. - -My course this time was into the valley of the Santa Cruz, where -farmers live by irrigation and barley fields are already green. I -had crossed the river, pausing on the bridge to enjoy the sight of -my first black phœbe,--a handsome, highly presentable fellow with a -jet-black waistcoat,--when all at once the dusty road before me was -seen to be fast becoming inundated. Beside the fence, wading in mud and -water, the owner of the fields, having taken up arms--a long-handled -spade--against this sea of troubles, appeared to have been working hard -to repair the mischief. At that moment, however, he had given over -the attempt in despair and was lifting his boots, first one, then the -other, out of the mire and scraping them, rather ineffectually, with -the spade. - -I ought to have known better, but it is easy to see the comical side of -other people’s misfortunes, and I remarked in a cheerful tone: - -“Well, well, you seem to have water to burn.” - -Thereupon other floodgates were opened, and out poured a stream of -language, the greater part of it too “colloquial” for print. The -substance of it all was that a Mexican (the opprobrious word being -dwelt upon and forcibly qualified) had come in the night and let on the -water, without giving him, the farmer, any notice of the unseasonable -action. Now the water was all over the road, and all over the yard, and -close up to the back door of the house. He had sent for a man to help -him. - -Seeing nothing better to do, I picked my steps among the dust-bounded -streams as best I was able, and passed by on the other side. I -had always understood irrigation to be a kind of predictable and -controllable rain, but it appeared that, if this were the rule, the -rule had exceptions. The sight set me thinking that possibly if the -general management of the weather were put into human hands, as the -least presumptuous of us are more or less in the habit of wishing were -possible, it might still be found difficult to escape an occasional -fault of administration. As for my farmer’s emphatic language, I held -it excusable. He certainly had provocation, and as the Scripture says, -with commendable toleration, there is a time for everything under the -sun. - -The river valley is narrow, like the river itself, and on the farther -side is bounded sharply by steep foothills, behind which are high -mountains. I was barely beginning to climb the nearest hill, over its -loose covering of small stones, when some bird broke into voice a -little above me; one of those peculiar voices, I said to myself, that -at a first hearing afford almost no indication as to the size of their -owners. - -My uncertainty lasted for some minutes, while I made my way cautiously -upwards, a step or two at a time. The bird proved to be a small -wren,--the rock wren, so called,--said to be “more or less abundant” in -this region; “more” rather than “less,” I hope, for I fell in love with -the creature immediately. - -One of the birds,--for there were two, talking “back and forth,” as -we say,--his fit of nervousness over, dropped into a lyrical mood, -and regaled me with a very pleasing bit of simple music, all in brief -phrases, but with a surprisingly wide range of pitch. Some of the -measures had a peculiar vibrant quality suggestive of the finest work -of our common Eastern snowbird. But withal, I received the impression -that the musician was rather trying his instrument than aiming at a -serious performance. - -While I stood listening, a bunch of a dozen Mexican house finches, more -than half the number in rosy plumage, happened along with the usual -chorus of twitters, and alighted in a very peculiar and graceful shrub -(_ocotillo_, I am told is its Mexican name), which grows in clusters of -a dozen or so of slender, angular stems, leaning away from one another -in all directions and covered sparsely with reddish leaves, which look -for all the world like the autumnal foliage of the common barberry. -The rosy finches, perched upon this group of slanting, wandlike, -fountain-like stems,[13] were exceedingly pretty to look at. - -All about me stood tall, fluted columns of the giant cactus, fifteen -or twenty feet in height, and large enough for telegraph poles. On -the day before, my first day in the city, I had turned a field-glass -in this direction, and to my surprise had seen the hills covered with -verdure. “Why,” said I, noticing what I took for the trunks of trees -amid the green, “those hills are forested.” Now I discovered that -the greenness was mostly that of the desert-loving creosote bush (a -low shrub, noticeable for being thornless, which covers thousands on -thousands of acres hereabouts, and just now is putting forth small -yellow blossoms), while the boles of trees were nothing but giant cacti. - -Among the stones at my feet grew flowers of various unknown sorts, -especially a large yellow one, apparently an evening primrose, rising -no more than two inches from the ground, with a tuft of leaves at -the base of the stem, or rather at the bottom of the calyx. The only -flower of them all that I could certainly name was a pretty blue -lupine, smaller than our New England species, both in blossom and leaf, -but so exactly like it in other respects that for old acquaintance’ -sake, though the lupine was never one of my particular favorites, I -plucked it for my buttonhole. I believe it is the only natural-looking, -familiar-looking wild plant that I have so far seen in this desert -country. - -The wrens having become silent, and the finches flown away, I descended -the hill and took the road running along its base northward. It must -lead, I thought, to another road across the valley, and would make a -round of my forenoon’s walk. And so it did; but first it brought me -to a large building which proved to be St. Mary’s Sanatorium, more -commonly known as the Sisters’ Hospital. I had just passed this and -turned the corner, facing the town, when all in a moment, so far at -least as my perception of events was concerned, the sky was covered -with black clouds, and an icy north wind changed the day from summer to -winter as in the twinkling of an eye. - -No more loitering by the way. I did at once what every other creature -was already doing--I hurried. “Now if I only had that overcoat!” I -thought; but speed also is an extra garment, and I put it on. - -No more loitering, I said; but I did stop once. Halfway across the -valley a flock of blackbirds were feeding beside a barn, and I turned -into the yard to look at them. - -“I want to see what kind of blackbirds these are,” I explained to the -man of the house, who came out of the door at that moment. - -“Oh, they’re the same kind that is all over the universe,” he answered, -smiling. - -But his generalization was hasty, as generalizations are apt to be. -They were Brewer’s blackbirds--the handsomest of grackles; birds that -I had seen for the first time, at Del Rio, only the week before. I -did not stay to admire their iridescence, but declining an invitation -to ride (it was too cold for that, though the man was just going to -harness up, he said), I buttoned another button and hastened on. The -two or three persons I met each had something to say about the weather, -but nobody stopped for prolonged comment. Short speeches and quick -steps, or another crack at the mule, were the order of the day. Even -at the South a man will generally hurry a little rather than freeze to -death. - -Well, the experience was more amusing than uncomfortable, after all, -and I reached the hotel door just as rain began falling. Before night -snow was mingled with the rain, and the next morning I saw a small boy, -his eyes dancing with brightness, making a tiny snow image to stand -upon the front-yard fence, while the mountains--that fairly surround -the city, as they do the Holy City in the Hebrew psalm--were dazzling -white. The mud was beyond belief, the walking laborious; but as I -paused now and then for breath or to recover my footing, and saw all -that glory about me, I thanked my stars that I was here. I was glad -to see that even in this arid zone (_arida zona_, as the Mexicans are -supposed to have begun by calling it) it still knew how both to rain -and to snow. - -“Well, now, this was a surprise, wasn’t it?” I remarked to a German -whom I met in the valley road. - -“You bet,” he answered; and then, with a smile, he added: “but it won’t -last only a couple of days; that’s all.” - -His mastery of American idiom recalls what another German farmer said -on the same forenoon. He had been living here and in California since -’82, he told me. - -“Which place do you like best?” I inquired. - -“Oh, Arizona,” he answered, without hesitation. “Things are freer -here,” he went on. “In Los Angeles, now, you have to dress up once in -a while; but here, if you dress up, or if you don’t dress up, it don’t -cut no ice.” - -My first man’s confident “couple of days” was a trifle too confident. -Twice two days have passed. In that time we have had summer weather (at -noon), a pretty hard freeze (at night), and another rain and another -snowfall, both heavier than the first. - -The winter visitors, of whom there are many, the greater part, alas, -ordered here for “lung trouble,” have naturally been put out,--the -more recent arrivals among them greatly astonished; they thought -they were coming to a dry climate; but the residents proper, if not -jubilant, have seemed at least reasonably well contented with the turn -of affairs. There has been a general agreement, to be sure (one heard -it on all hands), that it was “pretty muddy;” the wayfaring man, though -a fool, could not dispute the statement; but so far as the prosperity -of Arizona is concerned, there is no probability of an excessive -rainfall. The more the better. So much is evident, even to an itinerant -ornithologist, who may stand, if you will, for the wayfaring man before -mentioned. What is not so clear to his darkened understanding is why -the weather, no matter where one goes, should be every season so -strangely exceptional, so utterly different from everything that the -oldest inhabitant can remember. - - - - -MOBBED IN ARIZONA - - -I have never known a city more orderly seeming, more evidently peaceful -and law-abiding than Tucson. Nowhere have I felt safer in wandering -about by myself in all sorts of places, whether within the city proper -or in the surrounding country. Here is a town, I have said to myself, -where the citizen has small need of the policeman. And yet I know a -man, most discreet and inoffensive (not to be shame-faced about it, let -me admit that I speak of the bird-gazer himself), who a few days ago, -for no assignable reason, was violently set upon, or, to speak plainly, -mobbed, just outside the city limits. - -Tucson, it should be premised, is a thriving, rapidly growing, modern -city--though it has an antiquity to boast of, as well--in the midst of -a desert. Its own site was originally part of the desert. The nearest -large city is Los Angeles, California, five hundred miles distant; the -nearest village, from what I hear, must be fifty or sixty miles away. -Many roads run out of the town, but only to ranches scattered here and -there along the two watercourses, or to mining camps farther off in -the mountains. How a city ever came to grow up in a place so isolated, -so seemingly destitute of anything like local advantages, is a riddle -beyond my reading; but here it is, a city in the desert. North, south, -east, or west, you may start where you will and go in what direction -you please, and in fifteen minutes you will be out among the creosote -bushes and the cacti, with nothing but a world of creosote and -cactus--with perhaps a windmill and a roof rising above them somewhere -in the distance--between you and the mountain range that bounds the -horizon. - -Well, this was exactly what I myself did one fine morning a week ago. I -walked up the main street of the city, turned to the right, passed the -territorial university buildings, and, taking a course northward toward -the Santa Catalinas, sauntered carelessly forward, field-glass in hand, -to see what might be stirring in the chaparral. - -There would not be much, I knew. By daylight, at least, and in the -winter season, the desert is not a stirring place. In the tracts where -the creosote occupies the ground alone there proved, as usual, to be -nothing; but presently I came to a place where two or three kinds of -cactus were sprinkled among the creosote bushes, and newly sprung -bluish-green grass (I call it grass, provisionally, although, like -almost everything else hereabout, it has an unaccustomed look) carpeted -or half-carpeted the ground. Here were the almost inevitable two cactus -wrens (how overjoyed I was at the unexpected sight of my first one, -at San Antonio, only three weeks ago, and how soon they have become -an old story!) perched, one here, one there, at the top of branching -cactus trees five or six feet high, calling antiphonally, as their -habit is, in a coarse, unmusical, wearisome voice--the same churlish -phase over and over and over. Nothing but the lonesomeness of the -desert, surely, could ever make that grating, repetitive monotony a -pleasure-giving sound. What the birds will do in the way of song when -their musical season arrives, if it ever does,[14] is more than I know; -but, belonging to be so musical a family, they ought to be capable of -something better than this, for music, of all gifts, is a thing that -runs in the blood. It would be a strange wren that could not express -his happiness in some really lyrical manner. - -In the same neighborhood, as has happened on several occasions, were -a group of five or six sage thrashers. It was in this very place, -indeed, that I first formed their acquaintance; and a sorely puzzled -novelty-seeker I was on that eventful afternoon. The whole desert had -seemed to be devoid of animal existence, I remember, when of a sudden -there stood those strange birds on the ground before me. At the first -instant they gave me an impression of overgrown titlarks. Then, when I -watched them running at full speed over the grass, all at once pulling -themselves up and standing erect with a snap of the tail, I said: “Why, -they must be thrushes of some sort.” In attitude and action they were -almost exactly like so many robins. The only striking characteristic of -their plumage was the peculiarly dense streaking of the under-parts. - -The mystery was heightened for me by the fact that they maintained an -absolute silence. Indeed, although I have seen them many times since -then, I have yet to hear them utter the first syllable. For aught I can -positively affirm, they may every one be mutes. I chased them about for -half an hour, scrutinizing the least detail of their dress, all the -while wondering what on earth to call them, till finally it came over -me, I could never tell how, that they must be sage thrashers. - -“Yes,” I said, “_Oroscoptes!_ I remember that that bird is described as -having a short bill.” - -It was a true guess; and in a strange country a man makes so many poor -guesses that he may reasonably boast a little over every good one. To -this day, I am bound to add, the birds, with their short bills, their -extraordinary quickness upon their feet, and their upright carriage, -have to my eye very little the appearance of thrashers. Perhaps when I -hear them sing, my feeling may alter. - -There is at least one real thrasher in the desert, however, and usually -in the same places that Oroscoptes affects, places such as I have -mentioned, where cacti are mingled with the omnipresent creosote. -This is Palmer’s thrasher, so called, a grayish-brown bird, with -the characteristic thrasher make-up--long bill, long body, and long -tail. He is one of the common birds about Tucson, both in the river -valley and on the desert, and one of the few that are already in song. -Even he, I suspect, is not really letting himself go as yet, but he -is in tune daily; not so versatile a performer, seemingly, as our -Eastern reddish-brown bird; with much less range of voice, and more -given to repeating the same phrase half a dozen times in succession, -so that his music has less the air of a strict improvisation; but a -genuine thrasher, nevertheless, with a thrasher’s song. As the season -progresses he will probably grow more ecstatic, though to hear him -now, one would not expect him ever to become so mad a rhapsodist as -the crazy bird that we admire, and sometimes smile at, in the Eastern -country. - -Whether the thrasher was seen on the day I am supposed to be -describing, I do not now remember, but in all probability he was, -for I never walk far in the desert without seeing or hearing him. If -he does not sing, he salutes me with volleys of sharp, whip-snapping -whistles in the style of the wood thrush and the robin. Like the wren, -he prefers a perch at the top of a cactus. He prefers it, I say; but in -truth it is almost Hobson’s choice with him, since the topmost spray -of a creosote bush, the only other thing he _could_ perch on, would -hardly support his weight. There he stands, at all events, perfectly at -his ease among the closely set spines, sharp as the sharpest needles, -though how he manages the ticklish feat so adroitly is more than I can -imagine. - -I may have seen two or three desert sparrows, also; the black-throated -sparrow, that is, with some slight variations, imperceptible in the -bush, that make him, in the language of science, _Amphispiza bilineata -deserticola_; and possibly, though this is somewhat less to be taken -for granted, his long-tailed relative, the sage sparrow (_Amphispiza -belli nevadensis_), may have teased me by his shyness. Both these birds -are said to be famous enliveners of the desert,--though neither of them -in their present silent state quite lives up to his reputation,--and -will doubtless become prime favorites with me if I remain here long -enough really to know them. Where should simple, hearty melodies find -appreciation, if not in the desert? - -I am slow in coming to the point of my story; and with reason. It is -not pleasant to be mobbed; there is nothing to boast of in such an -adventure; nothing to flatter one’s sense of personal importance; one -is not apt to speak of it _con amore_, as we say. Some things are best -slipped over in silence. So I have noticed that men who have served -their country in prison will always contrive by one path or another to -go round the name of that unpopular institution. But I have begun, and -there is nothing for it but to finish. - -Well, then, I had walked perhaps a mile and a half beyond the -university buildings, which is the same as to say beyond the limits -of the town, and found myself approaching a lonely ranch, when a -flock of ravens, white-necked ravens, which abound hereabout--“the -multitudinous raven,” I have caught myself saying[15]--rose from the -scrub not far in advance, with the invariable hoarse chorus of _quark_, -_quark_. I thought nothing of it, the sight being so much an every-day -matter, till after a little I began to be aware that the whole flock -seemed to be concentrating its attention upon my unsuspecting, -inoffensive self. There must have been fifty of the big black birds. -Round and round they went in circles, just above my head, moving -forward as I moved, vociferating every one as he came near, “quark, -quark.” - -At first I was amused; it was something new and interesting. I recalled -the time when I walked miles on miles over the North Carolina mountains -in hope of seeing one raven, and here were half a hundred almost within -hand’s reach; I chaffed them as they passed, calling them names and -quarking back to them in derision. But before very long the novelty of -the thing wore off; the persecution grew tiresome. Enough is as good -as a feast; and I had had enough. “Quark, quark,” they yelled, all the -while settling nearer,--or so I fancied,--till it seemed as if they -actually meant violence. They were doing precisely what a flock of -crows does to an owl or a hawk: they were mobbing me. “Quark, quark! -Hit him, there! Hit him! Pick his eyes out!” - -The commotion lasted for at least half a mile. Then the birds wearied -of it, and went off about their business. All but one of them, I mean -to say. He had no such notion. For ten minutes longer he stayed by. His -persistency was devilish. It became almost unbearable. The single voice -was more exasperating even than the chorus. If the famous albatross -carried on after any such outrageous fashion, I have no stones to throw -at the Ancient Mariner. He acted well within his rights. If I had had -a crossbow, and had been as good a marksman as he was,--with “his -glittering eye,”--there would have been one less raven in Arizona, and -no questions asked. If a dead calm had succeeded, so much the better. -“Quark, quark!” the black villain cried, wagging his impish head, and -swooping low to spit the insult into my ear. - -But all things have an end, as leaves have their time to fall, and even -a raven’s perseverance will wear out at last. Perhaps the bird grew -hungry. At all events he gave over the assault, stillness fell upon the -desert, and an innocent foot-passenger went on his way in peace. - -And this is how I was mobbed in Arizona. I could never have believed -it. - - - - -AN IDLE AFTERNOON - - -I have heard of a man who invariably begins his letters, whether of -friendship or business, with a bulletin of the day’s weather: it rains, -or it shines; it is cold or warm; and to my way of thinking it is far -from certain that the custom is not commendable. It is fair to sender -and receiver alike that the mental conditions under which an epistle -is written should be understood; and there is no man--or no ordinary -man, such as most of us have the happiness to deal with--whose thoughts -and language are not more or less colored by those skyey influences -the sum of which we designate by the interrogative name of weather. I -say “interrogative,” because I assume, although, having no dictionary -by me, I cannot verify the assumption, that the word “weather” is only -a corruption or variant of the older word “whether;” the thing itself -being an entity so variable and doubtful that remarks about it fall -naturally, and almost of necessity, into a discussion of probabilities, -in other words, of “whether.” - -As to the weather here in Tucson, I could fill all my letters with -it, and still leave a world of things unsaid. Its fluctuations are so -constant that they tend to become monotonous; as Thoreau said of one of -his Concord days, that it was so wet you might almost call it dry. - -Three or four mornings ago, for example, I started early for a -seven-mile tramp across the desert. I wore overcoat and woolen gloves, -and needed them. It was so cool, indeed, that I left word for an extra -garment to be put into the carriage that was to come out and fetch me -back at noon. - -That same afternoon I walked down into the valley of the Santa Cruz. -The sun was blazing, and the heat intense. The few cottonwood trees -scattered along the road were still leafless (I had left my umbrella -at home--for the last time) and the only shelter to be found was on -the northeasterly side of the telegraph poles. I believe I never -before complained of such obstructions that they were not big enough; -but everything comes round in its turn. My thoughts ran back to the -time when a boy of my acquaintance used to trudge homeward from -berry-picking excursions on burning July noons. Also I thought of that -comfortable Hebrew text about the “shadow of a great rock in a weary -land.” The man who wrote that might have lived in Arizona. Finally, -out of sheer desperation, I stepped into the yard of a little adobe -house, and being obliged to walk almost to the door, said to the -motherly-looking woman who came forward to see what was wanted, “Excuse -me, please, but I only wish to stand a few minutes in the shade of your -house.” She looked surprised, as well she might. No doubt she took me -for an invalid, as Arizona people say, a “lunger.” Probably, sitting -indoors, and used to summer temperature in these parts, she had been -thinking of the day as rather cool, not to say wintry. Wouldn’t I come -in and sit awhile? She was sure I should be welcome. But I answered no; -I only desired to stand a few minutes in the shade. And two or three -hours afterward, within five minutes after the sun went down,--though -it had been shining in at my west window,--I needed a fire. - -Forty-eight hours later we had a snowfall,--the third within ten -days,--the whole world white, with “storm rubbers” barely equal to the -emergency; and the next morning, the snow having gone, ice was thick in -a big tub of water outside my door. - -“Cold?” said an Illinois gentleman, with whom I fell into conversation -yesterday, “I’ve been here three weeks, and in that time I’ve suffered -more from cold than in all my forty years.” - -I suspect that he exaggerated. For my own part, I haven’t suffered from -cold. It is the occasional heat that makes me fearful of homesickness. -Three days like that one afternoon would set me packing. All of which -may seem not very important to a chance reader; but unless he is of a -hopelessly unimaginative turn he can perhaps conceive how interesting -and important it must be to the parties directly concerned, especially -if he remembers that this is a winter resort, where weather is the one -thing needful. - -But what a perfect afternoon we had yesterday!--cool, yet not too cool; -and warm, yet not too warm; with a softness and yet a gently bracing, -uplifting, pulse-quickening, life-reviving quality in the air; and the -sky, too, clear, but not too clear, so that wisps of cloud floated here -and there over the bare, steep sides of the Santa Catalinas, giving -them beauty. I was out upon the desert in a mood of absolute indolence, -contented to walk a mile an hour, and breathe and breathe, and look. At -such times it seems hardly too much to say, strange as the words may -sound, that I am falling in love with the desert, a desert bounded only -by mountains. Already I can believe that men are fascinated by it (the -right men), and having once been here cannot long stay away. - -Looking and dreaming, the bird-gazer within me pretty well laid asleep, -suddenly I heard a strange voice in the air, thin, insect-like, -unknown. By the time it had sounded twice the sleeper was wide-awake, -with his opera-glass in play. The voice came from yonder thin clump of -creosote bushes. Yes, the bird flits into sight--a gnatcatcher; and -being a gnatcatcher, with such a note, it must be “the other one,” -known as the plumbeous, which I have been looking for ever since my -arrival in Tucson. And so it was--a pretty creature with a jaunty black -cap. I shall know him henceforth, I hope, even without seeing him. -We are fortunate, both of us, I take leave to say, to have made each -other’s acquaintance on so ideal an afternoon. - -The gnatcatcher disappeared, and the dreamer was just dozing off again, -when two large birds were seen to be having a hot encounter, high -overhead. This time the field-glass came into requisition. A raven was -teasing a red-tailed hawk, with all a raven’s pertinacity and spite. -Again and again and again he swooped upon him, while the hawk ducked -and turned to avoid the stroke. Why the big fellow, biggest of all our -hawks, larger and stronger in every way than the raven, did not face -his tormentor and lay him out was a mystery. I confess, I should have -been glad to see him do it. Instead, he made off toward the mountains, -and after a long chase and much croaking, the raven turned away. - -This also had passed out of mind, and I was on my way homeward, barely -putting one foot before the other, enjoying the air and the sun,--and -the mountains,--when, happening to glance upward, I beheld a grand -sight. “That’s the golden eagle,” I said aloud (in the desert a man -soon falls into the neighborly habit of talking to himself), and one -look through the field-glass proved the words correct. The great bird -was in perfect light, sailing in circles, so that his upper parts came -every minute into full view as he swung about, the old gold of the -head and neck, as well as the contrasted brown and black of the wings, -perfectly displayed, with nothing left for guesswork. I was all eyes, -and watched him and watched him, admiring especially the firm set of -his wings, till he, too, sailed away, not chased, but moving of his own -royal will, and dropped at last out of sight behind the rolling desert. - -He was my first golden eagle, in some respects one of the noblest -of all North American birds. I knew him to be not uncommon in the -mountains, and had hoped some day to see him passing, especially when -I should be far out on the edge of the foothills; and behold, here he -was on my idle afternoon, close at home. Who says that the lame and the -lazy are not provided for? - -My dreamy saunter was turning out ornithological in spite of myself, -and as if the gnatcatcher and the eagle had not done enough to that -end, the ubiquitous raven now took a hand at the business. My thoughts -were just settling back into vacancy, when the ravens were seen to be -commencing their regular afternoon progress to their roosting grounds, -wherever those may be, on the other side of the city. A detachment of -some scores was already on the move. And presently I observed what was -to me a strange and interesting thing, although, for aught I can affirm -to the contrary, it may be only an every-day occurrence. - -A great part of the birds were playing by twos, one chasing the -other, as if engaged in a frolic to which all parties were perfectly -accustomed. I had not expected such a pitch of levity on the part of -these black-suited, and as I should have thought, rather gloomy-natured -scavengers. But they were going to roost, and like children at the -hour of bedtime, they were making a lark of it. Perhaps the day’s -picking had been uncommonly good; they had been over by a certain -cattle-slaughtering establishment; something, at all events, had put -them in high spirits, and so Tom was having it out with Dick, and Bob -with Harry. To look at them, it seemed as much fun as a pillow-fight, -and as I have said, the greater part of the flock were engaged in it. - -But the point I started to speak of was not the game itself, but a -certain acrobatic feat by which it was accompanied. Again and again, -in the course of their doublings and duckings, I saw the birds turn -what looked to be a complete sidewise somersault. It may have been -an optical illusion; probably it was; but if so, it was absolute. -Sure I am that more than once I saw a bird flat on his back in the -air (as flat on his back as ever a swimmer was in water), and to all -appearance, as I say, he did not turn back, but came up like a flash on -the other side. Fact or illusion, clean over or halfway over, it was -a clever trick, and I could not wonder that the birds seemed to take -pleasure in its repetition. I imagined they were as proud of it as a -young gymnast ever was of his newly acquired back handspring. And why -not? A man must be extremely well contented with himself, or possess a -feeble imagination, not to feel sometimes a twinge of envy at sight of -a bird’s superiorities.[16] - -And while one flock of ravens were playing “it” in this brilliant -fashion, another and larger flock were sailing in mazy circles after -the manner of sea-gulls; a fascinating spectacle, to be witnessed here -every afternoon by any who will be at the trouble to look up. More than -once I have watched hundreds of the birds thus engaged, not all at the -same elevation, be it understood, but circle above circle--a kind of -Jacob’s ladder--till the top ones were almost at heaven’s gate. It is a -good time to be out on the desert when the ravens are going to roost. -And what with their soarings and tumblings, I have begun to think that -perhaps the big hawk was not such an absolute fool, after all, to -decline an aerial combat. The white-necked raven may be only a little -larger kind of crow, but he is a wonder on the wing. - - - - -SHY LIFE IN THE DESERT - - -After the desert and the mountains, and some of the longer-desired -birds, I have enjoyed few sights in Arizona more than that of two -coyotes. Old beaters about the wilds of this Western country will be -ready to scoff, I dare say, at so simple a confession. “Two coyotes, -indeed! A great sight, that!” So I think I hear them saying. Well, they -are welcome to their fun. It is kindly ordered, the world being mostly -a dull place, that men shall be mutually amusing, and there is no great -harm in being laughed at, provided it be done behind one’s back. - -The fact remains, then, as I state it. To me the coyotes were very -interesting and unexpected beasts. And the pleasure of my encounter -with them was heightened materially (this, too, is a laughable -admission; I know it as well as anybody), when I learned that -hereabouts, whatever may be true elsewhere, it was to be esteemed a -piece of rather extraordinary luck, unlikely to be soon repeated. To -all men of science, though they be nothing but amateurs and dabsters, -rarity is one of the cardinal virtues of a specimen. My good fortune, -be it accounted greater or less, came about in this way. - -Six or seven miles across the desert, where the plain comes to an -end at the buried Rillito River, and the foothills of the Catalinas -begin to rise from the opposite bank, are the adobe ruins (hospital, -barracks, and what not) of Old Camp Lowell, a relic of the Apache wars. -I had heard of the place (in fact, I had been happy enough to meet a -young man who is camping there with his brother), and started early one -morning to visit it. - -Perhaps it was because of the earliness of the hour, though the sun was -well above the horizon; at any rate, I had gone but a short distance -before my steps were arrested by the sight of a gray, long-legged, -wolfish-looking animal not far ahead. He had seen me first, I think -(strange if he had not, so alert as every motion showed him to be), -and was already considering his course of action, starting away, then -stopping to look back. My glass covered him at once (he was easily -within gunshot), and then, following a turn of his head, I saw that he -had a companion. The second one had already crossed the trail, and the -question between the two seemed to be whether he should come back or -the other should follow him. The point was quickly decided; the second -one recrossed the trail, and the two ran off among the creosote clumps -on the left, and in a few seconds were lost; but the hesitation had -given me time to note their color, size, build (especially their long, -sharp, collie-shaped noses), and their general appearance and action, -all very “doggy.” - -This, as I have said, was but a little way beyond the university -buildings, and, knowing no better, I assumed the occurrence to be a -common one, and spoke of it in a matter-of-fact tone to the campers -at the fort. They exclaimed at once that I had been surprisingly -fortunate; they themselves, passing their days and nights in the -desert, seldom or never saw one of the animals, though they often heard -them barking after dark. The circumstantiality of my description, and -it may be their politeness,--for they were gentlemen, “baching it” here -for the older brother’s health,--made it impossible for them to suggest -a doubt as to the identity of the animals; but I had no difficulty in -perceiving that if I wished to pass as a man of veracity among ordinary -dwellers hereabouts I must not see coyotes too frequently. In point of -fact, the very next man to whom I mentioned the circumstance, a man who -has lived here for several years, on the rim of the desert, answered -promptly: “They weren’t jack rabbits, were they?” He had never seen a -coyote in Arizona, he said, though he had seen plenty in Colorado. - -As for the big jack rabbits, if I have not seen “plenty” of them (and -I cannot truthfully profess so much as that), I have seen a good many. -One cannot walk far in the desert, with his eyes ranging, without -discovering, to right or left or in advance, a pair of long ears, -followed by a black tail, making quick time out of sight. Generally the -creatures seem to run by fits and starts (“leaps and bounds and sudden -stops” would express it), but the other morning a fellow had evidently -been frightened almost out of his five senses by something--not by -me--when a long way from home. There were no stops in his schedule. -Straight across the desert he bounded, going like an express train--a -mile a minute at the very least. - -So lively as these large rabbits are (there is a smaller kind that I -have not yet seen[17]) they would be as interesting as the much larger -coyotes but for their greater commonness. For grace and lightness, -as well as speed, their gait is next to flying. All the words in the -dictionary could not describe it. I never see one on the move without -admiration and an impulse to give him three cheers. Surely, man is a -slow coach, and a race-horse is clumsy. - -To one who comes this way for the first time in winter, as I have -come (and may Heaven save me from ever being here in summer, so long -at least as I am in an embodied state!), the desert seems thinly -inhabited. Of the scarcity of bird-life upon it I have before spoken; -and the reason is obvious: there is little here for birds to feed upon. -The smaller quadrupeds, too, are of surprising infrequency. Once in a -long while a striped squirrel, as I should call it, with its tail over -its back, will be seen squatting beside a hole in the ground, ready to -slip into it long before you can get near; and somewhat oftener a gray, -rat-tailed, big-eyed squirrel (if it _is_ a squirrel--I have only half -seen it) will dart across an open space, tail in air, barely visible -before it, too, has ducked into its burrow; but two or three such small -fry, with as many jack rabbits, in the course of a half-day tramp, do -not go far toward constituting anything to be accounted populousness. - -One morning I walked out upon the desert immediately after a snowfall. -It would be a favorable time, I thought, to study zoölogical -hieroglyphics; and I believe I walked a mile before I saw a single -footprint. Think of doing that, or anything like it, in our poor, -frost-bitten, winter-killed, over-civilized New England! The tracks -would have been a perfect crisscross. - -And, notwithstanding all this, footprints or no footprints, the desert -is not without its own world of little people. It is a desert only to -our dull, provincial, self-absorbed, self-sufficient, narrow-minded, -egotistical human apprehension of it. So much ought to be plain as day -to the most undiscerning traveler; for if he so much as looks where he -steps (lest a snake should bite him), he cannot help seeing that the -ground all about is almost as full of holes as a colander. Larger and -smaller, the earth is riddled with them. If the diggers of the holes -happen to be just now within doors instead of gadding abroad like so -many restless tourists, probably their conduct is not without a reason. -Possibly they object to cold feet. More likely they have an eye to -bodily safety. One thing you may wager upon, homekeepers though they -be--the sharpness of their wits. - -Whatever would live on this bare, open plain must be as wise as -a serpent. The remainder of the text may be omitted as locally -inapplicable. The desert-dweller--_Deserticola_, as we name him in -zoölogical Latin--must know the times and the seasons, and catch the -scent of danger afar off. You will find no trustful innocence in these -diggings. If there ever was any, it long ago perished. Everything is -shy, and has need to be. “Nature red in tooth and claw” has here its -ancestral seat. He that cannot fight must run; and however it may be -elsewhere, in the desert the race is to the swift and the battle to -the strong. In one way or another everything goes armed. It may be -set with thorns like the mesquite and the cactus, or it may have an -offensive oil like the creosote; it may run like the rabbit, or strike -like the rattlesnake. If it can do nothing else, it must hide. And even -the strong and the speedy must hide when that which is stronger and -speedier heaves in sight. The desert is open to the sky, but its life -is not open. Like the currents of the rivers, the current of animal -existence runs mostly underground. - -A Tucson business man was telling me about the great antiquity of the -town: the oldest settlement in the country, I think he called it, with -the exception of St. Augustine, Florida. - -“But how in the world came a city to grow up here?” I inquired. “I can -see no sufficient reason.” - -“Well,” said he, as if he could think of nothing else, “the river -comes to the surface here, you know.” - -He spoke of the Santa Cruz. And it is true. The river comes to the -surface; the stretch of watered farms and the brimming irrigation -ditches bear witness to the fact; but it does not stay there. I have -frequent occasion to go over the four roads that cross it from the -city. On the southernmost of these, where Mexican women are always to -be seen washing clothes, spreading the garment over a stone and beating -it clean with a stick (“mangling,” I should suppose the word ought to -be), carriages drive through the stream, while foot-passengers cross by -means of stepping-stones; six or eight boulders of the size of a man’s -head, perhaps, picked up at random and laid in a row. The next road is -furnished with a bridge, though it is hard to see why. The other two -(they are all within the distance of a mile) have neither bridge nor -stepping-stones, nor need of any. The river bottom, so called, though -it is rather roof than bottom, is as dry as the Sahara. - -So it is with the Rillito, and, I suppose, with all the rivers of the -desert. They are shy creatures. They love not the garish day. Like -the saints of old and the capitalists of our own time, they abhor -publicity. Water, they think, shouldn’t be too much in sight. With the -squirrel and the rabbit, they live mostly in burrows. - -Of certain more highly specialized inhabitants of the desert-- -rattlesnakes, Gila monsters, tarantulas, and the like--a winter -stroller can have little or nothing to relate. They are all here, -no doubt, and will disport themselves in their season. No midsummer -sun will be too hot for them. For myself, in three weeks’ wandering -I have seen one lizard, nothing else. And it, too, was shy, legging -it for shelter; running, literally, “like a streak.” That was really -all that I saw--a streak of brown over the gray sand. I was neither a -road-runner nor a hawk, and for that time the lizard was more scared -than hurt. - -If this shy life of the desert is happy, as I believe it is, after its -manner and according to its measure, we can only admire once more the -beneficent effect of use and custom. The safest of us are always in -danger. Whether we tread the sands of the desert or the shaded paths of -some Garden of Eden, our steps all tend to one end, the one event that -happeneth alike to all; and if we, who look before and after, go on our -way smiling, why not the humbler and presumably less sensitive people -whose homes are under the roots of the creosote bushes? - - - - -A NEW ACQUAINTANCE - - -A student of nature, differing from some less fortunate folk that one -meets at wintering places, is never at a loss what to do with his day. -In a strange land, at least (the stranger the better), he possesses one -of the prime requisites of a contented life: he knows every night what -is on his docket for the morrow. His days, so to express it, are all -dovetailed together. Tuesday’s work is to finish Monday’s; Wednesday’s -is to finish Tuesday’s; and so the weeks run by. What could be simpler, -or more conducive to cheerfulness? A day should have a motive, as well -as a piece of music or a poem. - -I am still at Tucson. Two mornings ago there was but one thing for -me to do. I knew it before I rose. I must take the half-past seven -horse-car, ride down town as far as Simpson Street, walk thence across -the Santa Cruz Valley to the base of Tucson Mountain, and from there -follow the narrow road that winds between the foot of the cliffs and -the old canal, till I came to a certain bush. The name of this bush I -cannot give, not knowing it, but it bears millions of small, fleshy -leaves, and, what is more to the present purpose, is covered with -thousands, if not millions, of small purple flowers. - -I had noticed it for the first time the forenoon before; and I noticed -it then because, as I passed, I heard to my great surprise and intense -gratification the buzz of a hummingbird’s wings. I was not in the least -expecting to see any bird of that sort during my brief winter’s stay -in Arizona; and which is better, ornithologically speaking, to find -the long expected or the unexpected, is a point that wiser heads than -mine may settle. For myself, either happening will do, so it be not too -infrequent. - -My eyes turned of themselves in the right direction, and there at my -elbow was the tiny, emerald-backed, familiar-looking beauty, hovering -before the blossoms of this spreading bush. It was only for a second -or two. Then for another such period he perched on the slender tip of -the nearest mesquite, and then was away on the wings of the wind. I -waited for his return, but not long enough, and came back to the city, -wondering. - -His upper parts, as I say, were green, and he looked at a first glance -much like our common ruby-throat of the East. But in the few seconds -that my eye followed him--a time too short for catching myself up and -making sure even of the little I had seen--I received an impression -(it was nothing more) of a black head as well as of a black throat. If -the impression was correct, the bird could not be a ruby-throat, and -besides, unless my memory was at fault, the ruby-throat was not to be -looked for in this longitude. I must see the handbook. - -A reference to that authority showed that eight species of hummingbirds -had been reported from the Catalina Mountains, but not the ruby-throat. -Of the two or three common ones among the eight, the most likely -candidate seemed to be the black-chinned, _Trochilus alexandri_, though -that bird’s crown is not black. Probably my impression upon that -point had been erroneous; so surprised and hurried as I had been, a -measure of inexactness was rather to be looked for. At all events, it -was impossible to make out how the bird could be any one of the other -seven. By the rule of exclusion--a pretty safe rule, I told myself--he -ought to be a black-chin. - -So the matter rested, not much to my satisfaction, till the next -morning. Then, as I have already said, I went immediately after -breakfast to stand beside that blossoming bush until the bird should -again show himself. If my confidence that he would be there, in that -precise spot, no different from thousands of others in all those miles -and miles of country, all so exactly alike, beside that particular -bush, itself like thousands of others,--if my confidence seems -presumptuous, as to many readers I dare say it will, I can only profess -that it was based upon no small acquaintance with the ruby-throat’s -habit of frequenting day after day the same tree, and even the same -twig, as a resting-place, or post of observation. It was not at all -unlikely, I reasoned, that the black-chin’s habit would prove to -be similar. At any rate, there was no harm in proceeding upon that -hypothesis. - -I went at once to the place, therefore, took a favorable position -with the sun at my back, focused my eight-power glass to a nicety -upon the topmost twig of the mesquite bush (quarter seconds might be -precious), and waited. As the capable reader has already divined, the -bird did not fail me, nor keep me long in suspense. There was a sound -of wings, and in another instant the hummer stood on the top spray of -the mesquite. And his crown was black, like his throat. He could not -be _alexandri_. But before I had time to take in the full awkwardness -of my dilemma--since I had already ruled the other seven species out -of the account--the bird turned his head to one side, the sun struck -him at the right angle, and behold, his gorget had long, flaring -wings, like the loose ends of a broad necktie, or, to use the homely -comparison which occurred to me at the moment, like a pair of big -mutton-chop whiskers, and was no longer black, but of a most exquisite -and brilliant shade of violet. The radiant vision shone upon me for an -instant; then, at another movement of the head, all was black again, -and in another instant the bird was gone. - -Now, then, I began to see daylight. The bird, having a ruff, was not -of the genus _Trochilus_, and the question was so far simplified, -though it would be necessary to consult the book again before it could -be settled. Meanwhile, I must by all means have another look at the -beauty. Such splendor of color was worth waiting for, though it came -only in flashes. And I waited. But though the creature finally returned -to the mesquite he persisted in sitting with his back to the sun, and I -came away without seeing him again transfigured. - -Another reference to the handbook, and I knew him for _Calypte costæ_, -the Costa hummingbird. But now mark how one day’s work is linked with -another’s. The book informed me that the crown, as well as the gorget -and the ruff, was “brilliantly burnished amethyst violet.” I had not -seen that, doubtless because the light had not fallen upon the crown -at the necessary angle. The detail must nevertheless be verified. Here, -then, was my business for to-morrow. - -I was late in arriving,--a full hour, at least, behind my -appointment,--having walked the whole distance this time, and by a -roundabout course; and the hummer was waiting for me. “You are late,” -I fancied him saying; but of course that was my “pathetic fallacy.” -In the course of my stay he “gave me three sittings,” as my penciled -memorandum puts it, and I saw that his forehead and a spot behind the -ear were of the same dazzling, indescribably beautiful color as the -gorget and ruff. The whole crown I did not see illuminated, but the -forehead sufficed. - -At one time a ruby-crowned kinglet came and played about in the same -bush, and in that comparison he seemed almost a giant. “The hummer -is smaller and smaller,” my pencil remarked, “every time I see him.” -I might have addressed him as Charles Lamb addressed the shade of -Elliston, when he saw that worthy, all his stage trappings removed, -seated in Charon’s boat,--“Bless me, how little you look.” - -The identification was now complete. I had doubled my list of -hummingbirds, having seen but one species in all my previous years, and -the next morning I might reasonably have turned my steps elsewhere. -But when the hour came round I could think of nothing else I wanted so -much to do as to see that hummer again. And I followed my inclination. -It was well I did. - -We were both prompt. As I drew near I saw the tiny creature perched -as usual at the tip of the mesquite. How many times he came and went -during the hour that I stayed by him I fail to remember; but on the -second or third occasion a verdin happened into the neighborhood. The -hummer descended upon him hotly, drove him away in no time, and then, -as if in celebration of his triumph, mounted straight into the air till -he was like a dot, and came down again almost vertically to his perch. -It was a brilliant and lovely display, an ebullition of vital spirits -well worth a forenoon of any man’s life to witness. There are city -parades, hours in length, with martial music and all manner of bright -regalia, that might better be skipped. And a few minutes later, the -enemy having returned, the entire performance was repeated, ecstatic -flight, vertical drop and all. The verdin’s presence, it appeared, was -extremely annoying to the hummer. This place was his. Trespassing was -forbidden, and the verdin ought to know it. - -Once, watching for another flash of color, I had my glass on the hummer -as he sat quiet. Suddenly the verdin began sputtering to himself, -after his manner, a little way off. Quick as thought the hummer cocked -his head, waited an instant as if to make sure he had heard correctly -(it seemed impossible, I suppose, after such a drubbing), and then, -like a bullet out of a gun, flew at the persistent intruder. His spirit -was wonderful, and being roused to his work, he finished by descending -at full speed upon a black phœbe that just then blundered innocently -along. The big flycatcher, many times bigger than the hummer,--but so -is a man many times bigger than a rifle ball,--did not stand upon the -order of his going, but went at once. I did not wonder. The fellow -might have driven me away, also, had he taken it into his head to try. -He was irresistible. Talk of a strenuous life! - -At another time he darted from his perch in a quite unwonted direction, -and flew on the line to a palo-verde shrub off on the hillside. The -verdin was there, it turned out, down at the very bottom of the -bush,--though to my senses he had made no sign,--and must be dislodged -forthwith. - -Why the hummer offered no objection to the kinglet’s presence is beyond -my knowledge. Perhaps he took into account the fact that the kinglet -was here only for the winter; for it was impossible not to surmise -that the hummer had selected this particular spot for his summer home, -and as such meant to hold it against all comers, exercising over it all -the rights of sovereignty. Let the verdin and the phœbe go elsewhere. - -The phœbe pretty certainly would have gone elsewhere, hummer or no -hummer. As to what the verdin will conclude to do, things being as they -are, my mind is less clearly made up. He is not so swift as his bullet -of a rival, but I fancy him to be a pretty dogged fighter, able to be -whipped a good many times without finding it out. Still, as between the -two, if I were compelled to wager, I think I should risk my money on -the hummingbird. - - - - -THE DESERT REJOICES - - -What was foretold in Judea is fulfilled in Arizona--the desert has -blossomed like the rose. - -I could hardly believe it, a month ago, when a Tucson business man, who -in the kindness of his heart had turned the city upside down, almost, -seeking to find a home for a man who was not a consumptive and did not -wish to live in a hospital or a pest-house--I could hardly believe it, -I repeat, when he said: “Oh, you mustn’t go back to Texas yet. You -must stay and see the desert in bloom. After these unusual rains and -snowfalls it will soon be all like a flower garden.” “So may it turn -out,” I thought; “but time will tell.” - -He spoke, according to the privilege of prophets, in the language of -hyperbole; for, although his prediction has come true, its fulfillment -is more than a little straitened and stingy. The desert has blossomed, -but it is like a flower garden only in this respect--that there are -flowers in it. They are numbered by millions, indeed; or, rather, they -are beyond all thought of numeration; but, as far as the appearance of -the place is concerned, it is scarcely more like a flower garden than -like a billiard table. A careless traveler--and not so very careless, -neither--might tread the blossoms under his feet for miles without -seeing so much as one of them. They are desert flowers; vegetable -Lilliputians; minute, almost microscopic, for the most part, as if -moisture had been doled out to them by the drop or the thimbleful, as -indeed it has been; and the few that are larger have in the main a -weedy aspect, such as blinds the eye of the ordinary non-observer, to -whom, rightly or wrongly, a flower is one thing and a weed another. -As for the tiny ones, the overwhelming majority, a blossom that you -can see in its place only by getting down on your knees to look for it -may be a “flower” to a botanist, but hardly to a plain, unlettered, -matter-of-fact citizen. - -And still, after the prophetic manner, the prediction has come true. -The desert has blossomed abundantly. As it now is, I can imagine -that it would be a place of unspeakable interest to a philosophic -botanist. He would know, presumably, what I do not, whether these -starveling races, existers upon nothing, are to be accounted species -by themselves, or only stunted representatives of species that under -favoring conditions grow to a more considerable size. To his mind -numberless problems would be suggested touching the methods by which -plants, sturdy and patient beings, adapt themselves to untoward -circumstances and keep themselves alive--so perpetuating the race--upon -the chariest of encouragement. He would understand the significance of -the prevailing hairiness of desert-inhabiting species, as well as of -the all but universal light bluish or dusty color of the foliage; for, -saving the yellow-green creosote, there is hardly so much as a bright -green leaf from one end of the desert to the other. - -The state of my own unphilosophic mind is peculiar, like the -circumstances in which it finds itself. It is (or perhaps it would be -more honest to say, it ought to be) humiliating, but it has something -of the charm of novelty. - -I spoke a month ago of my ornithological predicament when, newly -arrived in Texas, I found myself surrounded by a quite strange set of -birds. I was back in the primer, I think I said. Well, botanically, -here in Tucson, I have retrograded a long step farther even than that. -If I may say so, my state is pre-primeric. I am not even a primary -scholar. I am no scholar at all. My condition is what it was in -childhood, when I had never heard of botany. In those days, in what -for some reason was known as a grammar school, we studied reading, -writing, arithmetic, geography, and grammar. One older girl, long since -dead (poor child, I can see her now, reciting all by herself), studied -“Watts on the Mind!” At the high school we added algebra, geometry, -Latin, and Greek. As for “nature study,” neither the name nor the -thing was ever mentioned to us. Mr. Burroughs had not yet written, and -if Thoreau had written, his books were not yet heard of. Botany and -Hebrew were alike absent from our curriculum. For my own part, at any -rate, whatever may have been true of my cleverer or more home-favored -contemporaries, I neither knew the names of the flowers I saw, nor did -I aspire to know them. If I ever thought of such knowledge, I regarded -it as permanently beyond my ken. Who was I, that I should be wiser than -all my betters? I contented myself with liking the things themselves. - -Then, years afterward, I somehow began to “botanize,” as we say, by -myself; and from that time to the present, whether at home or abroad, I -have always had a “manual” at my elbow or in my trunk. A strange flower -must be looked up and set in its place. - -But now, in Arizona, all this is done. I have no manual. This carpet -of desert plants I walk over almost without curiosity, as I might -walk over a flowery carpet in a parlor. Their names are nothing more -to me than the jabberings of the Mexicans who pass me on the desert -with loads of wood. Sometimes, indeed, I guess at a relationship, as -now and then I catch a word of Spanish. This flower, I say, may be a -_Myosotis_. But nine chances to one I do not so much as guess. It’s a -pretty red flower, or a dainty white blossom, and there’s an end of -it. As I said just now, the state of my mind is pre-primeric. I am too -ignorant even to ask questions. - -A sad case, certainly, but, like sad cases in general, it brings its -own partial compensations. I have the more leisure for the birds, and -for looking at the mountains. Two months ago it would not have seemed -possible, but it has come true; I can sit upon the ground with half a -dozen kinds of unknown flowers about me, and gaze upon the Catalinas -or the snow-capped Santa Ritas as peacefully or rapturously as if I -had never used a manual or a pocket-lens since I was born. Have I been -converted, and become as a little child? Possibly; but I anticipate a -speedy backsliding when conditions alter. - -Yet I perceive that, like the prophet, I am waxing tropical, and using -language that requires “interpretation.” There are at least three -kinds of flowers in the desert that are not microscopic, and that I -call by name. They are not very numerous; you may walk long distances -without meeting them; but they are there. I mean the evening primrose, -the lupine, and the California poppy. The primrose, which is much the -commonest of the three, has no stalk, or none that is apparent; the -large, handsome, lemon-colored flower opens directly from a tuft of -leaves lying flat on the ground. As for the poppies, I should hardly -speak of them as growing in the desert but for the fact that two or -three days ago I stumbled upon a place (it would be like trying to find -a spot in the ocean to look for it again) where the ground for the -space of an acre or more was sparsely sprinkled with them. They were -abnormally small, and very short in the stem; but they were bright as -the sun, and being lighted upon thus unexpectedly they really made the -spot a garden. As the prophet said, the place was “glad for them;” and -so was I. - -Both poppy and primrose (and the lupine as well) are much more at home -on the foothills. There, too, are many flowers not to be seen at all on -the desert. I cannot talk about them for lack of names. The brightest -and showiest of them all is of a vivid, but, in my vocabulary, -nameless shade of red; not scarlet, nor crimson, nor orange, nor pink, -but red. The plant stands a foot or so in height and bears a dozen, -more or less, of rather large cup-shaped blossoms, the lively color of -which would attract notice in any garden. - -A very different favorite of mine (I have been intimate with it for a -week) is a low--inch-high--composite flower, of the size of a ten-cent -piece, with seven or eight white rays and a yellow disk; a dwarf daisy, -it looks to be, with soft, cottony stem and leaves. It grows in the -driest and most barren places, and as I sit down here and there on the -hillsides to rest (looking meanwhile at the green barley fields and the -ever-glorious mountains) I am sensibly happier if I see this dainty -bit of nature’s loveliness (a child, not a dwarf--I take back the -word) within my hand’s reach. It is the very flower to make a pet of; -prettier by far than if it were taller and showier. Cultivation would -spoil it. It was made for the desert. - -And this reminds me to say that, if the hills are to be counted as -part of the desert, as in reason they may be, then the prophet’s word -has been fulfilled, not partially but in all strictness. The desert -has blossomed like the rose. For the slopes of the Tucson range are -literally on fire with blossoms. Patches of sun-bright yellow, some -of them to all appearance an acre or more in extent, can be seen clear -across the plain. I saw them yesterday afternoon as I started homeward -from Camp Lowell. The distance could hardly be less than eight miles, -and probably they would have been visible had it been twice as far. -That the flowers are poppies, and not blossoms of a smaller cruciferous -plant that is very abundant and gregarious hereabout, I am confident, -not only because I am assured so by residents of the city, but because -the patches are much less conspicuous in the early forenoon, when -poppies are not wide open, than later in the day. Some of the patches -(I can see a dozen from my window as I write, fully five miles off[18]) -are well toward the tops of the mountains, which, needless to say, are -not of great elevation, perhaps four thousand feet. - -The poppy is the Tucson flower. Children go out upon the hills and -bring back bunches to sell along the streets and from house to house. -Their splendid color need not be praised. It is known to all Eastern -people, who grow the plants in gardens (I seem to remember when they -came in) under the name of _Eschscholtzia_. And here, on the mountain -walls of this Arizona desert, are hanging-gardens so full of them as -to form masses of color visible ten or fifteen miles away! “They shall -blossom abundantly,” said the prophet; and who knows but he spoke of -the Tucson Mountains in poppy time? - - - - -NESTS AND OTHER MATTERS - - -With the first of April approaching, the life of Arizona birds takes -on a busier complexion. The idle season is over; now there are nests -to be built (no small undertaking, in itself, as a man may easily -find out by setting himself to build one), and a family to be watched -over and defended. Now the human visitor begins to understand what -cactuses were made for. As he walks among the whitish-green chollas, -giving them elbow-room, he has only to glance to right and left to -see what a considerable proportion of them are inhabited; this one by -a pair of thrashers, the other by a pair of cactus wrens. In neither -case is there any serious attempt at concealment; partly because the -attempt would be useless; partly, we may guess, because concealment is -unnecessary. If your safe is burglar proof, why be at the trouble to -hide it? Neither squirrel nor snake is likely to climb a cholla cactus, -and even a man knows enough to approach it with caution. - -Of the two species of thrasher that live in the desert the larger one, -known as Palmer’s, seems to be the earlier breeder. I found a nest -with eggs on the first day of March; and on the ninth, I came upon a -brood of young birds already out of the nest. They were still new to -the world, acting as if they found it a strange, unintelligible place; -but they were fully fledged, and when put to it, flew from one cholla -to another without difficulty. Still, they had more faith in cactus -thorns than in wing-power, and allowed me almost to lay hands on them -before taking flight. - -The two desert-inhabiting thrashers, by the by, Palmer’s and Bendire’s, -are so much alike (the Palmer being somewhat longer and darker than -its neighbor), that it was some time before I felt sure of myself in -discriminating between them. As to the question of comparative length -(one of the most uncertain points on which an observer can base a -determination), I fell back upon an old method, which it seems worth -while to mention here, because I have never seen it referred to in -print. It has served one man well, and may do as much for another. - -Two of our Eastern birds that are most troublesome to beginners in -ornithology are the downy and the hairy woodpecker, the only difference -between them--the only one that can ordinarily be seen in the field, I -mean to say--being one of size. Well, I long ago discovered for myself -that it was much easier to carry in my eye the comparative measurements -of the two birds’ bills than the comparative measurements of the birds -themselves. Let me see the head in profile, and I could name its owner -almost beyond mistake. - -This method, as I say, I resorted to in the case of my two desert -thrashers, and little by little (time itself being of great service -in such matters), I settled the question with myself. And still -there remained a certain fact that cast a shade of doubt over my -determination. In Mrs. Bailey’s Handbook, the only authority I had -brought with me, Mr. Herbert Brown, after twenty years’ experience -with Tucson birds, is quoted as saying that the Bendire thrasher -almost never sings, whereas the birds that I was calling by that name -were in song continually. What was I to think? It seemed a case for a -gun. Without it, how could I ever be sure of my reckoning? I was in a -box, as we say. But there was a way out. There almost always is. The -two species lay eggs of different colors. I must find them; and with -patience I did; first, the blue-green eggs of Palmer, and then (two -sets in one day), the whitish eggs of Bendire; and my identification -of the owners, made before the eggs were examined, turned out to be -correct in all cases. - -In the way of music, neither bird is equal to the brown thrasher of -the East. In fact, if I am to be judge, one Massachusetts thrasher, -in his cinnamon-colored suit (and in the top of a gray birch), could -outsing any half-dozen of the birds in this Arizona desert. It is to be -said, however, that there is a third species here (not on the face of -the desert itself, but in the thickets along the Rillito River), the -crissal thrasher so called, whose song I have yet to make sure of. He -is larger even than the Palmer, and to look at him should have a fuller -voice. - -And this reminds me that I had been in Tucson more than a month before -I saw a mockingbird; and even now, when I have been here almost two -months, I have seen but three. The people generally seem to mistake -the thrashers for mockers. If I speak to them about the strangeness of -the mocker’s absence, they declare that mockers are common here. At -least two persons have turned upon me with the assertion, “Why, there’s -one singing out there at this minute.” And they point to a thrasher, -a bird that wears not one of the mocker’s three colors,--gray, black, -and white,--and for music is as much like him as a child’s tin -whistle is like a master’s flute. And still it is true, at least the -systematists tell us so, and I have no thought of questioning it, that -the mockingbird is only a nobler kind of thrasher. And thrashers, the -mocker included, are only larger kinds of wrens. - -Arizona is the wrens’ country. During my short stay in Tucson I have -seen ten species: the sage thrasher, the Western mockingbird, the -Bendire thrasher, the Palmer thrasher, the crissal thrasher, the cactus -wren, the rock wren, the canyon wren, the Baird wren, and the interior -tule wren. - -The sage thrashers, whose mysterious silence was commented upon in a -previous article, are only now beginning to find their voices; for they -are still (March 21) in the desert, though they will go elsewhere to -breed. Two days ago, while returning from the Rillito Valley, I came -upon a group of them, and to my great pleasure two or three were in -song; not letting themselves out, to be sure, but running over a medley -of a tune under their breath in a kind of dumb rehearsal. I could -barely hear it, but I saw at once why the birds, for all their short -bills and unthrasher-like ways, are called sometimes sage thrashers and -sometimes mountain mockingbirds. I hope their _sotto voce_ preludings -will not outlast my stay among them. - -One of my particular favorites here is the Say phœbe. From the first he -took my fancy. All his ways please me. As the homely phrase is, I like -the cut of his jib. His plaintive call is never wearisome, though he -is exceedingly free with it. And I have grown to like him and his mate -the better because they are fond of certain places where I myself am -given to spending now and then an idle hour. There are four abandoned -shanties in different parts of the desert, in the shade of which I -often rest; and every one of them has its pair of Say phœbes. I saw the -birds with building materials in their bills, and began by expecting to -find the nest inside the open building; but by and by I discovered that -they liked best of all a site down in a well! It seems a safe position -to begin with--as long as the nest contains nothing but eggs; but I ask -myself about the danger to the little ones when they become big enough -to be uneasy. If they are anything like young robins, for example, a -pitiful share of them must perish sixty feet underground. However, the -birds may be presumed to understand their own business better than any -outsider can teach it to them; and they unquestionably prefer the well. -Of the four pairs just mentioned, three have built in that position -(the wells, it should be understood, are not stoned), and the fourth -would have done likewise, I dare say, only that the well in their case -happens to be covered. As it is, the nest is on one of the joists of -a shed, and an impertinent stranger has been known to clamber up and -examine the eggs. “Oh, if that well had only been left open!” the birds -probably thought, as they saw what he was doing. - -One kind of nest that is common here is set so out in sight that none -but a blind man could miss it, though from its color it might readily -be passed as an old one, not worth investigation. I do not remember -just how many I have seen,--half a dozen, it may be,--but I have never -looked into one. They cannot be looked into, unless they are first torn -to pieces. - -I speak of the verdin’s nest. It is a marvel of workmanship: globular, -or roughly so, with an entrance neatly roofed over well down on one -side; constructed outwardly--I cannot speak beyond that, of course--of -countless small thorny sticks, and in size and general color resembling -a large paper-wasps’ nest. The bird, as I say, plants it in full sight, -in a leafless cat’s-claw bush, by preference, though I have seen one -beauty in a palo-verde tree. - -My first one I was directed to by the outcries of the owner. The -foolish thing--if she _was_ foolish--actually went inside, and while -there scolded me. She took it for granted, I suppose, that I had seen -her go in, and was determined to let me know what she thought of such -despicable espionage. As a matter of fact, I was busy just then with a -rarer bird, and might have passed her pretty house unnoticed had she -held her peace. But the verdin is a nervously loquacious body, and -perhaps would rather talk than keep a secret. Such cases have been -heard of. Whatever else we may say of her, she is an architect of -something like genius. - - - - -A FLYCATCHER AND A SPARROW - - -I believe I have seen two of the oddest birds in Texas--the road-runner -and the scissor-tailed flycatcher. The first was mentioned some time -ago in these letters; the second I have but lately met with. When I -was in San Antonio in January, he was absent for the winter. He would -return, I was informed, shortly after the middle of March, and I have -kept it fast in mind that I must stop here on my way home and make his -acquaintance. - -I knew he was odd, but he has turned out to be odder even than I -supposed. Other places, other birds, as a matter of course, but surely -this one, to use Emerson’s word, is the “otherest.” When I saw him -first, in San Pedro Park (everything is saintly in the Southwest), I -thought for an instant that I was looking at a bird which had seized a -long string, or a strip of cloth, and was flying away with it to his -nest. Seen more fully, he looked, I said to myself, like a Japanese -kite, or some other outlandish plaything. Even now, when he has been -in sight pretty constantly for five or six days, I can hardly say that -he looks like a bird to me. His enormously long tail feathers are so -fantastic, so almost grotesque! They render him a kind of monstrosity. -One feels as if he had been made, not born; and some Oriental must have -been the maker. - -Yet if ever a bird was alive, he is. His spirits are effervescent and -apparently inexhaustible. Few birds are noisier or more continually -on the move. When six or eight scissor-tails meet for consultation -in one small tree, even though it be in a cemetery, there are “great -doings,” as the country phrase is. What the disturbance is all about, -it is beyond me to tell, but it seems a reasonable assumption that it -has to do somehow with questions of love and marriage. So far as I have -noticed, such sessions do not last long. In the nature of things they -cannot. The hubbub increases, the discussion, whatever its subject, -waxes more and more animated, and then, of a sudden, the assembly -breaks up (I was going to say explodes), and away fly the birds (and -the birds’ tails), every one still contending for the last word. - -But there is no need of six or eight to set the pot bubbling. Two are -a plenty; and indeed I suspect that a single bird would have it out -with himself rather than forego for an hour or two the excitement of a -shindy. In temperament the scissor-tail, as well as I can determine, -is own brother to the kingbird. As I said, he is brimming over with -spirits. If he gave them no vent he would burst. - -So after a few minutes of quietness, the calm that precedes the storm, -he darts into the air, with vehement, mad gyrations, opening and -shutting his tail feathers spasmodically, and uttering loud cries of -one sort and another. Perhaps he flies straight upward, or as nearly -so as possible (this is one of the kingbird’s tricks), and with tail -outspread comes down headfirst like an arrow. He is like a creature -full of wine, or like one beside himself. What he does, he has to do. -There is no holding him in. - -Sometimes, when there are two in the air together, and for anything -I know at other times,--I tell what I have seen,--they utter most -curious, hollow, throbbing, booming noises, such as one would never -attribute to any bird of the flycatcher family. They utter them, I say, -but I mean only that they make them. How they do it, whether with the -throat, the wings, or the tail, is something I have yet to discover. -The only book I have at hand makes no mention of such noises, and I was -greatly taken aback when I heard them. - -As the reader perceives, I am dealing in first impressions. They are -all I have. Most of the scissor-tail’s tricks and manners, indeed, I -have yet to witness. I have not seen him chase a crow, for instance, -or a raven (he would have to travel a hundred miles, I suspect, to -find either the one or the other), but give him half a chance, and -I am sure he would do it. One thing I have seen him do: I have seen -him fly before an English sparrow. The action seemed unworthy of him, -but I dare say he did not so regard it. Perhaps it was all a joke. -But apparently no bird considers it a disgrace to be put to rout by a -smaller one. The shameful thing is to be afraid of one that is larger -than yourself. This is not the human way of looking at such matters; -but perhaps that does not prove it a false way. I seem to see that much -might be said in defense of it. - -It is surprising how common the scissor-tail is, and more surprising -yet that nobody seems to notice him. I should have thought that all the -passers-by would be stopping to stare at so half-absurd a prodigy. But -when he performs his craziest evolutions here in the Alamo Plaza, in -the very heart of the city, nobody appears to mind him. The truth is -that to these people--to most of them, at least--he is an old story, -while to me he is like a bird invented last week. Wherever you notice -men, you will perceive that it is not the wonderful that attracts their -attention, but the novel and the out-of-the-way. The moon and the stars -they are used to, and quite properly look upon with indifference; but -let a neighbor’s hencoop catch fire, and they cannot run fast enough to -behold the spectacle. - -Another and better thing I have accomplished during my present brief -stay in San Antonio: I have heard and seen the Cassin sparrow. A -Washington ornithologist, familiar with this Southwestern country, -learning that I was on my way thither, wrote to me in January: “On no -account return without hearing the Cassin sparrow.” To confess the -truth, I had almost forgotten the injunction, emphatic as it was; but a -few mornings ago, on my way back to the terminus of the street-car line -after a jaunt into some old pecan woods, five or six miles out of the -city, I stopped short at the sound of a few simple bird notes. What a -gracious tune! And as novel as it was gracious! I had never heard the -like: a long trill or shake, pitched at the top of the scale, and then, -after a rest, a phrase of five notes in the sweetest of sparrow voices, -ending with the truest and most unexpected of musical intervals. For -mnemonic purposes, as my custom is (useful to me, if to no one else), -I at once put words to the tune: “She” (this for the long trill), -“pretty, pretty she.” - -The birds were in some scattered mesquite bushes (very bright now, -in their new yellow-green leafage), and I hastened to get through -the fence and make up to them. They proved to be very small, and -distressingly deficient in marks or “characters,” but I took such note -of them as I could, in a poor light. The main thing, for the time -being, was the song. That prolonged opening note, with its sound of -an indrawn whistle, ought to be the work of a _Pucæa_, I told myself, -remembering the Florida representative of that genus, and the singers -should therefore be Cassin sparrows. - -The next morning, having refreshed my memory by a reading of the -handbook, I took the car immediately after breakfast for another visit -to the place. This, I should have said, was in the rear grounds of an -asylum for the insane. It was Sunday morning, and as I crawled through -the fence and took up my position among the mesquites, I presently -found myself under fire from the windows and balconies. The distance -was too great for me to understand what was said, but there was no -doubt that the inmates of the institution regarded me as a queer one. -However, I believed in my own sanity (as things go in this world), -and did not propose to be hindered. The birds were there, and that was -enough. - -And now, to my intense satisfaction, I found that they were doing -just what the handbook described: springing into the air for a few -feet, after the manner of long-billed marsh wrens, and with fluttering -wings dropping slowly back to the perch, uttering their sweet, “She, -pretty, pretty she,” as they descended. I secured somewhat fuller -observations of their plumage, also, and became morally certain--which -means something less than scientifically certain, though really, taking -Mr. Attwater’s list of the birds of San Antonio as a guide, there is -nothing else they can be--that the singers were Cassin sparrows.[19] - -And glad I am to have heard them. I cannot speak for others; judgment -in such matters must always be largely a question of personal taste; -but for myself I have heard few bird songs that satisfy me so well; so -quaint and original, yet so true and simple. San Antonio mockingbirds -are numberless, and their performances are wonderful; I think I should -never tire of them; but somehow those six quiet notes of the sparrow -seem to go deeper home. - - - - -A BUNCH OF BRIGHT BIRDS - - -Almost or quite the most brilliant bird that I saw in Arizona was the -vermilion flycatcher. I had heard of it as sometimes appearing in the -neighborhood of Tucson, but entertained small hope of meeting it there -myself. A stranger, straitened for time, and that time in winter, -blundering about by himself, with no pilot to show him the likely -places, could hardly expect to find many besides the commoner things. -So I reasoned with myself, aiming to be philosophical. Nevertheless, -there is always the chance of green hand’s luck; I knew it by more than -one happy experience; and who could tell what might happen? Possibly it -was not for nothing that my eye, as by a kind of magnetic attraction, -fell so often upon Mrs. Bailey’s opening sentence about this particular -bird as day after day, on one hunt and another, I turned the leaves of -her Handbook. “Of all the rare Mexican birds seen in southern Arizona -and Texas,” so I read, “the vermilion flycatcher is the gem.” - -One thing was certain: this famous Mexican rarity was not confusingly -like anything else, as so many of its Northern relatives have the -unhandsome trick of being. If I saw it, ever so hurriedly, I should -recognize it. - -Well, I did see it, and almost of course at a moment when I was least -looking for it. This was on the 5th of February, my fifth day in -Tucson. I had crossed the Santa Cruz Valley, west of the city, by one -road, and after a stroll among the foothills opposite, was returning -by another, when a bit of flashing red started up from the wire fence -directly before me. I knew what it was, almost before I saw it, as it -seemed, so eager was I, and so well prepared; and as the solitary’s -companionable habit is, I spoke aloud. “There’s the vermilion -flycatcher!” I heard myself saying. - -The fellow was every whit as splendid as my fancy had painted him, and -to my joy he seemed to be not in the least put out by my approach nor -chary of displaying himself. He was too innocent and too busy; darting -into the air to snatch a passing insect, and anon returning to his -perch, which was now a fence-post, now the wire, and now, best of all, -the topmost, tilting spray of a dwarf mesquite. Thus engaged, every -motion a delight to the eye, he flitted along the road in advance of -me, till finally, having reached the limit of his hunting-ground,--the -roadside ditches filled with water from the overflow of irrigated -barley fields,--he turned back by the way he had come. - -I went home a happy man; I had added one of the choicest and most -beautiful of American birds to my mental collection. One thing was -still lacking, however: flycatchers are not song-birds, but the -humblest of them has a voice, and having things to say is apt to say -them; my new acquaintance had kept his thoughts to himself. - -This was in the forenoon, and after luncheon I went back to walk again -over that muddy road between those ditches of muddy water. The bird -might still be there. And he was,--still catching insects, and still -silent. But so handsome! At first sight most people, I suppose, would -compare him, as I did, with the scarlet tanager. The red parts are -of nearly or quite the same shade,--a little deeper and richer, if -anything,--while the wings, tail, and back are dark brown, approaching -black,--the wings and tail especially,--dark enough, at any rate, to -afford a brilliant contrast. His scientific name is Pyrocephalus, which -is admirable as far as it goes, but falls a long way short of telling -the whole truth about him; for not only is his head of a fiery hue, but -his whole body as well, with the exceptions already noted. In size he -ranks between the least flycatcher and the wood pewee. In liveliness of -action he is equal to the spryest of his family, with a flirt of the -tail which to my eye is identical with that of the phœbe. His gorgeous -color is the more effective because of his aerial habits. The tanager -is bright sitting on the bough, but how much brighter he would look if -every few minutes he were seen hovering in mid-air with the sunlight -playing upon him! - -Certainly I was in great luck, and I felt it the more as day after -day I found the dashing beauty in the same place. I could not spend -my whole winter vacation in visiting him, but I saw him there at odd -times,--nearly as often as I passed,--until February 17. Then he -disappeared; but a week later I discovered him, or another like him, -in a different part of the valley, and on the 26th I saw two. The next -day, for the first time, one of the birds was in voice, uttering a few -fine, short notes, little remarkable in themselves, but thoroughly -characteristic; not suggestive of any other flycatcher notes known to -me; so that, from that time to the end of my stay in Tucson, I was -never in doubt as to their authorship, no matter where I heard them. - -All these earlier birds were males in full plumage. The first -female--herself a beauty, with a modest tinge of red upon her lower -parts, enough to mark the relationship--was noticed March 5. Males -were now becoming common, and on the 9th, although my walks covered -no very wide territory, I counted, of males and females together, -seventeen. From first to last not one was met with on the creosote and -cactus-covered desert, but after the first few days of March they were -well distributed over the Santa Cruz and Rillito valleys and about the -grounds of the university. I found no nest until March 27, although -at least two weeks earlier than that a female was seen pulling shreds -of dry bark from a cottonwood limb, while her mate flitted about the -neighborhood, now here, now there, as if he were too happy to contain -himself. - -The prettiest performance of the male, witnessed almost daily, and -sometimes many times a day, after the arrival of the other sex, was a -surprisingly protracted ecstatic flight, half flying, half hovering, -the wings being held unnaturally high above the back, as if on purpose -to display the red body (a most peculiar action, by which the bird -could be told as far as he could be seen), accompanied throughout by a -rapid repetition of his simple call; all thoroughly in the flycatcher -manner; exactly such a mad, lyrical outburst as one frequently sees -indulged in by the chebec, for instance, and the different species of -phœbe. In endurance, as well as in passion, Pyrocephalus is not behind -the best of them, while his exceptional bravery of color gives him at -such moments a glory altogether his own. Sometimes, indeed, he seems to -be emulous of the skylark himself, he rises to such a height, beating -his way upward, hovering for breath, and then pushing higher and still -higher. Once I saw him and the large Arizona crested flycatcher in the -air side by side, one as crazy as the other; but the big _magister_ was -an awkward hand at the business, compared with the tiny Pyrocephalus. - -It was good to find so showy a bird so little disposed to shyness. -At Old Camp Lowell, where I often rested for an hour at noon in the -shade of one of the adobe buildings, the bachelor winter occupants -of which were kind enough to give me food and shelter (together with -pleasant company) whenever my walk took me so far from home, our siesta -was constantly enlivened by his bright presence and engaging tricks. -One day, as he perched at the top of a low mesquite, on a level with -our eyes, I put my glass into the hand of the younger of my hosts. -He broke out in a tone of wonder. “Well, now,” said he (he spoke to -the bird), “you are a peach.” And so he is. It is exactly what, in my -more old-fashioned and less collegiate English, I have been vainly -endeavoring to say. - -And to be a “peach” is a fine thing. A vivacious living essayist, -it is true, who is probably a handsome man himself, at least in the -looking-glass, declares that “male ugliness is an endearing quality.” -The remark may be true--in a sense; by all means let us hope so, seeing -how lavish Nature has been with the commodity in question; but I am -confident that the female vermilion flycatcher would never admit it. As -for her glorious dandy of a husband, there can be no doubt what opinion -he would hold of such an impudent reflection upon feminine perspicacity -and taste. “A plague upon paradoxes and aphorisms,” I hear him answer. -“If fine feathers don’t make fine birds, what in Heaven’s name do they -make?” - -It was only two days after my discovery of the vermilion flycatcher (if -I remember correctly I was at that moment on my way to enjoy a third -or fourth look at him) that I first saw a very different but scarcely -less interesting novelty. I was on the sidewalk of Main Street, in -the busy part of the day, my thoughts running upon a batch of delayed -letters just received, when suddenly I looked up (probably I had heard -a voice without being conscious of it, for the confirmed hobby-rider -is sometimes in the saddle unwittingly) and caught sight of a few -swifts far overhead. People were passing, but it was now or never with -me, and I whipped out my opera-glass. There were six of the birds, and -their throats were white. So much I saw, having known what to look for, -and then they were gone,--as if the heavens had opened and swallowed -them up. It was a niggardly interview, at pretty long range, but a deal -better than nothing; enough, at all events, for an identification. They -were white-throated swifts,--_Aëronautes melanoleucus_. - -Three days later a flock of at least seventeen birds of the same -species were hawking over the Santa Cruz Valley, and now, as they -swept this way and that at their feeding, there was leisure for the -field-glass and something like a real examination. To my surprise -(surprise is the compensation of ignorance) I discovered that they -had not only white throats, as their name implies, but white breasts, -and more noticeable still, white rumps. Those who are familiar with -our common dingy, soot-colored chimney swift of the East will be able -to form some idea of the distinguished appearance of this Westerner: -a considerably larger bird, built on the same rakish lines, shooting -about the sky in the same lightning-like zigzags, and marked in this -striking and original manner with white. I saw the birds only four -times afterward, the last time on the 17th of February. So I say, -speaking after the manner of men; but in truth I can see them now, -their white rumps lighting up as they wheel and catch the sun. It -pleases me to learn that it is next to impossible to shoot them, and -that they are scarce in collections. So may they continue. They were -made for better things. - -The most _beautiful_ bird that I found in Arizona, though judgments of -this kind are of necessity liable to revision as one’s mood changes, -was the Arizona Pyrrhuloxia. I should be glad to give the reader, as -well as to have for my own use, an English name for it, but so far as I -am aware it has none. It has lived beyond the range of the vernacular. -My delight in its beauty was less keen than naturally it would have -been, because I had spent my first raptures upon its equally handsome -Texas relative of the same name a few weeks before. This was at San -Antonio, in the chaparral just outside the city. I had been listening -to a flock of lark sparrows, I remember, and looking at sundry things, -where almost everything was new, when all at once I saw before me at -the foot of a bush the loveliest bunch of feathers that I had ever -set eyes on. Without the least thought of what I was doing I began -repeating to myself under my breath, “O my soul! O my soul!” And -in sober truth the creature was deserving of all the admiration it -excited: a bird of the cardinal’s size and build, dressed not in gaudy -red, but in the most exquisite shade of gray, with a plentiful spilling -of an equally exquisite rose color over its under-parts. Its bright -orange bill was surrounded at the base by a double ring of black and -rose, and on its head was a most distinguished-looking, divided crest, -tipped with rose color of a deeper shade. It was loveliness to wonder -at. I cannot profess that I was awe-struck (not being sure that I know -just what that excellent word means), but it would hardly be too much -to say that “as I passed, I worshiped.” - -The Arizona bird, unhappily, was not often seen (the Texas bird treated -me better), though when I did come upon it, it was generally in -accessible places (in wayside hedgerows) not far from houses. It would -be impossible to see either the Texas or the Arizona bird for the first -time without comparing it with the cardinal, the two are so much alike, -and yet so different. The cardinal is brighter, but for beauty give -me Pyrrhuloxia. I do not expect the sight of any other bird ever to -fill me with quite so rapturous a delight in pure color as that first -unlooked-for Pyrrhuloxia did in the San Antonio chaparral. It was -like the joy that comes from falling suddenly upon a stanza of magical -verse, or catching from some unexpected quarter a strain of heavenly -music. - -If Pyrocephalus was the brightest and Pyrrhuloxia the most beautiful of -my Arizona birds, Phainopepla must be called the most elegant, the most -supremely graceful, if I may be pardoned such an application of the -word, the most incomparably genteel. I saw it first at Old Camp Lowell, -before mentioned, near the Rillito, at the base of the low foothills of -the Santa Catalina Mountains. At my first visit to the camp, which is -six or seven miles from the city of Tucson, straight across the desert, -I mistook my way at the last and approached the place from the farther -end by a cross-cut through the creosote bushes. Just as I reached the -adobe ruins, all that is left of the old camp, I descried a black -bird balancing itself daintily at the tip of a mesquite. I lifted my -glass, caught sight of the bird’s crest, and knew it for a Phainopepla. -How good it is to find something you have greatly desired and little -expected! - -The Phainopepla (like the Pyrrhuloxia it has no vernacular appellation, -living only in that sparsely settled, Spanish-speaking corner of -the world) is ranked with the waxwings, though except for its crest -there is little or nothing in its outward appearance to suggest such -a relationship; and the crest itself bears but a moderate resemblance -to the pointed topknot of our familiar cedar-bird. What I call the -Phainopepla’s elegance comes partly from its form, which is the very -perfection of shapeliness, having in the highest degree that elusive -quality which in semi-slang phrase is designated as “style;” partly -from its motions, all prettily conscious and in a pleasing sense -affected, like the movements of a dancing-master; and partly from its -color, which is black with the most exquisite bluish sheen, set off in -the finest manner by broad wing-patches of white. These wing-patches -are noticeable, furthermore, for being divided into a kind of network -by black lines. It is for this reason, I suppose, that they have a -peculiar gauzy look (I speak of their appearance while in action) such -as I have never seen in the case of any other bird, and which often -made me think of the ribbed, translucent wings of certain dragon flies. - -Doubtless this peculiar appearance was heightened to my eyes, because -of the mincing, wavering, over-buoyant method of flight (the wings -being carried unusually high) to which I have alluded, and which -always suggested to me the studied movements of a dance. I think I -never saw one of the birds so far forget itself as to take a direct, -straightforward course from one point to another. No matter where they -might be going, though the flight were only a matter of a hundred -yards, they progressed always in pretty zigzags, making so many little, -unexpected, indecisive tacks and turns by the way, butterfly fashion, -that you began to wonder where they would finally come to rest. - -The two birds first seen--the female in lovely gray--were evidently -at home about the camp. The berry-bearing parasitic plants in the -mesquites seemed to furnish them with food, and no doubt they were -settled there for the season; and at least two more were wintering -out among the Chinese kitchen gardens, not far away. And some weeks -afterward I came upon a third pair, also in a mesquite grove, on the -Santa Cruz side of the desert. But though in the two river valleys I -passed a good many hours in their society, I never once heard them -sing, nor, so far as I can now recall, did they ever utter any sound -save a mellow _pip_, almost exactly like a certain call of the robin; -so like it, in fact, that to the very last I never heard it suddenly -given, but my first thought was of that common Eastern bird, whose -voice in those early spring days it would have been so natural and -so pleasant to hear. I could have spared a dozen or two of thrashers, -I thought (not _brown_ thrashers), for a pair of robins and a pair of -bluebirds. But southern Arizona is a kind of thrasher paradise, while -robins and bluebirds desire a better country, and seemingly know where -to find it.[20] - -In the last week of March, however, there took place, as well as I -could judge, a concerted movement of Phainopeplas northward. They -showed themselves in the Santa Cruz Valley, here and there a pair, -until they became, not abundant, indeed, but a counted-upon, every-day -sight. Those that I had heretofore seen, it appeared, were only a few -winter “stay-overs.” Now the season had opened; and now the birds began -singing. For curiosity’s sake it pleased me to hear them, but the -brief measure, in a thin, squeaky voice, was nothing for any bird to -be proud of. They sing best to the eye. “Birds of the shining robes,” -their Greek name calls them; and worthily do they wear it, under that -unclouded Arizona sun, perching, as they habitually do, at the tip of -some tree or bush, where the man with birds in his eye can hardly fail -to sight them and name them, across the widest barley field. - -One of the birds whose acquaintance I chiefly wished to make on this -my first Western journey was the famous canyon wren,--famous not for -its beauty (beauty is not the wren family’s mark), but for its voice. -Whether my wish would be gratified was of course a question, especially -as my very modest itinerary included no exploration of canyons; but I -was not without hope. - -I had been in Tucson nearly a week, when one cool morning after a cold -night (it was February 7) I went down into the Santa Cruz Valley and -took the road that winds--where there is barely room for it--between -the base of Tucson Mountain and the river. Steep, broken cliffs, -perhaps a hundred feet high, were on my right hand, and the deep bed -of the shallow river lay below me on my left. Here I was enjoying the -sun, and keeping my eyes open, when a set of loud, clear bird notes in -a descending scale fell upon my ears from overhead. I stopped, pulled -myself together, and said, “A canyon wren.” I remembered a description -of that descending scale. The next instant a small hawk took wing -from the spot on the cliff whence the notes had seemed to fall. My -mind wavered, but only for a moment. “No, no,” I said, “it is not in -any hawk’s throat to produce sounds of that quality;” and I waited. -A rock wren began calling, but rock wrens did not count with me at -that moment. Then, in a very different voice, a wren, presumably the -one I was in search of, began fretting, unseen, somewhere above my -head; and then, silence. I waited and waited. Finally I tried an old -trick--I started on. If the bird was watching me, as likely enough he -was, a movement to leave his neighborhood would perhaps excite him -pleasurably. And so it did; or so it seemed; for almost at once the -song was given out and repeated: a hurried introductory phrase, and -then the fuller, longer, more liquid notes, tripping in procession down -the scale. - -The singer could be no other than the canyon wren; but of course I -must see him. At last, my patience outwearing his, he fell to scolding -again, and glancing up in the direction of the sound, I saw him on the -jutting top of the very highest stone, his white throat and breast -flashing in the sun, and the dark, rich brown of his lower parts -setting the whiteness off to marvelous advantage. There he stood, -calling and bobbing, calling and bobbing, after the familiar wren -manner, though why he should resent an innocent man’s presence so far -below was more than any innocent man could imagine. - -It would be an offense against the truth not to confess that the -celebrated song fell at first a little short of my expectations. -Perhaps I had heard it celebrated somewhat too loudly and too often. -It was very pleasing; the voice beautifully clear and full, and the -cadence of the sweetest; it had the grace of simplicity; indeed, there -was nothing to be said against it, except that I had supposed it would -be--well, I hardly know what, but somehow wilder and more telling. - -Within a few days I discovered a second pair of the birds not far away, -about an old, long-disused adobe mill. They were already building a -nest somewhere inside, entering by a crack over one of the windows. The -female appeared to be doing the greater part of the work, while her -mate sat upon the edge of the flat roof and sang for her encouragement, -or railed at me for my too assiduous lounging about the premises. The -more I listened to the song, the better I enjoyed it; it is certainly a -song by itself; I have never heard anything with which to compare it; -and I was especially pleased to see how many variations the performer -was able to introduce into his music, and yet leave it always the same. - -The first pair, on the precipitous face of the mountain, had chosen -the more romantic site, and I often stopped to admire their address in -climbing about over the almost perpendicular surface of the rock; now -disappearing for a few seconds, now popping into sight again a little -further on; finding a foothold everywhere, no matter how smooth and -steep the rock might look. - -The canyon wren is a darling bird and a musical genius; and now that -I have ceased to measure his song by my extravagant expectations -concerning it, I do not wish it in any wise altered. His natural home -is by the side of falling water (I have heard him since, where I should -have heard him first, in a canyon), and his notes fall with it. I seem -to hear them dropping one by one, every note by itself, as I write -about them. If they are not of a kind to be ecstatic over at a first -hearing (a little too simple for that), they are all the surer of a -long welcome. Indeed, I am half ashamed to have so much as referred to -my own early lack of appreciation of their excellence. Perhaps this was -one of the times when the truth should not have been spoken. - -My mention just now of the wren’s cleverness in traveling over the -steep side of Tucson Mountain called to mind a similar performance on -the part of a very different bird--a road-runner--in the same place; -and though it was not in my plan to name that bird in this paper, I -cannot deny myself the digression. - -I had taken a friend, newly inoculated with ornithological fever, down -to this mountain-side road to show him a black-chinned hummingbird. -We had seen it, to his amazement, on the very mesquite where I had -told him it would be (“Well!” he said,--and a most eloquent “well” -it was,--when I pointed the bird out, scarcely more than a speck, -as we came in sight of the bush), and were driving further, when I -laid my hand on the reins and bade him look up. There, halfway up the -precipitous, broken cliff, was the big, mottled, long-tailed bird, -looking strangely out of place to both of us, who had never seen him -before except in the lowlands, running along the road, or dodging among -clumps of bushes. Then of a sudden, he began climbing, and almost -in no time was on the very topmost stone, at the base of a stunted -palo-verde. There he fell to cooing (like a dove, I said, forgetting -at the moment that the road-runner is a kind of cuckoo), and by the -time he had repeated the phrase three or four times we remarked that -before doing so he invariably lowered his head. We sat and watched and -listened (“There!” one or the other would say, as the head was ducked) -for I know not how many minutes, commenting upon the droll appearance -of the bird, perched thus above the world, and cooing in this (for him) -ridiculous, lovelorn, gesticulatory manner. - -Then, as we drove on, I recalled the strangely rapid and effortless -gait with which he had gone up the mountain. “He didn’t use his wings, -did he?” I asked; and my companion thought not. I was reminded of a -bird of the same kind that I had seen a few days before cross a deep -gully perhaps twenty feet in width. “He seemed to slide across,” said -the man who was with me. That was exactly the word. He did not lift a -wing, to the best of our noticing, nor rise so much as an inch into the -air, but as it were stepped from one bank to the other. So this second -bird went up the mountain-side almost without our seeing how he did it. -A few steps, and he was there, as by the exercise of some special gift -of specific levity. He did not fly; and yet it might have “_seemed_ he -flew, the way so easy was.” Take him how you will, the road-runner’s -looks do not belie him: he is an odd one; and never odder, I should -guess, than when he stands upon a mountain-top and with lowered head -pours out his amorous soul in coos as gentle as a sucking dove’s. I -count myself happy to have witnessed the moving spectacle. - -I am running into superlatives, but no matter. The feeling against -their use is largely prejudice. Let me suit myself with one or two -more, therefore, and say that the rarest and most exciting bird seen -by me in Arizona was a painted redstart, _Setophaga picta_. It was at -the base of Tucson Mountain, close by the canyon wrens’ old mill. The -vermilion flycatcher, rare as I considered it at first, became after -a while almost excessively common. I believe it is no exaggeration -to say that forty or fifty pairs must have been living in and about -Tucson before the first of April. Unless you were out upon the desert, -you could hardly turn round without seeing or hearing them. But there -was no danger of the painted redstart’s cheapening itself after this -fashion. I saw it twice, for perhaps ten minutes in all, and as long as -I live I shall be thankful for the sight. - -I was playing the spy upon a pair of what I took to be Arkansas -goldfinches, and the question being a nice one, had got over a wire -fence to have the sun at my back. There I had barely focused my -eight-power glass upon a leafless willow beside an irrigation ditch, -when all at once there moved into its field such a piece of absolute -gorgeousness as I have no hope of making my reader see by means of -any description: a small bird in three colors,--deep, velvety black, -the snowiest white, and the most brilliant red. Its glory lay in the -depth and purity of the three colors; its singularity lay in a point -not mentioned in book descriptions, being inconspicuous, I suppose, -in cabinet specimens: a line (almost literally a line) of white below -the eye. From its position and its extreme tenuity I took it for the -lower eyelid, but as to that I cannot speak with positiveness. It would -hardly have showed, even in life, I dare say, but for its intensely -black surroundings. As it was, it fairly stared at me. I cannot affirm -that it added to the bird’s beauty. Apart from it the colors were all -what I may call solid,--laid on in broad masses, that is: a red belly, -a long white band (not a bar) on each wing, some white tail feathers, -white lower tail coverts, and everything else black. It does not sound -like anything so very extraordinary, I confess. But the reader should -have _seen_ it. Unless he is a very dry stick indeed, he would have let -off an exclamation or two, I can warrant. There are cases in which the -whole is a good deal more than the sum of all its parts. - -The bird was on one of the larger branches, over which it moved in -something of the black-and-white creeper’s manner, turning its head -to one side and the other alternately as it progressed. Then it sat -still a long time (a long time for a warbler), so near me that the -glass brought it almost into my hand, while I devoured its beauty; -and then, of a sudden, it took flight into the dense, leafy top of a -tall cottonwood, and I saw it no more. No more for that time, that -is to say. In my mind, indeed, I bade it good-by forever. It was not -to be thought of that such a bit of splendor (I had read of it as a -mountain bird) should happen in my way more than once. But eight days -afterward (March 28), in nearly the same place, it appeared again, -straight over my head; and I was almost as much astonished as before. -It was exploring the bare branches of a row of roadside ash trees, and -I followed it, or rather preceded it, backing away as it flitted from -one tree to the next, keeping the sun behind me. It carried itself now -much like the common redstart; a little more inclined to moments of -inactivity, perhaps, but at short intervals darting into the air after -a passing insect with all conceivable quickness. - -And such colors! Such an unspeakable red, so intense a black, and so -pure a white! If I said that the vermilion flycatcher was the brightest -bird I saw in Arizona, I was like the Hebrew psalmist. I said it in my -haste. - -This time the redstart was in a singing mood. On the previous occasion -it had kept silence, and I had thought I was glad to have it so, -feeling that no voice could be good enough to go with such feathers. -In its way the feeling was justified; but, after all, it would have -been too bad to miss the song. Curiosity has its claims, no less than -sentiment. And happily the song proved to be a very pretty one; similar -to that of the Eastern bird, to be sure, but less hurried (so it seemed -to me), less over-emphatic, and in a voice less sharp and thin; a very -pretty song (for a warbler), though, as is true of the Phainopepla and -most other brilliantly handsome birds (and all good children), the -redstart’s proper appeal is to the eye. So far as human appreciation is -concerned, it need make no other. - -I have heard a canyon wren in a canyon, I said. It was a glorious -day in a glorious place,--Sabino Canyon, it is called, in the Santa -Catalina Mountains. And it was there, where the ground was all a flower -garden, and the dashing brook a doubly delightful sight and sound after -so much wandering over the desert and so many crossings of dry, sandy -river-beds,--it was there, amid a cluster of leafy oaks (strange oak -leaves they were) and leafless hackberry trees, that I saw my first and -only solitaire,--_Myadestes townsendii_. I have praised other birds -for their brightness and song; this one I must praise for a certain -nameless dignity and, as the present-day word is, distinction. He did -not deign to break silence, or to notice in any manner, unless it were -by an added touch of patrician reserve, the presence of three human -intruders. I stared at him,--exercising a cat’s privilege,--for all his -hauteur, admiring his gray colors, his conspicuous white eye-ring, and -his manner. I say “manner,” not “manners.” You would never liken _him_ -to a dancing-master. - -He was the solitaire, I somehow felt certain (certain with a lingering -of uncertainty), though I had forgotten all description of that bird’s -appearance. It was the place for him, and his looks went with the name. -Moreover, to confess a more prosaic consideration, there was nothing -else he could be. - -“Myadestes,” I said to my two companions, both unacquainted with such -matters; “I think it is Myadestes, though I can’t exactly tell why I -think so.” - -We must go into the canyon a little way, gazing up at the walls, -picking a few of the more beautiful flowers, feeling the place -itself (the best thing one _can_ do, whether in a canyon or on a -mountain-top); then we came back to the hackberry trees, but the -solitaire was no longer in them. I had had my opportunity, and perhaps -had made too little of it. It is altogether likely that I shall never -see another bird of his kind. - -For now those cloudless Arizona days, the creosote-covered desert, and -the mountain ranges standing round about it, are all for me as things -past and done; a bright memory, and no more. One event conspired with -another to put a sudden end to my visit (which was already longer than -I had planned), and on the last day of March I walked for the last time -under that row of “leafless ash trees,”--no longer quite leafless, and -no longer with a painted redstart in them,--and over that piece of -winding road between the craggy hill and the river. Now I courted not -the sun, but the shade; it was the sun, more than anything else, that -was hurrying me away, when I would gladly have stayed longer; but sunny -or shady, I stopped a bit in each of the more familiar places. Nobody -knew or cared that I was taking leave. All things remained as they had -been. The same rock wrens were practicing endless vocal variations here -and there upon the stony hillside; the same fretful verdin was talking -about something, it was beyond me to tell what, with the old emphatic -monotony; the hummingbird stood on the tip of his mesquite bush, still -turning his head eagerly from side to side, as if he expected her, and -wondered why on earth she was so long in coming; the mocker across the -field (one of no more than half a dozen that I saw about Tucson!) was -bringing out of his treasury things new and old (a great bird that, -always with another shot in his locker); the Lucy warbler, daintiest -of the dainty, sang softly amid the willow catkins, a chorus of bees -accompanying; the black cap of the pileolated warbler was _not_ in -the blossoming quince-bush hedge (that was a pity); the desert-loving -sparrow hawk sat at the top of a giant cactus, as if its thorns were -nothing but a cushion; the happy little Mexican boy, who lived in one -corner of the old mill, came down the road with his usual smile of -welcome (we were almost old friends by this time) and a glance into -the trees, meaning to say, what he could not express in English, nor -I understand in Spanish, “I know what you are doing;” and then, as I -rounded the bend, under the beetling crags, the same canyon wren, my -first one, not dreaming what a favor he was conferring upon the man he -had so often chided as a trespasser, let fall a few measures of his -lovely song. How sweet and cool the notes were! Unless it was the sound -of the brook in the Sabino Canyon, I believe I heard nothing else so -good in Arizona. - -But at San Antonio, on my way homeward, I heard notes not to be called -musical, in the smaller and more ordinary sense of the word; as -unlike as possible, certainly, to the classic sweetness of the canyon -wren’s tune; but to me even more exciting and memorable. On a sultry, -indolent afternoon (April 9) I had betaken myself to Cemetery Hill for -a lazy stroll, and had barely alighted from the electric car, when I -heard strange noises somewhere near at hand. In my confusion I thought -for an instant of the scissor-tailed flycatchers, with whose various -outlandish outcries and antics I had been for several days amusing -myself. Then I discovered that the sound came from above, and looking -up, saw straight over my head, between the hilltop and the clouds, a -wedge-shaped flock of large birds. Long slender necks and bills, feet -drawn up and projecting out behind the tails, wing-action moderate -(after the manner of geese rather than ducks), color dark,--so much, -and no more, the glass showed me, while the birds, sixty or more in -number, as I guessed, were fast receding northward. They should be -cranes, I said to myself, since they were surely not herons, and then, -like a flash, it came over me that I knew the voice. By good luck I had -lived the winter before where I heard continually the lusty shouts of a -captive sandhill crane; and it was to a chorus of sandhill cranes that -I was now listening. - -The flock disappeared, the tumult lessened and ceased, and I passed on. -But fifteen minutes afterward, as I was retracing my steps over the -hill, suddenly I heard the same resounding chorus again. A second flock -of cranes was passing. This, too, was in a V-shaped line, though for -some reason it fell into disorder almost immediately. Now I essayed a -count, and had just concluded that there were some eighty of the birds, -when a commotion behind me caused me to turn my head. To my amazement, -a third and much larger flock was following close behind the second. -There was no numbering it with exactness, but I ran my glass down the -long, wavering line, as best I could, and counted one hundred and -fifteen. - -An hour before I had never seen a sandhill crane in its native wildness -(a creature nearly or quite as tall as myself), and behold, here was -the sky full of them. And what a judgment-day trumpeting they made! -Angels and archangels, cherubim and seraphim! Perhaps I did not enjoy -it,--there, with the white gravestones standing all about me. After -all, there is something in mere volume of sound. If it does not feed -the soul, at least it stirs the blood. And that is a good thing, also. -I wonder if Michelangelo did not at some time or other see and hear the -like. - - - - -INDEX - - - - -INDEX - - - Adder’s-tongue, 19, 29. - - Anemone, 6. - - Azalea, Lapland, 36. - - - Bayberry, 101. - - Bellwort, 6. - - Birch, yellow, 15, 72. - - Bittern, least, 126. - - Blackbird, Brewer’s, 202. - crow, 129. - red-winged, 86, 124, 139. - rusty, 66. - - Bluebird, 8, 54, 65, 76, 86, 132, 150, 156. - chestnut-backed, 181, 186. - Western, 279. - - Butterfly, clouded-sulphur, 61. - red admiral, 28. - - Buzzard, turkey, 86, 95, 124. - - - Cactus, giant, 199. - - Callicarpa, 99. - - Catbird, 86, 100, 107, 129, 130. - - Chewink, Arctic, 178. - red-eyed, 108, 140. - white-eyed, 140, 146. - - Chickadee, black-capped, 21, 64, 66, 79, 86, 139. - Hudsonian, 37. - - Chuck-will’s-widow, 154. - - Clintonia, 4. - - Coccoloba, 118. - - Cocoa plum, 115, 122. - - Cormorant, Florida, 84, 124. - - Coyote, 224. - - Cranberry, mountain, 23. - - Crane, sandhill, 293. - - Creosote bush, 200, 206. - - Crescentia, 112. - - Crinum, 126. - - Crossbill, red, 63, 78. - - Crow, American, 79, 157. - carrion, 86, 124. - fish, 85, 97, 129. - - Cypress, 122. - - - Diapensia, 35. - - Dove, ground, 86, 130. - - Dutchman’s-breeches, 19, 29. - - - Eagle, bald, 141. - golden, 220. - - Evening primrose, 200, 247. - - Eyebright, 35. - - - Ficus aurea, 99. - - Finch, Lincoln, 74, 192. - purple, 8, 66, 78. - - Flicker, 85, 86, 129. - red-shafted, 178. - - Flycatcher, Arizona crested, 271. - crested, 108, 130. - olive-sided, 63. - scissor-tailed, 259. - vermilion, 266, 286. - - - Gallinule, Florida, 149. - - Gnatcatcher, blue-gray, 85, 86, 108. - plumbeous, 219. - - Goldfinch, American, 41, 61, 78. - - Goldfinch, Mexican, 178. - - Grackle, boat-tailed, 85, 129, 130. - - Grosbeak, cardinal, 87, 104, 107, 108, 129, 130, 134, 139, 149, 156. - rose-breasted, 5, 10, 21. - - Grouse, 11, 21, 70, 78. - - Gumbo-limbo, 100. - - - Hawk, desert sparrow, 184, 292. - sharp-shinned, 38, 41, 69. - sparrow, 41, 94. - Western red-tailed, 219. - - Heron, great blue, 141. - Louisiana, 124. - - Hickory, 148. - - Hornbeam, 145. - - House finch, 180, 188, 199. - - Huisache, 162. - - Hummingbird, black-chinned, 284, 291. - Costa, 234. - ruby-throated, 86, 130. - - - Jay, blue, 67, 79, 86, 108, 130. - Florida, 93, 140. - - Jessamine, yellow, 137, 149. - - Junco, intermediate, 185. - - - Kingfisher, 124. - - Kinglet, golden-crowned, 64, 71. - ruby-crowned, 65, 66, 78, 107, 130, 238. - - - Lark bunting, 191, 194. - - Lupine, 200, 247. - - - Mangrove, 98, 121. - - Martin, purple, 124. - - Meadow lark, 156, 183. - - Mockingbird, 85, 86, 87, 95, - 100, 104, 107, 109, 129, 130, 139, 156. - Western, 254, 292. - - Moon-flower, 88. - - Morning-glory, 88, 97. - - - Nonpareil, 105, 108, 129, 130, 131, 134. - - Nuthatch, brown-headed, 150, 156. - Canadian (red-breasted), 7, 41, 60, 62, 64, 66, 71, 79. - Carolina (white-breasted), 123. - - - Ocotillo, 199. - - Orchids, 98. - - Oriole, Baltimore, 130. - - Osprey, 124, 141. - - Oven-bird, 21, 107. - - - Pavonia, 111. - - Pelican, brown, 140. - - Phainopepla, 276, 289. - - Phlox, Drummond, 137, 153. - - Phœbe, 86, 87, 104, 108, 130, 131. - black, 196, 240. - Say’s, 181, 255. - - Pithecolobium, 98. - - Plover, killdeer, 124. - - Poppy, California, 247, 249. - - Porcupine, 27. - - Pyrrhuloxia, Arizona, 185, 274. - Texas, 274. - - - Rabbits, 227. - - Rail, Carolina, 149. - - Raven, 212. - white-necked, 182, 191, 211, 219, 221. - - Redstart, 64. - painted, 286. - - Road-runner, 163, 259, 284. - - Robin, 8, 54, 66, 78, 86. - Western, 279. - - Rose, Cherokee, 136, 154. - - - Sandwort, Greenland, 23. - - Sapsucker, yellow-bellied, 59, 110. - - Seven-year apple, 116. - - Shrike, loggerhead, 95, 109. - - Siskin, 21, 63, 78. - - Snowbird, 21, 41, 62, 65, 66, 69, 78. - - Solitaire, 289. - - Sparrow, Cassin, 263. - chipping, 66. - desert, 210. - pine-wood, 156. - sage, 211. - savanna, 9. - song, 54, 65, 66, 75, 78, 138. - vesper, 75, 78. - white-crowned, 14, 74, 78, 192. - white-throated, 5, 8, 11, 22, 26, 58, 62, 64, 65, 66, 139. - - Swallow, barn, 8. - tree, 86, 95, 124. - - Sweet-bay, 146. - - Sweet-gum, 136, 145. - - Swift, white-throated, 273. - - - Tanager, summer, 155. - - Thrasher, Bendire, 252, 255. - brown, 138, 156. - crissal, 254. - Palmer, 209, 251, 255. - sage, 207, 255. - - Thrush, Bicknell’s, 21, 37. - hermit, 8, 66, 78, 130. - Swainson’s, 21, 27. - - Titmouse, tufted, 139. - - Trema, 100. - - Trillium, painted, 6, 19. - purple, 29. - - - Vaccinium cæspitosum, 49. - - Verdin, 172, 239, 257, 291. - - Violet, round-leaved, 4, 11, 19, 29. - Selkirk’s, 30. - - Vireo, blue-headed (solitary), 21, 86, 108, 129. - red-eyed, 147, 155. - yellow-throated, 129, 130. - white-eyed, 86, 104, 108, 130, 140, 147. - - - Warbler, Bachman’s, 134. - bay-breasted, 21. - black-and-white, 107, 129, 156. - Blackburnian, 21. - black-throated blue, 21. - black-throated green, 21. - Lucy, 292. - myrtle, 21, 26, 41, 65, 66, 76, 86, 101, 107, 129, 130, 156. - palm, 86, 107, 129, 130. - parula, 21, 107, 129, 133, 134, 140, 155. - pileolated, 292. - pine, 86, 156. - prairie, 107, 129, 133, 156. - yellow palm, 78. - yellow-throated, 129, 130, 133, 134, 156. - - Woodpecker, downy, 110, 129. - hairy, 18, 59, 63, 110. - ivory-billed, 110. - pileated, 79, 109, 150. - red-bellied, 86, 110, 129, 131, 149. - red-cockaded, 110. - red-headed, 110, 129. - - Wood pewee, 63. - - Wren, Baird, 255. - cactus, 207, 251, 255. - canyon, 255, 280, 289, 292. - Carolina, 107, 139, 147, 156. - house, 105, 107, 129. - interior tule, 255. - rock, 198, 255, 291. - winter, 21, 59, 62, 64, 66. - - - Yellow-throat, Florida, 86, 105, 107. - Maryland, 57. - - - - -FOOTNOTES: - - -[1] 1900. - -[2] It may have been some species of _Pellia_, to judge by the plate in -_Gray’s Manual_. - -[3] And if New Hampshire people will call the mountain “Moose Hillock,” -as, alas, they will, then we have here another proof of the degeneracy -which follows the white man’s addiction to the punning habit. - -[4] And so it was; for though I _felt_ sure, I wanted to _be_ sure, and -submitted it to an expert. - -[5] One was living in the greenhouse connected with the big hotel. -The gardener told me that it had come in of itself, and persisted in -staying. He had tried in vain to get rid of it. Tossed out of doors, it -would at once return and make itself at home. - -[6] And after all this talk about the plant I must in candor add that -it turned out to be by no means rare along the bay shore. I think I am -not wrong in remembering to have heard it called the calabash tree. - -[7] One of the most striking peculiarities of Southern speech among the -illiterate classes (I have observed it in other states besides Florida) -is the almost total absence of the word “saw.” - -[8] We often fed the birds afterward, and one or two, at least, were -never shy about coming into our laps. - -[9] _Vachellia Farnesiana_, sparingly naturalized in Florida, where it -goes by the name of Opopanax. - -[10] Since this letter was first printed I have been warned more than -once that walking upon railroad tracks, in the Southwestern country, -at least, is an unsafe proceeding, for a man alone and unarmed; and I -think it right to pass along the caution. - -[11] I could hardly believe it anything but an accidental omission -when I noticed the total absence of jays, crows, and ravens from Mr. -Attwater’s list of the birds of San Antonio and vicinity. See _The -Auk_, vol. ix, p. 229. - -[12] True as a general statement; but once, at Tucson, I saw a bird -standing on the top of a telegraph pole facing a pretty stiff breeze, -which blew the feathers of the throat apart till they showed a -snow-white spot as large as a silver dollar. - -[13] Botanically, if I am correctly informed, the plant is _Fouquiera -splendens_, otherwise known as candlewood, Jacob’s staff, and -coach-whip. Like the giant cactus it seems to be restricted to the -foothills. - -[14] Alas, it never does. - -[15] There is another raven in Arizona, rarer and larger,--a _real_ -raven, so to speak,--but I saw it only a few times, always high in air, -as if it were passing from one mountain range to another. - -[16] The trick was seen to fuller advantage on subsequent occasions, -and I came to the settled conclusion that the birds turned but halfway -over; that is to say, they lay on their backs for an instant, and then, -as by the recoil of a spring, recovered themselves. How they acquired -the trick, and for what purpose they practice it, are questions beyond -my answering. Since my return home, indeed, I have discovered that -Gilbert White, who noted so many things, noted this same habit on the -part of the European raven. According to him, the birds “lose the -centre of gravity” while “scratching themselves with one foot.” How he -knows this he does not inform us, and I must confess myself unconvinced. - -[17] They are not to be found on the desert, I afterward learned, but -along the watercourses. There I often saw them. - -[18] I visited more than one of them afterward. - -[19] And so they were, on the testimony of the Washington ornithologist -above quoted, who knows both bird and song. - -[20] It should be said, nevertheless, that straggling flocks of Western -bluebirds--lovely creatures--were met with on the desert on rare -occasions, and once, at Old Camp Lowell, three robins--Westerners, no -doubt--passed over my head, flying toward the mountains, in which they -are said to winter. - - - - - The Riverside Press - _Electrotyped and printed by H. O. Houghton & Co. - Cambridge, Mass., U. S. 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