194 TEXAS AND ARIZONA 



appears, although, if I had brought the five- 

 cents' worth away with me, I might, for aught I 

 positively know, have been called upon for duty. 

 The rights of American laboring men must by 

 all means be looked after. To think what ruin 

 might befall this great republic if its people, with 

 all the rest of their freedom, should in some fit 

 of madness insist upon the freedom to buy and 

 seU! 



That was three days ago. Since then I have 

 been to Juarez twice, pushing a little farther 

 each time into the country southward. On both 

 visits I found lark buntings in plenty. They 

 move about — and sit about — in peculiarly 

 dense flocks. One such, that I saw this morn- 

 ing, might have numbered a thousand birds. If 

 disturbed, they rise in a cloud, and on coming to 

 rest again every one seems to desire a perch at 

 the very tip of a bush. As they must all alight 

 in the same one or two bunches of scrub, how- 

 ever, though there are hundreds of others exactly 

 like them all about, there are by no means top 

 seats enough to go round, and there is a deal of 

 preliminary hovering, accompanied by a grand 

 confusion of formless twittering, during which — 

 the white patches of the quivering wings and out- 

 spread tails showing through — the spectacle is 

 most animated and pleasing. 



