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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



© 190; \\'illiam L. Finley and H. T. Bolilman 



A RUFOUS HUMMING BIRD TAKING LUNCH ON THE FLY 



He dropped into the garden like a shooting star. By our filling the flower cups with sweetened 

 water, he was lured to the geranium and "shot" by the camera man. 



saw the bands returning. How these 

 sights kindled my imagination, these pro- 

 cessions, so full of mj'stery, that moved 

 up and down tlie highway of the clouds ! 



The land where these flocks lived lured 

 me Hke "castles in Spain." It was a lure 

 I have never forgotten. 



One spring we followed the trails across 

 the southern tip of the Cascade Range 

 from Ashland, Oregon. The morning of 

 the fourth day we came down the eastern 

 sIo]:)e to the edge of a ridge that over- 

 looked the basin of the Lower Klamath. 



Stretching to the east and south, almost 

 beyond the limit of vision, lay the marshes. 

 The Klamath River threaded its way in 

 and out of the green maze. Beyond were 

 the Lower Klamath and Tule or Rhett 

 Lakes, cutting at the lower end into the 

 lava beds of northern California. To the 

 northeast lay the great basin of the Upper 

 Klamath. 



Here lay the land of my dreams. After 

 nearly 20 years of waiting, I was looking 

 out over this place of mystery that lay far 

 beyond the northern rim of my home 

 hills. 



From the distance where I stood the 

 marsh was a level sea of green. As I dis- 

 covered afterward, it was absolutely de- 

 ceptive as to its real character. The ocean 

 surface tells nothing of its thousand 

 hidden wonders ; so the marsh. The plain 

 yields to the plow, the forest to the ax, 

 but the immeasured stretch of these tules 

 is the same as when Lewis and Clark 

 blazed a trail into the Oregon forest. 



I hope the marsh will defy civilization 

 to the end. The trapper and the hunter 

 have plied the streams and the water of 

 the lake itself, but the tules lie untouched, 

 a maze forbidding, almost impenetrable. 



The lure of the tule marsh was in its 

 wildness. It is the ancestral nesting 

 ground of many species of wild fowl. 



We camped at the edge of the marsh 

 that night, and early the next morning 

 bailed out an old trapper's boat and pad- 

 dled slowly down the right bank of the 

 tule-lined river. 



There were many sounds. The Red- 

 winged and Yellow-headed Blackbirds 

 fluttered in and out and swung on the 

 bending tops of the tall cane. A male 



