228 TEXAS AND ARIZONA 



could not describe it. I never see one on the 

 move without admiration and an impulse to give 

 him three cheers. Surely, man is a slow coach, 

 and a race-horse is clumsy. 



To one who comes this way for the first time 

 in winter, as I have come (and may Heaven save 

 me from ever being here in summer, so long 

 at least as I am in an embodied state !), the 

 desert seems thinly inhabited. Of the scarcity 

 of bird-life upon it I have before spoken ; and 

 the reason is obvious: there is little here for 

 birds to feed upon. The smaller quadrupeds, 

 too, are of surprising infrequency. Once in a 

 long while a striped squirrel, as I should call it, 

 with its tail over its back, will be seen squatting 

 beside a hole in the ground, ready to slip into it 

 long before you can get near ; and somewhat 

 oftener a gray, rat-tailed, big-eyed squirrel (if it 

 is a squirrel I have only half seen it) will 

 dart across an open space, tail in air, barely vis- 

 ible before it, too, has ducked into its burrow ; 

 but two or three such small fry, with as many 

 jack rabbits, in the course of a half -day tramp, 

 do not go far toward constituting anything to be 

 accounted populousness. 



One morning I walked out upon the desert 

 immediately after a snowfall. It would be a fa- 

 vorable time, I thought, to study zoological hiero- 



