AN UNWELCOME VISITOB. 121 



unhealthy sign. For game is not in the habit of leaving a 

 favourite feeding-ground without reason. Discouraged at 

 want of success, I dismounted, fastening up Bucephalus, 

 and took my pipe again into confidence. On an old rotten 

 limh of a partially-decayed button wood a family of red- 

 headed woodpeckers were busily at work, making the wood 

 echo with the violence of their tapping. Watching the 

 sprightly movements of these active little beauties, I 

 became totally absorbed in their energetic pursuits, when 

 a half snort and uneasy movement on the part of my horse 

 caused me to look round ; and well I did so, for about 

 forty yards off, leisurely feeding, were about thirty full- 

 grown wild turkeys. My smooth-bore had ball in each 

 barrel, but as I had two or three loads of buck-shot in my 

 pouch, I determined to substitute it. To the shelter of a 

 log like a snake I glided to perform the change of missiles, 

 and was about to draw the last fragment of myself out of 

 sight, when the confounded warning of a rattlesnake 

 sounded so close, that I involuntarily gave a jump to 

 avoid the threatening danger, thus exposing myself to the 

 turkeys, who took wing, without affording me a chance 

 of a sho^, so turkeyless I was compelled to remain ; but 

 you may bet that snake never scared anyone afterwards. 

 He was one of the largest and most venomous of his 

 family, being quite five i'eet long, as yellow as gold along 

 the abdomen, and possessed of sixteen rattles. He belonged 

 to the variety which generally goes by the name of timber- 

 snake, much larger and totally different in colour from the 

 prairie rattlesnake or massasauga, which is always black, 

 and never exceeds eighteen or twenty inches in length. 



