The spring was by this time broadening into the
loveliest of all times on the prairies (when the weather is fine), the
days of the full blowth of the upland bird's-foot violets. Some southern
slopes were so blue with them that you could hardly tell the distant
hill from the sky, except for the greening of the peeping grass. The
possblummies were still blowing, but only the later ones. The others
were aging into tassels of down.
The Canada geese, except for the nesters, had swept on in that marvelous
ranked army which ends the migration, spreading from the east to the
west some warm morning when the wind is south, and extending from a
hundred feet in the air to ten thousand, all moved by a common impulse
like myself and my fellow-migrants, pressing northward though, instead
of westward, with the piping of a thousand organs, their wings whirring,
their eyes glistening as if with some mysterious hope, their black
webbed feet folded and stretched out behind, their necks strained out
eagerly to the north, and held a little high I thought as if to peer
over the horizon to catch a glimpse of their promised land of blue
lakes, tall reeds, and broad fields of water-celery and wild rice, with
dry nests downy with the harvests of their gray breasts; and fluffy
goslings swimming in orderly classes after their teachers. And up from
the South following these old honkers came the snow geese, the Wilson
geese, and all the other little geese (we ignorantly called all of them
"brants"), with their wild flutings like the high notes of
clarinets--and the ponds became speckled with teal and coot.
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