all
cedar,--a bright, animated, eloquent song, but without the richness
and magic of the song of the tropical species. We hitched our horses,
and followed the bird up as it flew from tree to tree. The President
was as eager to see and hear it as I was. It seemed very shy, and we
only caught glimpses of it. In form and color it much resembles its
West India cousin, and suggests our catbird. It ceased to sing when we
pursued it. It is a bird found only in the wilder and higher parts of
the Rockies. My impression was that its song did not quite merit the
encomiums that have been pronounced upon it.

At this point, I saw amid the rocks my first and only Rocky Mountain
woodchucks, and, soon after we had resumed our journey, our first blue
grouse,--a number of them like larger partridges. Occasionally we
would come upon black-tailed deer, standing or lying down in the
bushes, their large ears at attention being the first thing to catch
the eye. They would often allow us to pass within a few rods of them
without showing alarm. Elk horns were scattered all over this part of
the Park, and we passed several old carcasses of dead elk that had
probably died a natural death.

In a grassy bottom at the foot of a steep hill, while the President
and I were dismounted, and noting the pleasing picture which our pack
train of fifteen or twenty mules made filing along the side of a steep
grassy slope,--a picture which he has preserved in his late volume,
"Out-Door Pastimes of an American Hunter,"--our attention was
attracted by plaintive, musical, bird-like chirps that rose from the
grass about us. I was almost certain it was made by a bird; the
President was of like opinion; and we kicked about in the tufts of
grass, hoping to flush the bird. Now here, now there, arose this
sharp, but bird-like note. Finally, we found that it was made by a
species of gopher, whose holes we soon discovered. What its specific
name is I do not know, but it should be called the singing gopher.

Our destination this day was a camp on Cottonwood Creek, near
"Hell-Roaring Creek." As we made our way in the afternoon along a
broad, open, grassy valley, I saw a horseman come galloping over the
hill to our right, starting up a band of elk as he came; riding across
the plain, he wheeled his horse, and, with the military salute, joined
our party. He proved to be a government scout, called the "Duke of
Hell Roaring,"--an educated officer from the Austrian army, who,