THE WILD TURKEY. 21$ 



ground. Mallards and sprig-tails, widgeons, gad- 

 wells, and blue-bills, with teal by the thousand, 

 whizzed southward over our heads as we crossed 

 the rope ferry ; and dark lines in the zenith 

 headed in the same direction, from which fell 

 the clarion tones of the goose and the reverberat- 

 ing tremolo of the sand-hill crane, told that they 

 too thought it time to be looking up winter 

 quarters. With our old-fashioned muzzle-loaders, 

 loaded with Ely's wire buckshot cartridges, — 

 which could always be relied on to go like a 

 bullet when you wanted them to scatter, and to 

 break at the muzzle when you wanted them to 

 hold together, but which in the long-run were 

 better than loose buckshot, — we were soon 

 upon the bluffs. Nearly all the leaves had fallen 

 except the brown foliage of the white oaks ; the 

 woods, though quite open, looked wild, but there 

 was no sign of life except big yellow fox-squir- 

 rels and gray squirrels scampering over the 

 ground, dodging around some trunk or hiding in 

 some crotch, while the melancholy jingle of the 

 jay was about the only sign of bird-life. 



But before I with one-companion had gone a 

 mile, tracks of the wild turkey began to appear 



