36 WHERE ROLLS THE OREGON 



wild things I have ever seen. In the high rim 

 rock ledges of the Blitzen River valley I watched 

 several flocks of the big, black birds. Two speci- 

 mens were shot for their skins, and for what we 

 could learn of their feeding habits from the con- 

 tents of their gizzards. One of the birds fell at my 

 feet, his strong, wild spirit gone, and only the 

 black form left, with its powerful beak and wise, 

 crafty face. But even this body I took up and 

 touched with a feeling of wonder and something 

 akin to awe. 



Surely he is too wise a bird to be driven from 

 his inheritance because of fear of us. The grizzly 

 bears come and go at will in the Yellowstone 

 National Park because they know we mean no 

 harm. The fierce spirit of the beast is led about 

 by gentleness and by good faith, kept inviolate. 

 If the bear, why not the raven 2 



John Muir, speaking of the Clarke crow of the 

 high Sierra, a relation of the raven, says : " He 

 dwells far back on the high stormbeaten margin 

 of the forest, where the mountain pine, juniper, 

 and hemlock grow wide apart on glacier pave- 

 ments and domes and rough crumbling ridges, 

 and the dwarf pine makes a low crinkled growth 



