136 GAME-BIRDS AT HOME. 



lagoons, that made this rancho a favorite winter 

 home of water-fowl and cranes. On the south, 

 two thousand feet higher, towered Mount Volcan, 

 golden on the ridges with the wild oats and 

 grass of the last season, blue along the sides 

 with dense chaparral, and darkly green upon the 

 top with pine, live-oak, and silver fir. On the 

 northwest Mount Palomar rose still higher, in a 

 long ridge clad in cedar, pine, fir, and oak, above 

 heaving swells of blue and gold : on the west 

 Mesa Grande rose in a terrace of green on which 

 the live-oaks bowed like the trees in some old 

 apple-orchard ; and on the east the tall Coyote 

 Mountains, robed in chaparral with occasional 

 parks of live-oaks in some little basin, or grove of 

 sycamore around a sprmg, looked down from six 

 thousand feet upon the scene. 



Over such a horizon-line, heralded by their 

 penetrating tremolo, huge flocks of cranes set 

 their wings, and in long lines, bluish gray 

 against the somber background of cedar and fir 

 that filled the heads and sides of the great 

 gulches of the mountains, drifted slowly down 

 toward you. And when they had settled to 

 where the blue chaparral formed the background, 



