HO! FOR GRAY'S PEAK! 251 



slopes almost to the top, while the other is scarred, 

 craggy, and precipitous. 



The day was serene and beautiful, the sky a deep 

 indigo, unflecked with clouds, save a few filmy wracks 

 here and there, and the breeze as balmy as that of a 

 May morning in my native State. So quiet was the 

 alpine solitude that on all sides we could hear the 

 solemn roar of the streams in the ravines hundreds of 

 feet below, some of them in one key and some in 

 another, making almost a symphony. For several 

 hours we tarried, held by a spell. " But you have for- 

 gotten your ornithology ! " some one reminds me. No 

 one could blame me if I had. Such, however, is not 

 the case, for ornithology, like the poor, is never far 

 from some of us. The genial little optimists that had 

 been hopping about on the snow on the declivities had 

 acted as our cicerones clear to the summit, and some of 

 them remained there while we tarried. Indeed the leu- 

 costictes were quite plentiful on the mountain's brow. 

 Several perched on the dismantled walls of the aban- 

 doned government building on the summit, called cheer- 

 ily, then wheeled about over the crest, darted out and 

 went careering over the gulches with perfect aplomb, 

 while we watched them with envious eyes, wishing we 

 too had wings like a leucosticte, not that we " might 

 fly away, 1 ' as the Psalmist longed to do, but that we 

 might scale the mountains at our own sweet will. The 



