88 IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 



wall, loaded as she was, but by a strange path 

 that she knew well, up which I watched her 

 wending her way to her proper level. This was 

 a cleft between two solid bodies of rock, where, 

 it would seem, the two walls, in settling to- 

 gether for their lifelong union, had broken and 

 crumbled, and formed between them a sort of 

 crack, filled with unattached bowlders, with 

 crevices and passages, sometimes perpendicular, 

 sometimes horizontal. Around and through 

 these was a zigzag road to the top, evidently as 

 familiar to that atom of a bird as Broadway is 

 to some of her fellow-creatures, and more easily 

 traversed, for she had it all to herself. 



The wren flew about three feet to the first step 

 of her upward passage, then ran and clambered 

 nearly all the rest of the way, darting behind jut- 

 ting rocks and coming out the other side, occa- 

 sionally flying a foot or two ; now pausing as if 

 for an observation, jerking her tail upright and 

 letting it drop back, wren-fashion, then starting 

 afresh, and so going on till she reached the level 

 of her nest, when she flew across the (apparent) 

 forty or fifty feet, directly into the crevice. In 

 a minute she came out, and without an instant's 

 pause flung herself down again. 



I watched this curious process very closely. 

 The wren seemed to close her wings ; certainly 

 she did not use them, nor were they in the least 



