96 WHERE ROLLS THE OREGON 



wild, unspoiled, unslaughtered country as the In- 

 dian knew it, as Lewis and Clark saw it on that 

 first trip across the continent. 



The accounts of bird-life in early American 

 writings read to us now like the wildest of wild 

 tales the air black with flocks of red-winged 

 blackbirds, the marshes white with feeding herons, 

 the woods weighted with roosting pigeons. I have 

 heard my mother tell of being out in a flock of 

 passenger pigeons so vast that the sun was dark- 

 ened, the birds flying so low that men knocked 

 them down with sticks. As a child I once saw 

 the Maurice River meadows white with egrets, 

 and across the skies of the marshes farther down, 

 unbroken lines of flocking blackbirds that touched 

 opposite sides of the horizon. 



That was years ago. I had seen nothing like it 

 since ; nor did I ever again expect to see it. I had 

 heard of Malheur Lake, when, some few years 

 ago, the naturalist through whose efforts it was 

 made a Federal reservation visited me and told 

 me about it. He even brought photographs of its 

 bird-colonies. But words and pictures gave no 

 conception of the extent of its uncrowded crowds 

 of life. For what could a camera do with one 



