THE DESCHUTES RAVEN 35 



As for the great condor, he is passing from the 

 peaks of his mountain home because he is being 

 wantonly shot. His great spread of wing is a 

 mark for the hunter. He is being shot for the 

 mark's sake, his carcass left to rot where it falls ; 

 while from the skies of the Sierra are snatched 

 forever the most thrilling wings that shall ever 

 coast the clouds. 



It seems certain that the eagles and the greater 

 hawks must pass, as being unfit for a civilized 

 scheme of things. But the owls and the lesser 

 hawks should remain, and along with them the 

 wilder, shyer, more suspicious birds like the raven. 



Shall he need to be educated ? Or is nothing 

 more necessary than that we show him our good 

 faith ? It may be that I have misunderstood his 

 mind toward me. Perhaps I read things into his 

 character that I found in a book, — 



" Once upon a midnight dreary," — 



when I was a child. Perhaps I have Poe's raven 

 and the raven of the Deschutes canon mixed 

 in my mind. But I watched him in the desert 

 rim-rock country, and there he seemed to be the 

 most aloof, the most alien in his attitude, of all 



