Page:Atlantis Arisen.djvu/261

 a whale is captured the occasion is one of general rejoicing and feasting—a potlatch of much consequence to the whole tribe.

The woods of the Pacific Coast have not been noted for singing-birds, the songsters of the Atlantic States and Europe being strangers to the Northwest. The meadow-lark is almost the only bird which cheers the traveller on his way over the wide plains of East Oregon and Washington, where his short but inspiriting warble greets one from every side. In the garden trees of the Wallamet Valley the native canary sings merrily, and .a variety of chirping, sober-hued, and shy winged and feathered visitors make free with the fruit to be found there. The lack of songsters impelled the Agricultural Society to import them, and a few years ago there were brought from abroad and set free in the fields and woods the bullfinch, greenfinch, goldfinch, nightingale, black-headed nightingale, chaffinch, ringouzel, bobolink, black thrush, song thrush, starling, and singing quail. How they were received by their forest brothers is not known, but that they have to some extent increased is evidenced by the greater variety of notes which one may hear any morning in summer from his open window in the vicinity of trees.

Of game birds there are great numbers, as might be conjectured from the nature of the country. The habits and habitats of this kind of game are too well known to need remark. The most common are the mountain quail, valley quail, dusky grouse, ruffled grouse, sharp-tailed grouse or prairie chicken, sage-cock, curlew (the last three east of the Cascade Mountains), killdeer, plover, golden plover, Virginia rail, English snipe, red-breasted snipe, summer duck, Canada goose, white-fronted goose, black brant, mallard duck, canvas-back duck, blue-winged teal, brown crane, green-winged teal, and several others omitted or unknown. The golden pheasant of China (imported) is also beginning to be a very familiar sight to the sportsman.

In autumn the waters of the rivers, lakes, and sounds are swarming with water-fowl. A week's sport with a party in a hunting-boat or steam-yacht, with good living on board, is thought "worth the shot." When I add that the waters of the country afford the best of sport for the angler, from a seventy-pound salmon to a dainty speckled trout, it must be allowed that there is amusement for pleasure-seekers, not to say health-