there may be a flock of them in some meadow, leisurely getting their
breakfast after their all-night flight, chattering to each other in
the tinkling tones which are unlike any other song-talk in bird land.

The humming bird, the swallows, the purple martins, the chimney
swifts, also seem to be a-pilgriming. Gradually you become conscious
that all of them are flying southward, always down the stream and
never up. The first keen blasts up in the northland have given them a
warning and they are going steadily, happily, but for the most part
silently, on down the stream, giving rare beauty to these halcyon days
of late summer; on past the farthest point of your vision, where the
silver gray mist softens the outline of the forest-crowned headlands,
and lavender shadows hang gently across the valleys; always on and on
towards the land where all is light and life and where summer ever
abides in beauty. You look up and see flocks of cowbirds flying in the
same direction and still larger flocks of night hawks, hundreds of
them in the air at once. Like the queens on the mournful barge of the
fallen King Arthur, their mission is to escort the dying summer
floating down, always down

_"To the island valley of Avilion;
Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow,
Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies
Deep-meadowed, happy, fair with orchard lawns
And bowery billows crown'd with summer sea._

You can climb to the highest cliff and look down to where the creek
valley blends with the valley of the river, standing as did Sir
Bedivere where he