EXPERIMENTS IN TRADE 239 



day's sport was over," he said, "we counted more than 

 fifty of these beautiful birds whose skins were intended 

 for the ladies of Europe. There were plenty of geese 

 and ducks, but no one condescended to give them a shot." 

 This was Audubon in 1810, when such "sport" was re- 

 garded as legitimate enough, and the feather-hunting 

 of such Indians was not considered the nefarious trade 

 that it proved to be. If we shift the scene to twenty 

 years later, when William MacGillivray needed thou- 

 sands of specimens of American birds for his studies 

 upon their anatomy and variability, we find Audubon 

 supplying him liberally, but he could not then bear to see 

 them killed wantonly or for mere sport; more than 

 once, out of compassion for individual birds that he 

 chanced to be studying, whether in Florida or in Labra- 

 dor, he would not permit them to be shot even when 

 needed for his collections. 



At the Shawnee Indian camp, to relate a character- 

 istic anecdote, Audubon noticed that a squaw who "had 

 been delivered of beautiful twins during the night" was 

 busied on the next day at her usual task of tanning 

 deer skins. "She cut two vines," his record reads, "at 

 the roots of opposite trees and made a cradle of the bark, 

 in which the new born ones were wafted to and fro with 

 a push of her hand, while from time to time she gave 

 them the breast, and was apparently as unconcerned as 

 if the event had not taken place." 



When at last our adventurers gained the Mississippi, 

 the mighty volume of which was running three miles an 

 hour, the patron ordered all hands ashore to pull at the 

 bow rope. This characteristic remark of the naturalist 

 is delightful, as showing the "single eye" which it has 

 been declared of old shall be "full of light": "we made," 

 said Audubon, "seven miles a day up the famous river; 



