52 CAMPING WITH THE PRESIDENT 



ten or a dozen miles away, and in reaching it passed 

 over much of the ground the President had traversed 

 the day before. As we came to a wild, rocky place 

 above a deep chasm of the river, with a few scattered 

 pine trees, the President said, "It was right here thai 

 I heard that strange bird song." We paused a moment. 

 "And there it is now," he exclaimed. 



Sure enough, there was the solitaire singing from 

 the top of a small cedar, — a bright, animated, eloquent 

 song, but without the richness and magic of the song 

 of the tropical species. We hitched our horses, and 

 followed the bird up as it flew from tree to tree. The 

 President was as eager to see and hear it as I was. It 

 seemed very shy, and we only caught glimpses of it. 

 In form and color it much resembles its West India 

 cousin, and suggests our catbird. It ceased to sing 

 when we pursued it. It is a bird found only in the 

 wilder and higher parts of the Rockies. My impression 

 was that its song did not quite merit the encomiums 

 that have been pronounced upon it. 



At this point, I saw amid the rocks my first and 

 only Rocky Mountain woodchucks, and, soon after 

 we had resumed our journey, our first blue grouse, — 

 a number of them like larger partridges. Occasionally 

 we would come upon black-tailed deer, standing or 

 lying down in the bushes, their large ears at attention 

 being the first thing to catch the eye. They would 

 often allow us to pass within a few rods of them with- 

 out showing alarm. Elk horns were scattered all over 

 this part of the Park, and we passed several old car- 

 casses of dead elk that had probably died a natural 

 death. 



In a grassy bottom at the foot of a steep hill, while 



