134 SWARMS UPON SWARMS. 



one morning, on the quay of East River, at New York, 

 when my eyes were attracted by the following inscription, 

 painted in black letters on a strip of sail-cloth : " Wild 

 Pigeons for Sale." I proceeded on board a small coast- 

 ing-vessel, and was shown by the captain several baskets 

 of dead pigeons, which had been killed inland, and which 

 he offered for sale at three cents a piece. 



A Tennessee planter once assured me, that in a single 

 day he had caught, with a net, four hundred dozen 

 pigeons. His negroes, twenty in number, were thor- 

 oughly worn out in the evening with knocking down 

 the birds that had traversed his estate. 



In the month of October 1848, the nights of pigeons 

 in the state of New York were so considerable, that 

 these birds were sold on the quays and in the principal 

 markets at the rate of a penny a piece. Heads of fami- 

 lies fed their servants upon them j and the latter, could 

 they have foreseen the event, would assuredly have in- 

 cluded a clause in their agreements providing that they 

 should not have pigeons for dinner oftener than twice 

 a week, just as in Scotland the servants in the great 

 houses made it an express condition that they should not 

 be compelled to eat salmon above three times. 



One morning, in this same month of October 1848, on 

 the heights of the village of Hastings, which stretches 

 along the Hudson River, I fired some thirty times into 

 a swarm of pigeons, securing a booty of one hundred and 

 thirty-nine birds. This number included about eighty 

 enormous birds, fat and plump as young chickens. I was 

 obliged to hail a negro, who passed by the place where I 



