OUT OF DOORS WITH NATURE. 323 



che, as lie sweeps startled past with, streaming feathers, and 

 lance, and bow, upon some bloody foray into the distant set- 

 tlements ; and the mountain maurader hates the snowy bird 

 for many a cunning stratagem of his that clamorous warning 

 has even foiled. 



But little care the proud birds for his hate ; their wary 

 watchfulness is a match for the Indian's cunning. The 

 Mexican, too, with his fell assassin air and hidden knife, 

 feels his coward heart leap to his throat at that loud chal- 

 lenge, and he turns him on his robber-trail, like the sneaking 

 wolf, to look behind him for the avenger coming ! 



Strange sights and sounds these guardians of the prairies 

 have witnessed ; as, with slow and measured tread, they have 

 paced their stately rounds. 



They are as much a part of the scenery of the prairies as 

 the Ostrich is of that of the great desert ; and if we only 

 knew so much of the past story of the waste homes of 

 buried empire as the pairies beyond doubt were as we do 

 even of the home of the Ostrich, what strange and grand as- 

 sociations with the majestic era their progenitors had lived 

 through, the sight of this noble bird, amidst such scenes, 

 would call up ? As it is, they are singularly wild and fasci- 

 nating. 



You are seldom out of sight of the Sand-hill Crane in 

 these regions more than a day at a time. When the deer 

 has retreated to the shelter of the timber, the buffalo moved 

 further to the west, and the wolves have followed in their 

 trails, leaving the plains tenantless, they are still enlivened 

 by the numberless flocks of these birds either the Blue or 

 Canada Crane, as it is called, or the White. 



And yet such tender and magnificent associations are all 

 called up by a single stroke of the magical and unregarded 

 pencil of our lowly mother ! Who thinks of her simplicity 

 when morbidly groping for miracles amidst the pompous 

 wrecks of humbled human art in poor degraded Rome ? 

 Who thinks of her amidst the storied frescoes of " Beautiful 



