158 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 



Gillivray, 12 dated "Cote Blanche, 18 April, 1837,' 

 which we will now reproduce : 



Audubon to William MacGillivray 



MY DEAR FRIEND, 



Being just now snugly anchored in a bay, the description 

 of which may prove agreeable to you, I sit down to give you 

 an account of what I have been doing since I last wrote to you. 



After visiting "Rabbit Island," on which, as I have already 

 told you, not a single Rabbit or Hare is to be seen, we made our 

 way between it and Frisky Point, by a narrow and somewhat 

 difficult channel leading to the bay in which I now write. The 

 shores around us are entirely formed of a bank, from twenty 

 to thirty feet high, and composed of concrete shells of various 

 kinds, among which the Common Oyster, however, predominates. 

 This bank, which at present looks as if bleached by the sunshine 

 and rain of centuries, is so white that it well might form a 

 guiding line to the vessels which navigate this bay even in the 

 darkest nights. The bay, however, is so shallow, that it is 

 rarely entered by vessels larger than schooners of about seventy 

 tons burthen, which visit its shores to take in the sugars and 

 cottons grown in the neighbouring country. 



The "Crusader" is a somewhat curious craft, small, snug 

 withal, and considerably roguish looking. She has not fewer 

 than four "grunters" on her fore deck, her sails are of pure 

 white cotton, and although she bears the lively flag of our 

 country at the peak, her being painted purely black gives her 

 the aspect, not merely of a smuggler, but of a pirate. But 

 here she is, at the entrance of a canal of a sugar plantation, 

 and close to another craft, much the worse for wear, and, for 

 aught I know to the contrary, belonging to the captain alone, 

 who, I would almost venture to assert, belongs to no country 

 at all. 



"Printed in the Edinburgh Journal of Natural History (Bibl. No. 37), 

 vol. i, p. 17 (December, 1838). 



