s
to pull so heavy a load with no other harness than a chain and a
crooked piece of wood on their necks, and how they could sway so
obediently to right and left past roadside trees and stumps when the
driver said _haw_ and _gee_. At Mr. Gray's house, father again left us
for a few days to build a shanty on the quarter-section he had
selected four or five miles to the westward. In the mean while we
enjoyed our freedom as usual, wandering in the fields and meadows,
looking at the trees and flowers, snakes and birds and squirrels. With
the help of the nearest neighbors the little shanty was built in less
than a day after the rough bur-oak logs for the walls and the
white-oak boards for the floor and roof were got together.

To this charming hut, in the sunny woods, overlooking a flowery
glacier meadow and a lake rimmed with white water-lilies, we were
hauled by an ox-team across trackless carex swamps and low rolling
hills sparsely dotted with round-headed oaks. Just as we arrived at
the shanty, before we had time to look at it or the scenery about it,
David and I jumped down in a hurry off the load of household goods,
for we had discovered a blue jay's nest, and in a minute or so we were
up the tree beside it, feasting our eyes on the beautiful green eggs
and beautiful birds,--our first memorable discovery. The handsome
birds had not seen Scotch boys before and made a desperate
screaming as if we were robbers like themselves; though we left the
eggs untouched, feeling that we were already beginning to get rich,
and wondering how many more nests we should find in the grand sunny
woods. Then we ran along the brow of the hill that the shanty stood
on, and down to the meadow, searching the trees and grass tufts and
bushes, and soon discovered a bluebird's and a woodpecker's nest, and
began an acquaintance with the frogs and snakes and turtles in the
creeks and springs.

[Illustration: MUIR'S LAKE (FOUNTAIN LAKE) AND THE GARDEN MEADOW
Sketched from the roof of the Bur-Oak Shanty]

This sudden plash into pure wildness--baptism in Nature's warm
heart--how utterly happy it made us! Nature streaming into us,
wooingly teaching her wonderful glowing lessons, so unlike the dismal
grammar ashes and cinders so long thrashed into us. Here without
knowing it we still were at school; every wild lesson a love lesson,
not whipped but charmed into us. Oh, that glorious Wisconsin
wilderness! Everything new and pure in the very prime of th