The situation was delightful,--no snow, scattered pine trees, a
secluded valley, rocky heights, and the clear, ample, trouty waters of
the Yellowstone. The President was not in camp. In the morning he had
stated his wish to go alone into the wilderness. Major Pitcher very
naturally did not quite like the idea, and wished to send an orderly
with him.
"No," said the President. "Put me up a lunch, and let me go alone. I
will surely come back."
And back he surely came. It was about five o'clock when he came
briskly down the path from the east to the camp. It came out that he
had tramped about eighteen miles through a very rough country. The
day before, he and the major had located a band of several hundred elk
on a broad, treeless hillside, and his purpose was to find those elk,
and creep up on them, and eat his lunch under their very noses. And
this he did, spending an hour or more within fifty yards of them. He
came back looking as fresh as when he started, and at night, sitting
before the big camp fire, related his adventure, and talked with his
usual emphasis and copiousness of many things. He told me of the birds
he had seen or heard; among them he had heard one that was new to him.
From his description I told him I thought it was Townsend's solitaire,
a bird I much wanted to see and hear. I had heard the West India
solitaire,--one of the most impressive songsters I ever heard,--and I
wished to compare our Western form with it.