mile
of a dear friend, now no more) a canary bird from its cage. The wild
geranium was already showing its pink stem and scarlet-edged leaves,
themselves almost gorgeous enough to pass for flowers; the periwinkle,
with its wreaths of shining foliage, was hanging in garlands over the
precipitous descent; and the lily of the valley, the fragrant woodroof,
and the silvery wild garlick, were just peeping from the earth in the
most sheltered nooks. Charmed to find myself surrounded by so much
beauty, I had scrambled, with much ado, to the top of the woody cliff,
(no other word can convey an idea of its precipitous abruptness,)
and was vainly attempting to trace by my eye the actual course of the
spring, which was, by the clearest evidence of sound, gushing from
the fount many feet below me; when a peculiar whistle of delight, (for
whistling was to Dick, although no ordinary proficient in our common
tongue, another language,) and a tremendous scrambling amongst the
bushes, gave token that my faithful attendant had met with something
as agreeable to his fancy, as the primroses and orchises had proved to
mine.

Guided by a repetition of the whistle, I soon saw my trusty adherent
spanning the chasm like a Colossus, one foot on one bank, the other on
the opposite--each of which appeared to me to be resting, so to say,
on nothing--tugging away at a long twig that grew on the brink of the
precipice, and exceedingly likely to resolve the inquiry as to the
source of the Loddon, by plumping souse into the fountain-head. I, of
course, called out to warn him; and he equally, of course, went on with
his labour, without paying the slightest attention to my caution. On the
contrary, having possessed himself of one straight slender twig, which,
to my great astonishment, he wound round his fingers, and deposited in
his pocket, as one should do by a bit of pack-thread, he apparently,
during the operation, caught sight of another. Testifying his delight by
a second whistle, which, having his knife in his mouth, one wonders how
he could accomplish; and scrambling with the fearless daring of a monkey
up the perpendicular bank, supported by strings of ivy, or ledges
of roots, and clinging by hand and foot to the frail bramble or the
slippery moss, leaping like a squirrel from bough to bough, and yet, by
happy boldness, escaping all danger, he attained his object as easily
as if he had been upon level ground. Three, four, five times was the
knowi