130 GROUND-SQUIRRELS. 



of the sixth feather black. Tail-coverts same 

 colour as wings. 



July 8. After crossing a very high ridge we 

 look suddenly down into the valley of the Spokan 

 river. The river has a very rapid flow, and 

 where we ferry it, in a scow worked by a rope 

 from side to side, it is about 150 yards wide. The 

 charge for crossing was, I think, a dollar (45.) per 

 head for packed mules ; the cattle swam it. 



We camp on a grassy flat, known as Walker's 

 Prairie, a few miles from the ferry, where a 

 solitary settler keeps a rough kind of inn. I 

 wander across the prairie, and am amused with 

 the freaks of the ground-squirrels (Spermophilus 

 Parryi, Richardson) ; they live in burrows dug 

 in all directions into mounds, which mounds, I 

 think, are not made by the squirrels. By keeping 

 still I soon saw numbers of them emerge from 

 their holes, chase one another round the hillock, 

 up one side, down the other, as if they were occu- 

 pied in playing some game fashionable in squirrel- 

 dom. If I move or otherwise make my presence 

 known, shrill whistles oft repeated warn the as- 

 semblage that danger is at hand ; each at once 

 makes for its hole and disappears. In coming 

 from out their burrows, their habit is to sit upon 

 their haunches at the entrance, and with their tiny 



