IN OLD SAN ANTONIO 163 



name to be,^ though I may. err in the spelling), 

 with lower shrubs of different sorts, mostly- 

 thorny, scattered loosely among them, the whole 

 constituting (or so I suppose) what is known in 

 this part of the world as chaparral; which is 

 very like what in our Northern country we speak 

 of, less respectfully, as " scrub." 



It is a godsend to a man on my errand, that 

 chaparral, as it grows about San Antonio, at all 

 events, is not a dense thicket. It can be walked 

 through or ridden through in all directions with 

 perfect ease, though one cannot keep a straight 

 course for more than a rod or two together. 



I had been strolling over exactly such a hill 

 half an hour before, circling one cluster of shrubs 

 after another, opera-glass in hand, on the alert 

 for any bird that might show itself (it was likely 

 as not to be a stranger), when aU at once — how 

 it came about I shall never be able to tell — there, 

 just before me on the ground, twenty or thirty 

 feet away, stood one of the birds that I had 

 most desired to see in this novel Southwestern 

 world — a road-runner. I have found some puz- 

 zles since my arrival at San Antonio, three days 

 ago, but this was not one of them. As our good 

 common saying is, the fellow looked " as natural 



1 Vachellia Farnesiana, sparingly naturalized in Florida, 

 where it goes by the name of Opopanax. 



