and fortitude. Hour in and hour out the faithful 

 kingfisher flies from the nest to the fishing-ground, 

 bringing each time a small fish. He is a primitive 

 and industrious fisherman who gets an honest living 

 by his skill and supports his family, yet he is under 

 ban, while the dilettante whips the stream for his 

 pleasure. The hoarse rattle of the kingfisher is an 

 altogether barbarous chant with which he beguiles 

 himself as with a hunting song. His is an austere 

 temperament with no room for melody. But that 

 he returns every year to the same nest — the an- 

 cestral hall — is evidence of some more domestic 

 and kindly trait in his charadter. 



This nest is an excavation in the sand, high in 

 a bluff, and is perhaps five feet deep, — a true cave, 

 and its inmate a cave-dweller. We have thus both 

 cave- and cliff-dwellers among us — primitive states 

 of man still exemplified by birds. The cave-dweller 

 had something in common with the kingfisher, 

 which led him to burrow in the earth for a home. 



That was truly an aboriginal abode which I 

 came upon in the spruce woods in a region of 

 perpetual twilight. The somber spruce was re- 

 lieved only by some veteran yellow birches and by 

 ghostly patches of false miterwort on a projediing 



32 



