HUNTING IN THE SELKIRKS^ 155 



concernedly into the swift water. Anon he 

 emerged, stood on another stone, and trilled 

 a few bars, though it was late in the season 

 for singing; and then dove again into the 

 stream. I gazed at him eagerly; for this 

 strange, pretty water-thrush is to me one of 

 the most attractive and interesting birds to be 

 found in the gorges of the great Rockies. Its 

 haunts are romantically beautiful, for it always 

 dwells beside and in the swift-flowing mount- 

 ain brooks; it has a singularly sweet song; 

 and its ways render it a marked bird at once, 

 for tliougii looking much like a sober-colored, 

 ordinary woodland thrush, it spends half its 

 time under the water, walking along the bot- 

 tom, swimming and diving, and flitting through 

 as well as over the cataracts. 



In a minute or two the shrew caught my 

 eye again. It got into a little shallow eddy 

 and caught a minute fish, which it carried to 

 a half-sunken stone and greedily devoured, 

 tugging voraciously at it as it held it down 

 with its paws. Then its evil genius drove 

 it into a small puddle alongside the brook, 

 where I instantly pounced on and slew it ; for 

 I knew a friend in the Smithsonian at Wash- 

 ington who would have coveted it greatly. 

 It was a soft, pretty creature, dark above, 

 snow-white below, with a very long tail. I 

 turned the skin inside out and put a bent 

 twig in, that it might dry ; while Ammal, who 

 had been intensely interested in the chase and 

 capture, meditatively shook his head and 

 said "wagh." unable to fathom the white 

 man's medicine. However, my labor came to 

 nought, for that evening I laid the skin out on 



