Like every other visitor to Ukiah I had heard of his prodigious watch, and, while enjoying a glorious ride to Blue Lakes, took occasion to ask about it. "Uncle Jim" tossed away the stub of his cigar, and, looking quietly pleased by my cordial interest, related the following: "It was twenty-five years ago, and I was new on the road, or I would n't have did such a foolhardy thing. When I seen four highwaymen pointing guns and ordering me to hand over the box, I was that mad I did n't stop to think, but just gave the horses the silk, and they went out like a shot. The bullets came bang, bang! through the top of the coach, and the passengers screamed and swore; but I yelped at my six mustangs till they lit out faster 'n ever, and those fellers behind me had to give up the chase. There was a big lot o' money in the box, and the Wells, Fargo men was so glad to have it saved they asked me what I'd like best, and I told 'em I'd always wanted a big watch. What did they do but take four pounds of bullion, an' put half of it in a chain an' the rest in a watch. I wore the chain round my neck for years, an' then had it cut off, like you see it now," showing me the thick silver fob, attached to a watch so absurdly large it made one's wrist ache to hold it. The trip to Blue Lakes took less than four hours' riding, over the smoothest road we had yet traversed. From the summit we beheld the lakelets, nestled in the heart of mountains rounding up from their brimming basins. In the fading day their color-beauty was a revelation. On through the wildwood skirting the steep banks, past summer resorts and camps, we came to a sequestered group of rustic cottages built on the smaller lake. Here I slept and dreamed to the mystic leaf music of the laurels, and the soft lapping of wavelets under my window. Ninetta Eames. QUAIL AND QUAIL SHOOTING. WHEN the brush of glorious autumn accustomed to shooting quail in the comparatively more open and level country When the golden-rod is decked with glistening sprays, of that section, a day with the quail in Then it's time to seek the woodcock, 'Mid the briar-tangled thickets On the hillsides in the bright October days. W. Townsend. To a sportsman living east of the California hills would prove at first, if not a disappointing, certainly a novel, and perhaps trying, experience. In the New England or Middle States a devotee of the dog and gun, out for a dweller on the Atlantic seaboard, and day's sport with Bob White, that little Rocky Mountains, especially if he be a It is many years since the writer, while hunting on a farm in the Highlands of the Hudson, started from and shot his first quail in a patch of buckwheat stubble; but those hills, dales, and swamps, those fields and woodlands, are pictured in his memory as though seen but yesterday. brown beauty of the Eastern meadows, the charm of Eastern upland shooting. would, having reached some farm, his selected hunting ground, look first to the buckwheat or other stubble of the lately cut grain fields. In these his brace of well-broken pointers or setters, trained regularly to quarter their ground, would work out every nook and corner until a bevy was found. Should his dogs fail to find in the stubble, he perhaps would be next seen directing their movements as they hunted out the low and scattered brush that skirts some woodland border, and should success again fail him here, the clear notes of Bob White piping in the catbriers and bulrushes of a summerdried swamp might direct him to a bevy, where perhaps near by some spring sits this little piper, some male bird calling to its mates that are drinking. Rarely in Eastern quail shooting is the sportsman compelled to hunt for any length of time on such ground as affords him unsteady footing; rarely will he on these cultivated farms find the brush growing very high, or in it lose sight of his dogs for more than a moment or two, as they race here and there in search of that scent they love so well. When at last they come to a steady point, and the hidden bevy is sprung, whether in the stubbles, along the woodlands, or in the bulrushes, the hunter's view of the fly. ing birds will be unobstructed, as they wing their way across the fields to alight in other covert, where his dogs will shortly find each bird of the now "marked down" bevy again. Although the Eastern quail springs from the ground, and takes to wing with almost incredible swiftness, yet the sportsman who knows the habits and haunts of this bird, and it may be said here that "Bob White" rarely or never alights upon trees, who possesses good dogs, and who is an expert wing shot, will generally be able to follow up and account for nearly every bird in a bevy. No one can dispute, no one will ever forget, who has participated in the sport, There are two species of quail found in California, the mountain and the valley. The mountain quail, found in the Sierra Nevadas and in most of the mountains of the Coast Range, is seldom seen at a less elevation than two thousand feet. It is a larger, and, in some respects, a finer bird than its cousin the valley quail, which it much resembles both in plumage and general appearance; the most notable difference between them being in the greater length of the topknots of the mountain bird, and in the coloring of the abdominal feathers of either sex, which in the mountain quail are of a deep reddish brown bordered with white, instead of a light yellow, bordered with reddish brown or black, as in the valley quail. Viewed from behind, both species appear so much alike that if a bevy of two-thirds grown mountain quail happen to be seen running away along the ground, it will at first glance sometimes be difficult to decide to which species they belong, the general color of both being slaty blue and bluish brown. The mountain bird does not lie well to the dog, and keeps strictly to the brush; and for these reasons, as well as because it is found in such wild and remote places, it is not much sought for by the generality of sportsmen. When flushed in the brush, and followed through it by the hunter, it will fly a few feet or yards, then alight and run a short distance, take wing once more, fly again through the brush; and repeating this performance over and over, will finally baffle both man and dogs. When a bevy is first started, the sportsman, should he |