122 WHERE ROLLS THE OREGON 



he came from the woods knowing. He accepts 

 the fenced and cluttered farm, turns it into the 

 tall, timbered river-bottom, and lives his primal 

 forest life among the corn-cribs and Baldwin ap- 

 ple trees as of old. He has not turned aside by 

 one quill's breadth from his original wild ways. 

 He roosts in the bare tops of the apple trees or 

 along the ridge-pole of the barn, as if the jaguars 

 and panthers were still prowling for him; he wakes 

 in the night, gobbles, ducks, and spreads his round 

 targe of a tail over him to ward off the swoop of 

 the imaginary owl. He breaks the hen's egg out 

 of jealousy, in order to prolong the honeymoon ; 

 she steals her nest from him and covers her eggs 

 in leaving the nest, just as she used to; and when 

 the small bands of any neighborhood are gathered 

 into a flock to be driven to market, as they still 

 are in the less settled parts, the old flock-spirit 

 returns to them, and they fall into the odd migra- 

 tion habits of their wild forebears, who used to 

 congregate in vast numbers in the autumn and 

 follow the course of the river-banks, sometimes 

 across several States, as they fed on the autumn 

 mast. 



The early accounts of their hesitancy and in- 



