436 Wright, Early Records of the Passetiger Pigeon. [bet" 



seat there, because their swine would be thereby deprived of their 

 mast. When I saw such flocks of the pigeons I now speak of, 

 none of our company had any other of shot than that which is 

 cast in moulds, and was so very large that we could not put above 

 ten or a dozen of them into our largest pices; wherefore we made 

 but an indifferent hand of shooting them; although we commonly 

 killed a pigeon for every shot. They were Aery fat and as good 

 pigeons as ever I eat. I enquired of the Indians that dwelled in 

 those parts, where it was that those pigeons bred, and they pointed 

 toward the vast ridge of mountains and said they bred there. Now, 

 whether they make their nests in the holes in the rocks of those 

 mountains or build in trees, I could not learn; but they seem to me 

 to be a wood pigeon that build in trees, because of their frequent 

 sitting thereon, and their roosting on trees always at night, under 

 which their dung commonly lies half a foot thick, and kills every- 

 thing that grows where it falls." 



In 1761 and 1770 we have the following notes: the first, in 

 'A Description of South Carolina,' etc., gives l "the sorts of wild 

 fowl that frequent the inland parts of the Country," as " . . . . 

 Pidgeons, . . . . ;" the second, "A Short Description of the Province 

 of South Carolina: Written in the year 1763 by G. Milligen. 

 London, 1770," states that 1 "In the woods and fields are plenty of 

 wild turkeys...., doves, pigeons,...." Shortly after, Alex. 

 Hewatt, in ' An Historical Account of .... South Carolina and 

 Georgia' (London, 1779, Vol. I, p. 85), records "wild turkeys, 

 pigeons, . . . ., and turtle doves, in great numbers ..." 



Xear the close of the eighteenth century William Bartram visited 

 this region and in his ' Travels through North and South Carolina, 

 Georgia, East and West Florida,' (Philadelphia, 1791, Part IV, 

 Chap. X, pp. 469, 470), gives the following account: "Left 

 Savannah in the evening, in consequence of a pressing invitation 

 from the honourable Jonathan Bryan, Esq. who was returning 

 from the capital, to his villa, about eight miles up Savanna river; 

 .... At night, soon after our arrival, several of his servants came 

 home with horse loads of wild pigeons (Columba migratoria) 

 which it seems they had collected in a short space of time at a 



> Hist. Coll. S. C. By B. R. Carroll. N. Y., 1836, Vol. 2, pp. 250, 482. 



