he lads who had expedited our
march along the street, and proceeded on our way up the valley. We soon
settled down to taking our burros philosophically, and erelong they were
going calmly on the even tenor of their way, and afterwards we had
little trouble with them, and actually became quite attached to the
gentle creatures before our joint pilgrimage drew to an end.

It is time to pass from quadrupeds to bipeds. While our feathered
friends were not so abundant in the wilder regions as we might have
wished, still we had almost constant avian companionship along the way.
The warbling vireos were especially plentiful, and in full tune, making
a silvery trail of song beside the dusty road. We had them at our elbow
as far as Graymont, where we made a sharp detour from the open valley,
and clambered along a steep mountain side, with a deep, wooded gorge
below us. Here the vireos suddenly decided that they could escort us no
farther, as they had no taste for crepuscular canyons and alpine heights.
Not a vireo was seen above Graymont, which has an altitude of nearly ten
thousand feet. We left them singing in the valley as we turned from it,
and did not hear them again until we came back to Graymont.

Almost the same may be said of the broad-tailed humming-birds, whose
insect-like buzzing we heard at frequent intervals along the route to a
shoulder of the mountain a little above Graymont, when it suddenly
ceased and was heard no more until we returned to the same spot a few
days later. House-wrens, willow thrushes, Brewer's blackbirds, and
long-crested jays were also last seen at Graymont, which seemed to be a
kind of territorial limit for a number of species.

However, several species--as species, of course, not as
individuals--convoyed us all the way from Georgetown to the timber-line
and, in some instances, beyond. Let me call the roll of these faithful
"steadies": Mountain hermit thrushes, gray-headed juncos, red-shafted
flickers, pine siskins, western robins, Audubon's and Wilson's warblers,
mountain bluebirds and white-crowned sparrows. Of course, it must be
borne in mind that these birds were not seen everywhere along the upward
journey, simply in their favorite habitats. The deep, pine-shadowed
gorges were avoided by the warblers and white-crowned sparrows, whilst
every open, sunlit, and bushy spot or bosky glen was enlivened by a
contingent of these merry minnesingers. One little bird added to our
list in the gorge