4 o 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



iiig his sister and her children, who were living on a farm that 

 Wilson and his nephew "William had bought together. He made 

 his way home down the Mohawk Valley to Albany, and thence by 

 boat to New York. In this journey, occupying two months, he 

 traversed over twelve hundred miles. Winter overtook him in 

 the midst of it, so that the latter part of it was made " through deep 

 snows and almost uninhabited forests ; over stupendous mount- 

 ains and down dangerous rivers." The trip seems to have bene- 

 fited both his health and spirits, for in his account of it, written 

 to Bartram,he expresses eagerness for wider explorations and new 

 discoveries. " With no family to enchain my affections, no ties but 

 those of friendship, and the most ardent love of my adopted coun- 

 try ; with a constitution which hardens amid fatigues, and a dispo- 

 sition sociable and open, which can find itself at home by an Indian 

 fire in the depth of the woods, as well as in the best apartment 

 of the civilized [world], I have at present a real design of becom- 

 ing a traveler. But I am miserably deficient in many acquire- 

 ments absolutely necessary for such a character. Botany, miner- 

 alogy, and drawing I most ardently wish to be instructed in, and 

 with these I should fear nothing." How oblivious to matters of 

 detail his enthusiasm made him can be judged, Ord * remarks, 

 from the fact that at this time Wilson's available cash amounted 

 to seventy-jive cents. 



Two of the birds which he shot in New York, one being the 

 Canada jay, were unknown to Wilson's associates. He made 

 careful drawings- of them, and got Mr. Bartram to send them to 

 President Jefferson, whom Wilson much admired. The Presi- 

 dent, who was quite an amateur naturalist, replied with a very ap- 

 preciative letter, in which he put Wilson on the track of a certain 

 sweet-singing and very unapproachable bird. He had " followed it 

 for miles without ever, but once, getting a good view of it," and 

 had for twenty years tried to get a specimen without success. 

 "After many inquiries and unwearied research," says Ord, "it 

 turned out that this invisible musician was no other than the 

 wood robin, a bird which, if sought for in those places which it 

 affects, may be seen every hour of the day." The next summer 

 Wilson announced to Bartram his determination to make a collec- 

 tion of drawings of the birds of Pennsylvania, and sent him twen- 

 ty-eight for criticism. The scope of his undertaking was extend- 

 ed, within a few months, so as to include the whole United States. 

 He had planned an expedition down the Ohio and Mississippi Riv- 

 ers for the summer of 1806 with Bartram ; but the latter, who was 

 nearly seventy years old, gave up the idea. Wilson, who had heard 

 that explorers were to be sent up the Red and Arkansas Rivers, 



* " Life of Alexander Wilson," by George Ord. In Volume IX of the " American Or- 

 nithology." 



