138 HUNTING THE GRISLY. 



One lay quite near the ranch house, under 

 a bold rocky bluff ; at its edge grew giant 

 cypress trees. In the hollows and by the 

 watercourses were occasional groves of pecans, 

 live-oaks, and elms. Strange birds hopped 

 among the bushes ; the chaparral cock a 

 big, handsome ground-cuckoo of remarkable 

 habits, much given to preying on small snakes 

 and lizards ran over the ground with ex- 

 traordinary rapidity. Beautiful swallow-tailed 

 king-birds with rosy plumage perched on the 

 tops of the small trees, and soared and flitted 

 in graceful curves above them. Blackbirds 

 of many kinds scuttled in flocks about the 

 corrals and outbuildings around the ranches. 

 Mocking-birds abounded, and were very noisy, 

 singing almost all the daytime, but with their 

 usual irritating inequality of performance, 

 wonderfully musical and powerful snatches of 

 song being interspersed with imitations of 

 other bird notes and disagreeable squalling. 

 Throughout the trip I did not hear one of them 

 utter the beautiful love song in which they 

 sometimes indulge at night. 



The country was all under wire fence, unlike 

 the northern regions, the pastures however 

 being sometimes many miles across. When 

 we reached the Frio ranch a herd of a thou- 

 sand cattle had just been gathered, and two 

 or three hundred beeves and young stock were 

 being cut out to be driven northward over the 

 trail. The cattle were worked in pens much 

 more than in the North, and on all the ranches 

 there were chutes with steering gates, by 



