A MAY VISIT TO MOOSILAUKE 21 



unearthly beauty, was less a work of pure en- 

 chantment, I thought, than this detached, fleecy- 

 looking piece of aerial whiteness, cloud stuff or 

 dream stuff, yet whiter than any cloud, lying at 

 rest yonder, almost at my own level, against the 

 deep blue of the forenoon sky. 



All this while, the birds, which had been few 

 from the start, — black-throated greens and 

 blues, Blackburnians, oven-birds, a bay-breast, 

 blue yeUow-backs, siskins, Swainson thrushes, 

 a blue-headed vireo, winter wrens, rose-breasted 

 grosbeaks, chickadees, grouse, and snowbirds, — 

 had grown fewer and fewer, till at last, among 

 these stunted, low-branched spruces, with the 

 snow under them, there was little else but an 

 occasional myrtle warbler (" The brave myrtle," 

 I kept saying to myself), with its musical, soft 

 trDl, so out of place, — the voice of peaceful 

 green valleys rather than of stormy mountain- 

 tops, — yet so welcome. Once a gray-cheeked 

 thrush called just above me. These impenetra- 

 ble upper woods are the gray-cheeks' summer 

 home, — a worthy one; but I heard nothing of 

 their wild music, and doubted whether they had 

 yet arrived in full summer force. 



It was past eleven o'clock when I came out at 

 the clearing by the woodpile, with half the world 

 before me. From this point it was but a little 



