Coues at His First Army Post 5 



no exultation over his victory beyond a bright smile and a clap on one 

 shoulder, with the friendly question, "Am I not right?" or "Is that not 

 so?" Although Coues gained a prominent position in various branches 

 of natural science, and in literature as well, he was, above all, an orni- 

 thologist. From his earliest youth he loved birds, and delighted to talk 

 about them and argue the various questions that a discussion of them 

 gave rise to. His mind was always dwelling upon them, and he never 

 lost an opportunity to speak of his favorite subject. I remember once 

 when, arriving in Washington during his student days and seeking him 

 at his residence, I was directed to a certain hall where a dancing class to 

 which he belonged usually met and, on sending up my name, he came 

 bounding down the stairs two steps at a time with a cheery "Hello, D. G. ! 

 Glad to see you!" and almost immediately took up a certain subject on 

 birds that we had had a discussion about in our correspondence a short 

 time before. It was the absorbing passion, always foremost in his thoughts. 

 Personally attractive in his mature years, Coues was no less so in his 

 youth, and although our mutual interest in the one common absorbing 

 pursuit of our lives may have brought us more closely together, yet even 

 those who were without the special love of nature's works to afford a 

 breadth of sympathy with him, and who knew him in his youth, could 

 not fail to recognize the traits I, on another occasion, have attributed to 

 him in his boyhood, of being "frank, simple, honest and confiding, with a 

 boy's generous impulses and the glorious enthusiasm of the ornithologist 

 manifest in speech and action." 



Coues at His First Army Post 



BY CAPT. C A. CURTIS, U. S. A. (Retired) 



On the 12th day of June, 1864, I reported for duty as acting quarter- 

 master of a mixed column of infantry and cavalry, which had been ordered 

 to rendezvous at the town of Los Pinos, New Mexico, in preparation for 

 a march to Prescott, Arizona. 



This command was composed of one company of regular infantry, a 

 troop each of California and New Mexican cavalry, and was intended to 

 act as an escort to a supply train going to provision a new fort near 

 the Arizona town above mentioned. 



This march was to be for fully five hundred miles through a hostile 

 Indian region, where the Navaho and Apache ranged, and we were 

 cautioned from departmental headquarters to hold ourselves in constant 

 readiness to repel attack. 



To be more explicit and show what a prize our train would have 

 proved to a successful Indian foray, I will mention that the supply train 



