“A more glorious, a more heavenly dawn of day than this, it is impossible to conceive! The heavy dew of the preceding night has been congealed, and the whole country is white with frost. The rising sun casts his broad beams over the vast plain, and in an instant its surface is brilliant with sparkling crystals. “The abrupt and isolated peaks, whose soft parts the frosts and storms of past ages have loosened and swept away, seem in the distance to rear still higher their lofty summits, now crowned with glittering diadems. On all sides, to the farthest extent of my powers of vision, the varied prospect is open to my view—hereaway, strongly defined, I behold the bold outline of the Apache mountains; yonder, I regard, with admiration growing as I gaze, the countless undulations of the prairie, each as it succeeds the other diminishing in the distance until the last faint wave is blended with the blue horizon. Still admiring as I turn, I find my horse at last fairly faced about; and now another view, the grandest, the strangest of all, is presented to my almost bewildered senses. It is the _mirage_! Wonderful illusion, cruel mockery—how often hast thou deceived the famished wanderer of the plains with the semblance of water; leading him on farther and farther, and leaving him at last sinking and exhausted in the midst of the desert! “Behold! I clearly see a broad lake of bright water, with noble trees growing on either hand; and nothing but the positive knowledge that this counterfeit lake lies directly across the road over which I have just passed, and the perfect certainty under which I rest, from actual examination, that neither wood nor water is to be found in that direction within thirty miles, can persuade me that what I now look upon is not real! But I will return from this digression—yet, if this page ever meets the eyes of my two companions on that expedition (Lieutenants B—— and M——, of the 3d), they will remember the glorious sunrise, the mirage, and finally, the covey of Partridges to which I have here alluded. “This species is found farther to the south on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande than on our own, owing probably to the rugged character of the country there, for I never met with it anywhere in low grounds. The first appearance it makes in Texas is a little above Rhinosa, on the first highlands on this side encountered in ascending the river from its mouth. Thence up to the Rocky Mountains, the birds of this species may be considered denizens of the United States, being about equally distributed on both sides of the great river.”