136 The Wilderness Htmter. 



dove again into the stream, I gazed at him eagerly ; for 

 this strange, pretty water-thrush is to me one of the most 

 attractive and interesting birds to be found in the gorges 

 of the great Rockies. Its haunts are romantically beautiful, 

 for it always dwells beside and in the swift-flowing moun- 

 tain brooks ; it has a singularly sweet song ; and its ways 

 render it a marked bird at once, for though looking much 

 like a sober-colored, ordinary woodland thrush, it spends 

 half its time under the water, walking along the bottom, 

 swimming and diving, and flitting through as well as over 

 the cataracts. 



In a minute or two the shrew caught my eye again. 

 It got into a little shallow eddy and caught a minute fish, 

 which it carried to a half-sunken stone and greedily- 

 devoured, tugging voraciously at it as it held it down with 

 its paws. Then its evil genius drove it into a small puddle 

 alongside the brook, where I instantly pounced on and 

 slew it ; for I knew a friend in the Smithsonian at Wash- 

 ington who would have coveted it greatly. It was a soft, 

 pretty creature, dark above, snow-white below, with a very 

 long tail. I turned the skin inside out and put a bent 

 twig in, that it might dry ; while Ammal, who had been 

 intensely interested in the chase and capture, meditatively 

 shook his head and said " wagh," unable to fathom the 

 white man's medicine. However, my labor came to 

 nought, for that evening I laid the skin out on a log, 

 Ammal threw the log into the fire, and that was the end 

 of the shrew. 



When this interlude was over we resumed our march, 

 toiling silently onwards through the wild and rugged 



