OUT OF DOORS WITH NATURE. 
323 
die, as lie sweeps startled past with streaming feathers, and 
lance, and bow, upon some bloody foray into the distant set- 
tlements ; and the mountain maurader hates the snowy bird 
for many a cunning stratagem of his that clamorous warning- 
has even foiled. 
But little care the proud birds for his hate ; their wary 
watchfulness is a match for the Indian's cunning. The 
Mexican, too, with his fell assassin air and hidden knife, 
feels his coward heart leap to his throat at that loud chal- 
lenge, and he turns him on his robber-trail, like the sneaking 
wolf, to look behind him for the avenger coming ! 
Strange sights and sounds these guardians of the prairies 
have witnessed ; as, with slow and measured tread, they have 
paced their stately rounds. 
They are as much a part of the scenery of the prairies as 
the Ostrich is of that of the great desert ; and if we only 
knew so much of the past story of the waste homes of 
buried empire — as the pairies beyond doubt were — as we do 
even of the home of the Ostrich, what strange and grand as- 
sociations with the majestic era their progenitors had lived 
through, the sight of this noble bird, amidst such scenes, 
would call up ? As it is, they are singularly wild and fasci- 
nating. 
You are seldom out of sight of the Sand-hill Crane in 
these regions more than a day at a time. When the deer 
has retreated to the shelter of the timber, the buffalo moved 
further to the west, and the wolves have followed in their 
trails, leaving the plains tenantless, they are still enlivened 
by the numberless flocks of these birds — either the Blue or 
Canada Crane, as it is called, or the White. 
And yet such tender and magnificent associations are all 
called up by a single stroke of the magical and unregarded 
pencil of our lowly mother ! Who thinks of her simplicity 
when morbidly groping for miracles amidst the pompous 
wrecks of humbled human art in poor degraded Eome ? 
Who thinks of her amidst the storied frescoes of " Beautiful 
