s mimicking the call of the cat-bird. Down in the
brush by the river was the happy little water-ousel, as cheerful in
his way as the dumpy-built musical canyon wren. The Mexican crossbill
appeared to have little fear of the migrating Northern shrike. There
were warblers, cardinals, tanagers, waxwings, song-sparrows, and
chickadees. Flitting droves of bush-tit dropped on to slender weeds,
scarcely bending them, so light were they. Then in a minute they were
gone. In the swamps or marshes were countless red-winged blackbirds.

The most unobservant person could not help but see birds here. I had
expected to find water-fowl, for the Colorado delta is their breeding
place; but I little expected to find so many land birds in the trees
along the river. Instead of having a lonesome trip, every minute was
filled with something new, interesting, and beautiful and I was having
the time of my life.

I camped that night at Picachio,--meaning the Pocket,--eighty miles
below Ahrenburg. This is still a mining district, but the pockets
containing nuggets of gold which gave the place its name seem to have
all been discovered at the time of the boom; the mining now done is in
quartz ledges up on the sides of grim, mineral-stained hills. I was
back in the land of rock again, a land showing the forces of nature in
high points of foreign rock, shot up from beneath, penetrating the
crust of the earth and in a few places emerging for a height of two
hundred feet from the river itself, forming barren islands and great
circling whirlpools, as large as that in the Niagara gorge, and I
thought, for a while, almost as powerful. In one I attempted to keep
to the short side of the river, but found it a difficult job, and one
which took three times as long to accomplish as if I had allowed
myself to be carried around the circle.

Then the land became level again, and the Chocolate Mountains were
seen to the west. A hard wind blew across the stream, so that I had to
drop my sunshade to prevent being carried against the rocks. This day
I passed a large irrigation canal leading off from the stream, the
second such on the entire course of the Colorado. Here a friendly
ranchman called to me from the shore and warned me of the Laguna dam
some distance below. He said the water was backed up for three miles,
so I would know when I was approaching it.

In spite of this warning, I nearly came to grief at the dam. The wind
had shifted until it blew directly