XVIII.
IN A PASTURE.
The word "pasture," as used on the shore of the Great Salt Lake, conveys no true idea to one whose associations with that word have been formed in States east of the Rocky Mountains. Imagine an extensive inclosure on the side of a mountain, with its barren-looking soil strewn with rocks of all sizes, from a pebble to a bowlder, cut across by an irrigating ditch or a mountain brook, dotted here and there by sage bushes, and patches of oak-brush, and wild roses, and one has a picture of a Salt Lake pasture. Closely examined, it has other peculiarities. There is no half way in its growths, no shading off, so to speak, as elsewhere; not an isolated shrub, not a solitary tree, flourishes in the strange soil, but trees and shrubs crowd together as if for protection, and the clump, of whatever size or shape, ends abruptly, with the desert coming up to its very edge. Yet the soil, though it seems to be the driest and most unpromising of baked gray mud, needs nothing more than a little water, to clothe itself luxuriantly; the course of a brook or even an irrigating ditch, if permanent, is marked by a thick and varied border of greenery. What the poor creatures who wandered over those dreary wastes could find to eat was a problem to be solved only by close observation of their ways.
"H. H." said some years ago that the magnificent yucca, the glory of the Colorado mesas, was being exterminated by wandering cows, who ate the buds as soon as they appeared. The cattle of Utah—or their owners—have a like crime to answer for; not only do they constantly feed upon rose-buds and leaves, notwithstanding the thorns, but they regale themselves upon nearly every flower-plant that shows its head; lupines were the chosen dainty of my friend's horse. The animals become expert at getting this unnatural food; it is curious to watch the deftness with which a cow will go through a currant or gooseberry bush, thrusting her head far down among the branches, and carefully picking off the tender leaves, while leaving the stems untouched, and the matter-of-course way in which she will bend over and pull down a tall sapling, to despoil it of its foliage.
In a pasture such as I have described, on the western slope of one of the Rocky Mountains, desolate and forbidding though it looked, many hours of last summer's May and June "went their way," if not
"As softly as sweet dreams go down the night,"
certainly with interest and pleasure to two bird-students whose ways I have sometimes chronicled.
Most conspicuous, as we toiled upward toward our breezy pasture, was a bird whose chosen station was a fence—a wire fence at that. He was a tanager; not our brilliant beauty in scarlet and black, but one far more gorgeous and eccentric in costume, having, with the black wings and tail of our bird, a breast of shining yellow and a cap of crimson. His occupation on the sweet May mornings that he lingered with us, on his way up the mountains for the summer, was the familiar one of getting his living, and to that he gave his mind without reserve. Not once did he turn curious eyes upon us as we sauntered by or rested awhile to watch him. Eagerly his pretty head turned this way and that, but not for us; it was for the winged creatures of the air he looked, and when one that pleased his fancy fluttered by he dashed out and secured it, returning to a post or the fence just as absorbed and just as eager for the next one. Every time he alighted it was a few feet farther down the fence, and thus he worked his way out of our sight, without seeming aware of our existence.