180 WHERE ROLLS THE OREGON 



I sat down on the edge of the slide to rest, 

 feeling that I had had my labor for my pains -— ' 

 infinitely more than that, the fierce and fearful 

 glory of the heights — but not a cony. There 

 could be no excuse for life up here. There are 

 living forms in the uttermost depths of the sea, 

 as if thrust down by the weight of water; men in 

 their senses dwell far in the Arctic ice, and even 

 go out into the sagebrush desert to make a home, 

 impelled by I know not what. Strange, unac- 

 countable shifts these, yet not so unaccountable 

 as the choice of such a rock-slide as this for a 

 dwelling. For this is the deliberate choice of 

 a race. Only at these heights do the conies dwell, 

 only in such slides of broken rock. As for the 

 stork, the fir trees are her house. The high hills 

 are a refuge for the wild goats ; and the rocks for 

 the conies. But this particular slide, while not so 

 lofty as some among the Colorado peaks, was un- 

 usually bleak and barren, I am sure. There was 

 almost no fodder in sight, nothing upon which 

 a cony could live long, to say nothing of a 

 colony of conies. 



Could this be the place? I must make sure 

 before settling down to the watch, for when in 



