MY many questions caused me to be set down as a “tender-foot" the moment I reached a certain mining-camp in Southern Arizona. Amusement or disgust was depicted upon the countenance of every miner that I questioned, and both, in one unhappy instance, when I asked if the San Pedro River was an irrigation ditch. This blunder demonstrated that I had all to learn, and from that moment I pursued a course of quiet investigation. Of mining-camps in general nothing need here be said. Probably this particular one has no distinctive feature. Let it suffice that the surroundings, and not the camp, called me so far from home, and it was to them that I turned as soon as possible. Out of the village there was but one of two things for the rambler to do: to follow this or that tortuous valley, or climb to some one of the innumerable hills, as anything akin to a prairie was beyond easy walking-distance.

I reached Bisbee at noon, July 8, and climbed a high hill early the next morning.

There is a never-failing charm in turning into new paths; to have opened to you a new vista; to enter for the first time the bounds of a new territory. Fatigue is set at defiance. One's old self slinks into the background. We are mentally born again. What though the region was here a desert, so long had it been since a refreshing rain had fallen. The oaks were brave of heart and held their leafy crowns aloft, cacti were in bloom, birds sang, butterflies flitted in the brilliant sunshine, and snow-white clouds floated from peak to peak of the distant mountains. At last I was in a wilderness, with not a familiar object about me, and it was with honest pleasure that I handled rocks, plants, and many a living creature of which I knew not the name. It was sufficient merely to recognize their position in the grand scheme of organic nature.

For long there had been no rain, and the first impression was that of wonder that so great a variety of animals should choose so arid a region, when capable of migrating to others more inviting. Here were birds in abundance, nesting in scattered oaks, and finding abundant food-supply among the heated rocks and repellent cacti. It is true, I was told that the rainy season should have commenced before this, and that the birds simply anticipated the coming change; but could they not have waited for it? In the East we certainly associate abundance of animal life with the constant presence of water, and never an upland field so teeming with creatures of every kind as the low-lying marshes with their ranker vegetation. The river valleys within reach of these Arizonan hills have not much to commend them: still, that they were not over-crowded, and the hills deserted, was a surprise; the more so that Professor Henshaw, our authority on the ornithology of this region, states that this over-crowding near water commonly occurs. However, here among the uplifted rocks were the birds and a goodly company of less prominent creatures, to which I turned again and again, notwithstanding the grandeur of the landscape spread before me.

The cactus-wren, because of its close kinship to the dear wrens of the homestead door-yard, but more y reason of its own merits, held me long, and it will ever be a mystery how this restless bird thridded the maze of spiny branches that baffled all my efforts to follow it. That it could dart through the tangled branches of a stag-horn cactus without a wound is simply miraculous, and do this, too, when pursued; rushing with reckless haste from a supposed enemy. Possibly it was pricked now and then, but if its feathers were ever ruffled, not so its temper; and often, when the fates seemed most against it, this bird would perch between thorns of dangerous lengths and sing with that whole-souled ardor that should cause fainthearted folk to blush. If ever a little foot-sore, and you long to return to the smoothened pathway of the village street, pray for the cactus-wren to find you out. Never a blue- devil so brave as to listen to that bird's song.

There were other creatures on the hill-side that merit our attention, and I would that I had weeks instead of minutes to devote to them. Lizards and skinks are well-nigh countless; but not, too, the snakes, which fact I deplored. It was not so long ago that the lively lizards in New Jersey pine barrens had given me much to do to gain some insight into their life-history, and now I recalled each time, place, and circumstance, as these same animals darted over the rocks and between the scattered cacti. The surroundings were not dissimilar: was there any peculiarity of habit? I could detect none. The lizards were as swift, but still a little strategy enabled me to capture them with my hands, and they straightway became tame, as had proved the case in the East, while the wary skinks defied all my efforts to capture them, and even when badly wounded by bird-shot, bit me savagely, — an Eastern experience also. Let him who will attempt to explain why these animals, with essentially the same habits, and constantly associated, differ in this one respect of temper. In New Jersey the skink is a solitary animal, and lives in hollows of old trees, often twenty, thirty, or fifty feet from the ground, — locations the common lizard seldom visits, — which may or may not explain the difference of temper of the two animals; but here, on this Arizonan hill-side, the same rocks and cacti sheltered both. They basked upon the same sunlit surfaces, often in actual contact; they fed upon the same food, and took refuge in the same safe harbors when pursued; but in every instance it held good that the lizard was amiable and the skink otherwise. I fancied a score of reasons for this while on the spot, but have no foundation upon which to rest any one of them, even for superficial investigation. A merit of such a stroll as this of to-day is that one must keep moving. To sit long in the same spot where rocks are rugged and loose wearies far more quickly than a constant change of position, and with this change is endless novelty. It needed but half a turn of the head to catch winning glimpses of a new world From the wriggling centipede at my feet, which delighted me by reason of its graceful movements, to some distant mountain, wrapped in rosy clouds, was a bold leap, but one that the mountain rambler has constantly to make. However vividly an object impressed itself upon me, be it one at hand or many a mile away, I was never so occupied as to be too late for something new; and why regret such aimless wandering? If I learned little, I enjoyed much, and these are vacation days. But does one learn so little when method is left in the lurch? There is at such a time a deal of unconscious cerebration, and the most trivial incident of a mountain, tramp, when recalled, stands out in boldest outline and has far more significance than we supposed. I shall not need to turn to the photographs that my companions took to see the landscapes that were spread out before me, and I doubt not but that in years to come, when wandering about the fields at home, I will have their familiar birds and plants bring vividly before me incident after incident that at the time made but the faintest impression upon me. It has proved so heretofore, and I look for its repetition in the future. We learn much, if we but desire to learn, without making further effort. It adds a bright leaf to memory's volume to walk over a mountain. The day is well advanced, and what of the landscape that I have so frequently mentioned? Who shall dare describe it? If it needs a lifetime to fathom the secrets of a single hill, what can be said, after a few hours, of scores of mountains clustered about you? It is well to be passive rather than active when among them, and accept what they offer rather than be importunate. One can seldom anticipate their lesson of the day, but it is never one not worth the learning. When I gazed at their wrinkled fronts, deaf to the birds and blind to the flowers about me, the initial thought was that of their unchangeableness. Nature is here at rest, if anywhere. Peak after peak, ridge beyond ridge, valley after valley; a troubled ocean, motionless. But such a thought was scarcely crystallized before it dissolved. A cloud passed betwixt the sun and the hills, and every one was set in motion. What mighty magic lurked in that single shadow! As well, now, try to catch the contour of a troubled wave as single out one of the hundred hills before me. What but the moment before typified eternal rest was now the embodiment of the poetry of motion. Such massive clouds, hung in so blue a sky, and casting such shadows, are common to few places, and here their glory is supreme. It is little wonder, then, that the mountains were thrilled by that shadow's gentle touch.