WALKS ABOUT TALLAHASSEE. 211 
afterward, to come upon a confirmatory 
judgment by Mr. Maurice Thompson, who, 
if any one, must be competent to speak. 
“Tf I were going to risk the reputation 
of our country on the singing of a mock- 
ing-bird against a European nightingale,” 
says Mr. Thompson,! “ I should choose my 
champion from the hill-country in the neigh- 
borhood of Tallahassee, or from the environs 
of Mobile. . . . I have found no birds else- 
where to compare with those in that belt of 
country about thirty miles wide, stretching 
from Live Oak in Florida, by way of Talla- 
hassee, to some miles west of Mobile.” 
I had gone down the hill past some ne- 
gro cabins, into a small, straggling wood, 
and through the wood to a gate which let 
me into a plantation lane. It was the fair- 
est of summer forenoons (to me, I mean ; 
by the almanac it was only the Oth of 
April), and one of the fairest of quiet land- 
scapes: broad fields rising gently to the 
horizon, and before me, winding upward, a 
grassy lane open on one side, and bordered 
on the other by a deep red gulch and a zig- 
zag fence, along which grew vines, shrubs, 
1 By-Ways and Bird-Notes, p. 20. 
