CHOCORUA. 221 



danger threatens for a moment, if a snake ap- 

 pears in the grass, a hawk in the air, an owl 

 in the thicket, a man near their nest, joy returns 

 the moment danger is gone. There are tragedies 

 of the nests, and many a bird falls a victim to 

 destroyers, but on the whole the life of birds is 

 joyous, not sorrowful; contented, not anxious. 

 I sought the birds that morning in their deep- 

 est solitude, their inner temple. Wading ice- 

 cold brooks in which I alarmed many a trout, 

 forcing a way through thickets of high-bush 

 blueberry, alder, and tangled vines, plunging 

 through soft spots in the bog where I sank to 

 my knees, I came finally to the cool dark shades 

 in the centre of a great swamp. Several 

 tall pines reared their heads above it. From 

 their lower limbs, long since dead and dry, 

 beards of gray moss depended and swung back 

 and forth. An under forest of water maples, 

 balsam firs, larches, and white ash trees flour- 

 ished beneath the giant pines. Below these in 

 turn a miniature forest of ferns and hobble bush 

 grew, and still lower the moist ground surround- 

 ing numerous pools of amber-colored water was 

 covered by a carpet of clintonia, veratrum, or- 

 chids, gold-thread, swamp blackberry, dalibarda, 

 and fernlike mosses. Who, if any, were the 

 dwellers in this solitude of solitudes ? Not the 

 robin or the bluebird, the song sparrow or the 



' 



