232 WILD SCENES AND SONG-BIKDS. 



It was indeed a horrible creature possessing a life the 

 most strangely incomprehensible that can be conceived, and 

 the only parallels to which, in the disguise of humanity, that 

 are to be found among us, exist in the buzzard race of rag- 

 picking gutter- rakers, which the dreadful distortions of Euro- 

 pean life have weekly vomited upon our shores. 



The creature was what is called a boat or river thief one 

 who lived by petty thieving a prowler along the desolate 

 river shore, from small settlement to settlement a compara- 

 tive harmless wretch, appropriating everything he could lay 

 his hands upon in the shape of movable or convertable 

 property ; boats, poultry, pigs and groceries, left exposed 

 one night upon the landings. He had evidently received 

 a severe striping lately most probably for some petty 

 theft as I could see the blue whelks and blood-crusted 

 scars plainly enough through the loop-holes of his tattered 

 shirt. 



It was droll indeed to witness the airs of " indignant vir- 

 tue" forthwith assumed by the delectable and " chosen" in- 

 nocents who constituted the inmates of the hut. They rose 

 at once upon the poor miserable devil, as the wolf snarls 

 through white tusks at the feeble carrion crow, or at the 

 slow- winged, obscene aura, that comes flapping in slow glide 

 above a promised feast. He begged for food in vain, and 

 before he had time to whine out his pitiful story, they seized 

 and hurled him out into the darkness from whence he had 

 emerged, floating on a drift-log down the fretful river. I 

 felt as if the time had come when I must act, if ever. So 

 standing behind these virtuous gentry, just as they had suc- 

 ceeded in turning out the poor river-thief, by their united 

 efforts, my friend and myself presented ourselves at the door 

 with weapons cocked, and ordered them peremptorily off, 

 telling them that we knew them to be far TV :>rse and more 

 dangerous scoundrels than the poor creature they had thrown 

 into night. 



" Now I" said I, " we understand you fully for a set of 



