CHAPTER X. 



WILD SWANS. 



Very abundant on the Pacific Coast — Classification of Linnaeus — Differ- 

 ence between swans and ducks — Food of tlie swan — How to dis- 

 tinguisli cygnets from young snow-geese — The wooing season — 

 ow brides are won — Cygnets— Breeding grounds— Indians thinli 

 the swan attains a great age — Opinions of Aristotle, Pliny, Virgil, 

 Sonini, Ovid, and Plato on its mythical qualities — The American 

 species — The trumpeting swan — General sketch — The whistling 

 swan — Difference between the species — Haunts and habits — 

 Swans-down— Swans rarely killed for their flesh — Cause of their 

 toughness — Indians slaughter them in large numbers on the Pacific 

 Coast— Very abundant along the Columbia River — Swans cannot 

 rise suddenly from the water — How the sportsman should ap- 

 proach them — Fly low during heavy winds — The difficulty in mak- 

 ing large bags — Prices of swans in full plumage — A day among 

 swans — Change of quarters — Cranes and herons as sentinels — A 

 bag of swans — Lose our boat— A welcome arrival — An Indian wild- 

 fowler — A destructive shot — An unwelcome bath and frozen 

 clothes — A cure for a cold — A kicking gun — Windy days the best 

 for shooting swans — The moulting season — " Fire-hunting " swans. 



These birds, which have so often aroused the poetic 

 fire of bards, are more numerous west of the Rocky 

 Mountains than m any other part of the world, so far as 

 I can learn. They are, in fact, so abundant at the mouth 

 of the Columbia River, in Oregon, which is six or seven 

 miles wide, that the water seems, at a distance, to be 

 covered with cumulus clouds or a snow-bank, late in 

 the autumn. Their trumpeting and whistling sounds 

 are familiar to those persons who have encamped on the 

 wooded borders of a well-watered prairie in October, for 

 they come in such vast flocks from their home in the 

 Arctic regions, that they cover an immense tract of coun- 

 try in a short time, and seek every available stream and 

 tarn in search of food and shelter. They form a most 

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