SKETCH OF ALEXANDER WILSON. 405 



through the recently acquired Territory of Louisiana, then offered 

 himself to President Jefferson for this service. " Mr. Wilson," says 

 Ord, " was particularly anxious to accompany Pike, who com- 

 menced his journey from the cantonment on the Missouri, for 

 the sources of the Arkansas, etc., on the 15th of July, 1806." But 

 no reply was made to his application. 



In April he was engaged by the publishers, Messrs. Bradford 

 and Inskeep, as assistant editor for the revision of Rees's " New 

 Cyclopaedia," on " a generous salary," namely, nine hundred dol- 

 lars a year. He now gave up school-keeping, which had been his 

 calling for ten years. While in this position, he made known his 

 plans for the " American Ornithology " to Bradford, who readily 

 agreed to undertake its publication. A prospectus was immedi- 

 ately issued, and a year later, in September, 1808, the first volume 

 of the work appeared. In the fall of that year he made a trip 

 through New England, " in search of birds and subscribers." On 

 the way from Philadelphia he stopped at Princeton, to show his 

 work to the college professors. He expected to get some valuable 

 information on American birds from the Professor of Natural His- 

 tory, " but," he writes, " I soon found, to my astonishment, that 

 he scarcely knew a sparrow from a woodpecker." Wherever he 

 showed his book to college professors, and other literary men, the 

 highest praise was lavished upon it, but subscriptions were not 

 so freely forthcoming, the price, one hundred and twenty dollars, 

 being a serious obstacle. He wrote from Albany, on his way 

 home, that he had obtained only forty-one subscribers. One of 

 the less intelligent personages, whose favor he had sought, was 

 the then Governor of New York Daniel D. Tompkins. This 

 magnate, as Wilson informs us, " turned over a few pages, looked 

 at a picture or two, asked me my price, and, while in the act 

 of closing the book, added, ' I would not give a hundred dol- 

 lars for all the birds you intend to describe, even had I them 

 alive/ " 



He soon set off again on a trip through Baltimore, Washington 

 (where he was received " very kindly " by Jefferson), and other 

 Southern cities, and when he reached home had in all two hundred 

 and fifty subscribers. In the South he shot several new birds. 

 It was now deemed advisable to add three hundred impressions 

 of Volume I to the two hundred first struck off, and the second 

 volume started with an edition of five hundred copies. His un- 

 dertaking had already won him " reputation and respect," but the 

 pecuniary return was still doubtful. 



Volume II of the " Ornithology " was ready in 1810, and in 

 February of that year Wilson set out on another hunt for new 

 specimens of the feathered tribes and those rare birds subscrib- 

 ers. His varied adventures on these expeditions, and his impres- 



