4 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH. 



vowels poured out in a hurried volume. It domineers over every 

 other sound by reason of its peculiarity. There is no manner of 

 representing it in language, though the negroes have a song that 

 ends in a turkey chorus, which might be written thus : — Chug-u- 

 logga, chug-u-logga, chug-u-logga-chug. In the liquid negro patois 

 it is not dissimilar. Having taken the bearings of the turkey by 

 his sound, and estimated his distance, I ran on ahead, during a 

 time equal to the interval between his calls, and then stopped and 

 listened. In a moment the call sounded through the woods near 

 me. I walked carefully forward, awhile sheltering myself behind 

 clumps of alders and trunks of trees, and then waited and watched 

 attentively. Again the note sounded, but it seemed in the air. I 

 cast my eye upward, and there, perched on the dead and topmost 

 boughs of a sycamore, from whence he could overlook the sur- 

 rounding forest, stood my friend. His erect and slender form was 

 drawn up to its full height, his little head turned quickly to the 

 right and the left as he surveyed the forest below him, lit up by 

 the same early sun that was burnishing his own glossy breast. I 

 could imagine the view he was eyeing, and it must have been the 

 conscious pride of a chieftain viewing his native heaths and hills 

 that drew his form to such stately proportions. From where he 

 sat he overlooked river and lake, broad lagoon, and hundreds of 

 low-lying islands ; he saw savannahs covered with reeds and osiers, 

 and shady with tapering canes, where bred the crab, and trailed 

 the snail and centipede ; he heard the pattering rain of pecan and 

 of beech-nuts on the upland, and saw the pawpaw bear its luscious 

 fruit ; shady glens invited to repose, and in fancy's eye his lazy 

 harem lay beneath those trees, shuffling with their wings the 

 white sand of the hummocks that bounded the sea. All this he 

 saw, and then swelling his throat, he sent forth his call, herald of 

 the morn, and gathering-cry of his clan. 



Eaising my rifle I took aim and fired. A half-uttered gobble 

 was suppressed, and spreading his wings he sailed away in a 

 slanting direction. " Missed," I ejaculated, as I saw him skating 

 along like a hawk. Just then, without an indication, he rolled 

 over in the air and came crashing through the boughs of the pine 

 trees to the earth. 



