Page:Letters from an Oregon Ranch.djvu/150

 is an old paling fence, at least so tradition tells us, for if it still is there it is lost to sight and serves only as a support for vines and brambles. There the blackberry trails its flowery sprays, and the wild gourd runs like a creature alive, holding up its slender stems of green, tipped with fragrant starry white blossoms, such as we never saw until we came to Oregon. The farmers call it a pest; if so, it is a most bewitching one. Here too are hazel bushes,—not like ours, but small trees; and wild rose and salmon bushes. The latter I am quite sure you have never seen. Their blossoms are beautiful, like pink hollyhocks in miniature. The humming-birds love them; two burnished beauties were hovering above them when I entered the garden,—different from any we have before seen, making the queerest roaring sounds, not unlike a wild animal. You won’t believe this, nor did I until I had traced the incongruous sounds to them. It seemed preposterous to suppose such dainty bits of iridescence should roar like that; but they did, for I caught them in the very act.

Alders and willows grow about my Eden, and wild plum and crab-apple trees are snowy with bloom and faintly sweet; underneath these is a tangle of low bushes, wild-flowers, tall weeds, and vines. Through this wall of green came a pleasant sound of bubbling waters, gushing from the roots of a group of alders just above me, a pure little rill of it sliding down the hillside, under bending briers, tall grasses, and nodding rushes.