When I climbed up over a tangle of rocks to a woodsy ravine far above the lake, it seemed at first as if there were no birds in the place, that it was given up entirely to solitude; but the winged creatures were only shy and cautious for the nonce, waiting to learn something about the errand and disposition of their uninvited, or, rather, self-invited, guest, before they ventured to give him a greeting. Presently they discovered that he was not a collector, hunter, nest-robber, or ogre of any other kind, and there was the swish of wings around me, and a medley of chirps and songs filled the sequestered spot. Away up here the gray-headed juncos were trilling like warblers, and hopping about on their pine-needle carpet, creeping in and out among the rocks, hunting for tidbits. Here also was the mountain chickadee, found at this season in the heights hard by the alpine zone, singing his dulcet minor strain, "Te-te-re-e-e, te-eet," sometimes adding another "te-eet" by way of special emphasis and adornment. Oh, the sweet little piper piping only for Pan! The loneliness of the place was accentuated by the sad cadenzas of the mountain hermit thrushes. Swallows of some kind--cliff-swallows, no doubt--were silently weaving invisible filigree across the sky above the tops of the stately pines. In the afternoon we made our way, with not a little laborious effort, to the farther end of the lake, across which a red-shafted flicker would occasionally wing its galloping flight; thence through a wilderness of large rocks and fallen pines to a beckoning ridge, where, to our surprise, another beautiful aqueous sheet greeted our vision in the valley beyond. Descending to its shores, we had still another surprise--its waters were brown instead of green. Here were two mountain lakes not more than a quarter of a mile apart, one of which was green and the other brown, each with a beauty all its own. In the brown lake near the shore there were glints of gold as the sun shone through its ripples on the rocks at the bottom. Afterwards we learned that the name of this liquid gem was Clear Lake, and that the western branch of Clear Creek flows through it, tarrying a while to sport and dally with the sunbeams. While Green Lake was embowered in a forest of pine, its companion lay in the open sunlight, unflecked by the shadow of a tree.