The bobolink, that little minstrel of the marshes, teeters up and down on a swaying cattail, and flirts most scandalously, as he calls to his lady love:  “What a pink, what a pink, little minx, little minx!  You’re a dear, dear, dear.”

But we cannot stay to spy upon such love scenes, and we strike out on the trail for home, after listening with pleasure, as well as profit, to these feathered musicians.

[Illustration]

Wild-cat Canon

It was on February 22, Washington’s Birthday, that Hal and I started in the early morning from Berkeley, for a trip to Wild-cat Canon.  The birds are singing their Te Deum to the morning sun.  The California partridges run along the path ahead of us, their waving crests bobbing up and down as they scurry out of sight under the bushes, seldom taking wing, but depending on their sturdy little legs to take them out of harm’s way.  A cotton-tail, disturbed in his hiding, darts away, bounding from side to side like a rubber ball, as if expecting a shot to overtake him before he can get safely to cover He need not fear, as we have no more deadly weapon than a camera, though we should certainly train that upon him if he but gave us a chance.  High overhead we hear the clarion honk, honk of wild geese, cleaving the air in drag-shaped column, while the dew on the grass dances and sparkles in the sunshine like glittering diamonds.

After a hard climb we reach the top of the hill, and look down at the town just awakening into life, and out across the waters of the bay partly hidden by the blanket of fog rolling in from the ocean.

Did you ever stand on the top of a high hill in the early morning, when the eastern sky is beginning to put on its morning robe of variegated colors, with all the blended shades of an artist’s palette, and watch the town, nestling in the valley at your feet, wake up after its night of slumber?  Here a chimney sends its spiral of blue smoke straight in air; then another, and another, like the smoke of Indian scouts signaling to their tribes.  The lights in the windows go out, one by one; the sharp blast of a whistle cuts the air, the clang of a bell peals out, the rumble of a wagon is heard, and the street cars begin their clatter and clang.  All this comes floating up to you on the still morning air, until an ever-increasing crescendo of sounds is borne in upon you, telling that the town has awakened from its nap, stretched itself like a drowsy giant, and is ready once more to grapple with its various problems.

We pass a grove of tall eucalyptus trees on our left, their rugged trunks like an army of tattered, unkempt giants.  From the brink of the old stone quarry, we gaze down into its prisonlike depths, the perpendicular walls looking as if they had been carved out of solid rock to hold some primeval malefactor; then we descend the hill on the other side to the canon.

[Illustration:  The bottom of the canon]