Burns — On Alexander Wilson. 175 



enabled to make an advantageous trade in horse flesh ; his 

 animal having shown signs of giving out in the deep sands of 

 South Carolina. A planter took a fancy to it ; and in exchange, 

 Wilson received a vicious sorrel with plenty of endurance, 

 which at once ran away with him at a canter for fifteen miles, 

 and traveled forty-two miles the first day with but a few mouth- 

 fuls of rice straw to eat ; and at the Georgetown ferry, threw 

 one of the boatmen in the river. Charleston was reached about 

 the middle of February ; at any rate he arrived in time to pre- 

 side at a singular feast oii the 21st at Hampstead, a suburb ; in 

 which the carcass of a horse served as the piece dc resistanee^ 

 and 237 Black Vultures, with several dogs, the self-invited 

 guests. Here he records a total of 125 subscribers since leaving 

 home, and here it was a Scotchman again, that came to his aid, 

 giving him a list of prospective subscribers taken from the 

 directory, among whom he expends ten days with good results, 

 departing on the 23rd for Savannah. While being ferried over 

 the flooded Savannah river, at the Two Sister's Ferry, his horse 

 threv/ himself overboard, and had not Wilson rescued him at 

 a great personal risk, the animal would doubtless have been 

 lost. In this vicinity he had the best fortune of the trip, orni- 

 thologically it yielding the Great White and Louisiana Herons, 

 Fish Crow, Savannah Sparrow and Yellow-throated Warbler. 

 He notes the Brown Thrasher in full song on March 1st and 

 the Mockingbird one day later. From a collector's standpoint, 

 he could not have chosen a more unseasonable time for his 

 trips. From the northern parts of the district of Maine to the 

 Ogechee river in Georgia, a distance of more than 1800 miles 

 by the circuitous route in which he traveled, he never passed 

 a day and scarcely a mile v^^ithout seeing numbers of the Snovv^- 

 bird or Slate-colored Junco. However he had accomplished 

 his mission of securing a total of two hundred and fifty sub- 

 scribers, "obtained at a price worth five times their amount," 

 as he writes on March 5th. He had visited every town of im- 

 portance v/ithin one hundred and fifty miles of the Atlantic 

 coast from the St. Lawence river to Savannah. He had 

 endeavored to make arrangements at every town with depend- 



