50 THE NUESEET. 



4 skunk cabbage,' and each branch and spray, 

 draped with the black lichen (Lichen jubatus), 

 seem mourning over death and decay on every 

 side in these damp solitudes lives the ' Store- 

 keeper,' merry and quarrelsome, as in brighter 

 scenes. Climb the mountain-side, and scramble 

 through the rock-walled ravine, where the pine 

 clings to the stones rather than grows from 

 their clefts ; where no murmuring streamlet cools 

 and refreshes thirsty Nature, or breaks the solemn 

 silence with its rippling music; and not even 

 the footfall of the savage disturb its echoes ; and 

 naught living, save the denizens of the air, that 

 peep into its weird depths from the tree-tops, 

 ever visits it : yet in the very loneliest of these 

 glens the ' Store-keeper' is sure to be met with. 

 Climb on higher, higher to the perpetual snow- 

 line, marking the boundary betwixt life and icy 

 desolation; and there too, on the very frontier, he 

 bounds, and jumps from rock to rock, ever 

 scolding, laughing, whistling, and toiling, to 

 garner in his harvest. 



Two of them, husband and wife, took up their 

 abode in an old sawpit, close to our winter- 

 quarters, at Fort Colville ; and there constructed 

 a nest, during the month of July, for the mamma 

 to bring forth and rear her offspring in. I 



