368 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 



The Indians, he says, are dying fast ; they seem to pine and 

 die whenever the white population approaches them. The 

 Shawanese, who amounted, Mr. Audubon says, to some thou- 

 sands within his memory, are almost extinct, and so are vari- 

 ous other tribes. Mr. Audubon could never hear any tradition 

 about the mammoth, though he made anxious inquiries. He 

 gives no countenance to the idea that the red Indians were ever 

 a more civilized people than at this day, or that a more civilized 

 people had preceded them in North America. He refers the 

 bricks, etc., occasionally found, and appealed to in support of 

 this opinion, to the earlier settlers, or, where kettles and other 

 utensils may have been found, to the early trade between the 

 Indians and the Spaniards. 



Audubon was anxious to receive a written recom- 

 mendation from the great "Wizard of the North" touch- 

 ing the merits of his work, the publication of which had 

 just begun, but Sir Walter Scott sensibly demurred, on 

 the ground that his knowledge of natural history was 

 insufficient to qualify him to pass expert judgment. 

 "But," he added, "I can easily and truly say, that what 

 I have had the pleasure of seeing, touching your talents 

 and manners, corresponds with all I have heard in your 

 favor ; and I am a sincere believer in the extent of your 

 scientific attainments." 



While Audubon was playing the role of society's 

 pet lion at Edinburgh in the winter of 1827, he was 

 painting to meet the expense of engraving his first 

 plates, and writing at odd times of the day or night. 

 On February 20 he recorded that his paper on the 

 "Habits of the Wild Pigeon of America" was begun on 

 the previous Wednesday, and finished at half past three 

 in the morning; so completely, said he, was he trans- 

 ported to the woods of America and to the pigeons, 

 that his ears "were as if really filled with the noise of 



