I was forced to please myself with the glory of the foreground. What lay beyond the mist was matter for dreams. But even as things were, I was not so badly used. There was more beauty in sight than I could begin to see, and, notwithstanding the comparative narrowness of the outlook,--partly because of it,--one of my most enjoyable forenoons was spent on the broad, open, slightly rounded summit of Satulah. Here and there (“more here than there,” my pencil says) a solitary cabin was visible, or a bit of road, a ribbon of brown amidst the green of the forest, but no village, nor so much as a hamlet. The only other signs of human existence were a light smoke, barely distinguishable, rising from Horse Cove as I guessed, and, for a few minutes, a man whom my eye fell upon most unexpectedly, a motionless speck, though he was walking, far down the Walhalla road. I turned my glass that way, and behold, he had the usual bag of grain on his back. The date was May 12. I had been in Highlands less than a week, and my thoughts still ran upon ravens, the birds which, more even than the southern snowbird and the mountain vireo, I had come hither to seek. They were said often to fly over, and this surely should be a place to see them. They could not escape me, if they passed within a mile. But though I kept an eye out, as we say, and an ear open, it was a vigil thrown away. Buzzards, swifts, and a bunch of twittering goldfinches were all the birds that “flew over.” A chestnut-sided warbler sang so persistently from the mountain side just below that his sharp voice became almost a trouble. From the same quarter rose the songs of an oven-bird, a rose-breasted grosbeak, and a scarlet tanager. On the summit itself were snowbirds and chewinks; and once, to my delight, a field sparrow gave out a measure or two. After all, go where you will, you will hear few voices that wear better than his,--clear, smooth, most agreeably modulated, and temperately sweet.