lacked several hundred feet of the necessary altitude for two of the species, so that if his labels were correct he must have shot them out of a balloon.
"They all looked alike except about the throat and head. One lot had a gold band across the breast, another had the whole throat gold, others had gold stripes or spots. I believe he produced these gaudy effects with the lighted end of his cigar.
"He doctored up a lot of humming-birds, too, and made me a peck of trouble. I fired him, all right. Dishonesty in a trade like mine is, I think, most reprehensible, and there is no money in it, because you are dead sure to get found out.
"He was a cute little chap, however, and had learned a lot of tricks from the Indians. He could change a bird's color by feeding it on certain kinds of food. There is a chap in Amsterdam who does about the same thing and brightens up old worn birds which
have faded out in the Zoölogical Gardens, and sends them back with all the brilliancy of their original plumage restored; but he cannot turn a red parrot blue, or make a gray bird with a yellow head turn to bright orange all over, as this chap could. He told me how he did it, but the secret is too good to give away. But to get back to the story about rattlesnakes:
"It was, as I said, in the spring of '89, a party of us were camped at the White Tanks about forty-five miles north-west of here, and one day a chap came into our camp, a half-breed Mexican Indian, who called himself a snake-charmer. He had a box of rattlesnakes which he would allow to twine round his neck and bite him, for a dollar. He travelled about the country giving exhibitions with his snakes, and selling the rattlesnake cure, which was put up in small bottles containing a brown-colored liquid, which he claimed he made
from a plant which was a sure cure for the bite of the rattlesnake, and a number of the boys bought this remedy, paying him a dollar a bottle.
"He had seen our camp, as he drove along the road to Phœnix, and he told us he had been up country for two or three weeks visiting some mines, where he had done very well, selling his cure to the miners and exhibiting his snakes.
"There were several of us in the party, and one chap, a doctor by the name of Baker, who was always playing practical jokes. As we were coming back to Phœnix, the next day, Miguel, which was the snake-charmer's real name, I believe, although he was generally known as Mexican John, decided to stay over a day and go back with us.
"Baker proposed that we should see how much faith Miguel had in his own antidote. As it happened, I had captured a very big