306 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH. 



" Gorry mighty brcss us ! what for you call ee coon ? 

 you purty nigger, dun know snake far coon!" 



There wore no signs of deer on the island, though 

 quantities of birds of every description, that roosted in 

 the mangrove bushes, and resorted to the pools and the 

 beeches of the island for food, and made the bushes laugh 

 with their various notes. The Key West pigeon was 

 here, with its burnished colors, and the ground dove, 

 with its plaintive note ; the oriole gleamed in the willows 

 like sunrise, and the mocking-bird so peopled the bowers 

 with his many-tuned throat that the stranger would be- 

 lieve a hundred voices were singing at once. When, 

 through vistas of the mangroves, we caught sight of the 

 sea, the porpoise was rolling in pursuit of the fish 

 on the bar, while the pelican and cormorant were follow- 

 ing his motions in revolving circles high in the air. All 

 created things, in their multitude of ways, were fulfilling 

 their destiny, and each grade of life, by the other fed, 

 ran its appointed round to make its part in the measured 

 whole of that great cycle of animal life, of which man 

 knows but a few members, and whose rules of revolution 

 seem to his dull vision to be the mere instinct of appetite. 



" Bar !" said Mike, interrupting my reflections. 



"Where?" said I. 



" Smell him." 



"Nonsense!" 



"Yah! ha! ha! ha!" said Cassar, tugging at lihe 

 leathern leash by which he held Mike's hound ; " Yowler 

 smell him, too !" 



