MY FIRST CONDOR 



like to see one myself." Dear me ! I thought, is 

 it so bad as that ? You might as well be looking 

 for the dodo, his tone seemed to imply. But anon 

 hope sprang up again. Such birds there are, I 

 said to myself, and men have seen them. And 

 why not I? So I continued to look heavenward. 

 But the result justified the collector's word. A 

 good man he was, a Boston man, and did me 

 many a favor. Probably the mountains were not 

 sufficiently high and inaccessible to suit the 

 condor's purpose. 



Then I returned to San Diego, and moved 

 northward to Pasadena. Here, if anywhere, my 

 desire might possibly be gratified. My window 

 looked into the Sierra Madre Mountains ; Mount 

 Lowe, some six thousand feet high, was the 

 nearest of them ; I would go to its top and gaze 

 about me. 



So said, so done. The way was made easy. A 

 street-car took me from the hotel door to Rubio 

 Cafion ; thence a cable-car lifted me almost 

 straight upward to the top of Echo Mountain, so 

 called, a spur of Mount Lowe, and there an ordi- 

 nary open trolley-car was waiting to convey me 

 to the Alpine Tavern, at the foot of the moun- 

 tain cone. A marvelous ride that was in the 

 trolley-car, over a road hung against the precipi- 

 tous side of the mountain, with numberless sharp 

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