42 LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN. 



but broken and forced. I say labored and 

 breathless : but, happily, the singer was un- 

 aware of his infirmity (or can it be I was 

 wrong?), and continued without interrup- 

 tion for at least half an hour. If he was 

 uncomfortably short-breathed, he was very 

 agreeably long-winded. Oven-birds sang at 

 intervals throughout the day, and once I 

 heard again the black-billed cuckoo. Yes, 

 Hooker was right : Lookout Mountain is 

 Northern, not Southern. But then, as if to 

 show that it is not exactly Yankee land, in 

 spite of oven-bird and black-bill, and not- 

 withstanding all that Hooker and his men 

 may have done, a cardinal took a long turn 

 at whistling, and a Carolina wren came to 

 his support with a cheery, cheery. A far- 

 away crow was cawing somewhere down the 

 valley, no very common sound hereabout ; 

 a red-eye, our great American missionary, 

 was exhorting, of course ; a black-poll, on his 

 way to British America, whispered some- 

 thing, it was impossible to say what ; and a 

 squirrel barked. I lay so still that a black- 

 and-white creeper took me for a part of the 

 boulder, and alighted on the nearest tree- 

 trunk. He goes round a bole just as he 



