had a richer plumage, its color being deep glossy blue, or blue-black,
and underneath bright chestnut. When close at hand and in the bright
sunshine, the aerial gambols of a flock were beautiful to witness, as
the birds wheeled about and displayed in turn, as if moved by one
impulse, first the rich blue, then the bright chestnut surfaces to the
eye. The charming effect was increased by the bell-like, chirping notes
they all uttered together, and as they swept round or doubled in the air
at intervals came these tempests of melodious sound--a most perfect
expression of wild jubilant bird-life. Yoletta, discoursing in the most
delightful way about her loved cloud-birds, had told me that they spent
the summer season in great solitary marshes, where they built their
nests in the rushes; but with cold weather they flew abroad, and at such
times seemed always to prefer the neighborhood of man, remaining in
great flocks near the house until the next spring. On this bright sunny
morning I was amazed at the multitudes I saw during my walk: yet it was
not strange that birds were so abundant, considering that there were no
longer any savages on the earth, with nothing to amuse their vacant
minds except killing the feathered creatures with their bows and arrows,
and no innumerable company of squaws clamorous for trophies--unchristian
women of the woods with painted faces, insolence in their eyes, and for
ornaments the feathered skins torn from slain birds on their heads.

When I at length arrived at the wood, I went to that spot where I had
felled the large tree on the occasion of my last and disastrous visit,
and where Yoletta, newly released from confinement, had found me. There
lay the rough-barked giant exactly as I had left it, and once more I
began to hack at the large branches; but my feeble strokes seemed to
make little impression, and becoming tired in a very short time, I
concluded that I was not yet equal to such work, and sat myself down to
rest. I remembered how, when sitting on that very spot, I had heard a