ely cautious.
Every time that the little sitter went off for food she met him
somewhere, and he came back with her. Occasionally he took a peep at the
treasures himself, but he never entered by her roundabout way. He always
flew directly in from above.

Ten days passed away in this quiet manner, my attention divided between
the birds, the dragonflies, and the clacking grasshopper, who went
jerking himself about with a noise like a subdued lawn-mower, giving one
the impression that his machinery was out of order.

The tenth day of sitting we had a south wind. That does not seem very
terrible, but a south wind on the shore of the Great Salt Lake is
something to be dreaded.

"A wind that is dizzy with whirling play,
A dozen winds that have lost their way."

It starts up suddenly, and comes with such force as to snap off the
leaves of trees, and even the tender twigs of shrubs. As it waxes
powerful it bends great trees, and tries the strength of roofs and
chimneys. From the first breath it rolls up tremendous clouds of dust,
that come and come, and never cease, long after it seems as if every
particle in that rainless land must have been driven by. It is in the
"Great Basin," and the south wind is the broom that sweeps it clean. Not
only dust does the south wind bring, but heat, terrible and
suffocating, like that of a fiery furnace. Before it the human and the
vegetable worlds shrink and wither, and birds and beasts are little
seen.

Such a day was the birthday in the little nest in the raspberries, and
on my usual morning call I found four featherless birdlings, with beaks
already yawning for food. Every morning, of course, I looked at the
babies, but it was not till the eighth day of their life that I found
their eyes open. Before this they opened their mouths when I jarred the
nest in parting the branches, thus showing they were not asleep, but did
not open their eyes, and I was forced to conclude that they were not yet
unclosed.

Sometimes the daily visit was made under difficulties, and I was
unpleasantly surprised when I stepped upon the grass of the little lawn
that I was obliged to cross. The grass looked as usual; the evening
before we had been sitting upon it. But all night a stream had been
silently spreading itself upon it, and my hasty step was into water two
or three inches deep, which swished up in a small fountain and filled a
low shoe in an instant.

This is one of the idiosyncrasies of irrigat