n the cool rocks, beside the impetuous brook. This last was an
ever fresh source of interest and pleasure, for nothing differs more
widely from an Eastern brook than its Western namesake. The terms we
apply to our mountain rivulets do not at all describe a body of water on
its way down a Rocky Mountain valley. It does not murmur,--it roars and
brawls; it cannot ripple,--it rages and foams about the bowlders that
lie in its path. The name of a Colorado mountain stream, the Roaring
Fork, exactly characterizes it.

One warm morning in June, a small party from the camp set out for a walk
up the road. By easy stages, resting here and there on convenient rocks,
beguiled at every step by something more beautiful just ahead, they
penetrated to the end of the canyon. Of that party I was one, and it was
my first visit. I was alternately in raptures over the richness of
color, the glowing red sandstone against the violet-blue sky, and
thrilled by the grandeur of places which looked as if the whole
mountain had been violently rent asunder.

But no emotion whatever, no beauty, no sublimity even, can make me
insensible to a bird note. Just at the entrance to the Pillars of
Hercules, two towering walls of perpendicular rock that approach each
other almost threateningly, as if they would close up and crush between
them the rash mortal who dared to penetrate farther,--in that impressive
spot, while I lingered, half yielding to a mysterious hesitation about
entering the strange portal, a bird song fell upon my ear. It was a
plaintive warble, that sounded far away up the stern cliff above my
head. It seemed impossible that a bird could find a foothold, or be in
any way attracted by those bare walls, yet I turned my eyes, and later
my glass that way.

At first nothing was to be seen save, part way up the height, an
exquisite bit of nature. In a niche that might have been scooped out by
a mighty hand, where scarcely a ray of sunlight could penetrate, and no
human touch could make or mar, were growing, and blooming luxuriantly, a
golden columbine, Colorado's pride and glory, a rosy star-shaped blossom
unknown to me, and a cluster of

"Proud cyclamens on long, lithe stems that soar."

When I could withdraw my eyes from this dainty wind-sown garden, I
sought the singer, who proved to be a small brown bird with a
conspicuous white throat, flitting about on the face of the rock,
apparently quite at home, and constantly repeating his few no