ense of ownership and seclusion
from all the world, I first paused in the neighborhood of the small
cliff-dweller whose music had charmed me, and suggested the enchanting
idea of spending a day with him in his retreat. I seated myself opposite
the forbidding wall where the bird had hovered, apparently so much at
home. All was silent; no singer to be heard, no wren to be seen. The
sun, which turned the tops of the Pillars to gold as I entered, crept
down inch by inch till it beat upon my head and clothed the rock in a
red glory. Still no bird appeared. High above the top of the rocks, in
the clear thin air of the mountain, a flock of swallows wheeled and
sported, uttering an unfamiliar two-note call; butterflies fluttered
irresolute, looking frivolous enough in the presence of the eternal
hills; gauzy-winged dragonflies zigzagged to and fro, their intense blue
gleaming in the sun. The hour for visitors drew near, and my precious
solitude was fast slipping away.

Slowly then I walked up the canyon, looking for my singer. Humming-birds
were hovering before the bare rock as before a flower, perhaps sipping
the water-drops that here and there trickled down, and large hawks, like
mere specks against the blue, were soaring, but no wren could I see. At
last I reached the end, with its waterfall fountain. Close within this
ceaseless sprinkle, on a narrow ledge that was never dry, was placed--I
had almost said grew--a bird's nest; whose, it were needless to ask. One
American bird, and one only, chooses perpetual dampness for his
environment,--the American dipper, or water ouzel.

Here I paused to muse over the spray-soaked cradle on the rock. In this
strange place had lived a bird so eccentric that he prefers not only to
nest under a continuous shower, through which he must constantly pass,
but to spend most of his life in, not on the water. Shall we call him a
fool or a philosopher? Is the water a protection, and from what? Has
"damp, moist unpleasantness" no terrors for his fine feathers? Where now
were the nestlings whose lullaby had been the music of the falling
waters? Down that sheer rock, perhaps into the water at its foot, had
been the first flight of the ouzel baby. Why had I come too late to see
him?

But the hours were passing, while I had not seen, and, what was worse,
had not heard my first charmer, the canyon wren. Leaving these perplexing
conundrums unsolved, I turned slowly back down the walk, to resume my
sear