you, is not a little disturbing. But my big bay did his part well, and
I did not lose my head or my nerve, as we cautiously made our way
along the narrow path on the side of the steep gorge, with a foaming
torrent rushing along at its foot, nor yet when we forded the rocky
and rapid Yellowstone. A misstep or a stumble on the part of my steed,
and probably the first bubble of my confidence would have been
shivered at once; but this did not happen, and in due time we reached
the group of tents that formed the President's camp.

The situation was delightful,--no snow, scattered pine trees, a
secluded valley, rocky heights, and the clear, ample, trouty waters of
the Yellowstone. The President was not in camp. In the morning he had
stated his wish to go alone into the wilderness. Major Pitcher very
naturally did not quite like the idea, and wished to send an orderly
with him.

"No," said the President. "Put me up a lunch, and let me go alone. I
will surely come back."

And back he surely came. It was about five o'clock when he came
briskly down the path from the east to the camp. It came out that he
had tramped about eighteen miles through a very rough country. The day
before, he and the major had located a band of several hundred elk on
a broad, treeless hillside, and his purpose was to find those elk, and
creep up on them, and eat his lunch under their very noses. And this
he did, spending an hour or more within fifty yards of them. He came
back looking as fresh as when he started, and at night, sitting before
the big camp fire, related his adventure, and talked with his usual
emphasis and copiousness of many things. He told me of the birds he
had seen or heard; among them he had heard one that was new to him.
From his description I told him I thought it was Townsend's solitaire,
a bird I much wanted to see and hear. I had heard the West India
solitaire,--one of the most impressive songsters I ever heard,--and I
wished to compare our Western form with it.

The next morning we set out for our second camp, ten or a dozen miles
away, and in reaching it passed over much of the ground the President
had traversed the day before. As we came to a wild, rocky place above
a deep chasm of the river, with a few scattered pine trees, the
President said, "It was right here that I heard that strange bird
song." We paused a moment. "And there it is now!" he exclaimed.

Sure enough, there was the solitaire singing from the top of a sm