186 TEXAS AND AKIZONA 



sketch, but it made a glorious sixth in my list of 

 the day's findings. I shall see more of it, I trust, 

 when I reach the territory to which it more dis- 

 tinctively belongs. 



One other piece of good fortune I must not 

 fail to chronicle, though I have omitted to do so 

 in its proper place. Late in the forenoon, after 

 I had given the bluebirds up for lost, I discov- 

 ered them sitting, the six together, a lovely com- 

 pany, among the leaves of a cottonwood tree, as 

 if they had taken shelter from the wind ; and the 

 book's description was borne out : their throats 

 were " purplish blue." 



The nine hours — for so long the embargo lasted 

 — passed all too soon. If I could have had two 

 or three hours of free wandering, who knows 

 what other bright names I might have brought 

 back ? I went so far, indeed, as to inquire of the 

 postmaster and variety storekeeper — a genial, 

 smiling German — whether there was any place 

 in the neighborhood where a stranger coidd be 

 put up for the night ; but he thought not, and 

 advised me, not at all inhospitably, to stick to the 

 train. And possibly, after all, I had found more 

 rather than less for being compelled to beat a 

 small space over again and again, instead of 

 ranging farther afield. At aU events, I had dis- 

 covered a new use for ornithological enthusiasm, 



