202 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH. 



tail with a whirring sound, like a grasshopper's buzz. Over went 

 Caesar in his haste to get away from his dangerous prize, exclaim- 

 ing, as he ran — 



" Gord a'mighty bress us ! what 's for you call ee coon ? you 

 purty nigger, dun know snake fur coon ! " 



There were no signs of deer on the island, though quantities of 

 birds of every description, that roosted in the mangrove bushes, 

 and resorted to the pools and the beaches of the island for food, 

 and made the bushes laugh with their various notes. The Key 

 West pigeon was here, with its burnished colours, and the ground 

 dove, with its plaintive note; the oriole gleamed in the willows 

 like sunrise, and the mocking-bird so peopled the bowers with his 

 many-tuned throat that the stranger would believe a hundred 

 voices were singing at once. When, through vistas of the man- 

 groves, we caught sight of the sea, the porpoise was rolling in 

 pursuit of the fish on the bar, and the pelican and cormorant were 

 following his motions in revolving circles high in the air. All 

 created things in their multitude of ways were fulfilling their 

 destiny, and each grade of life, by the other fed, ran its appointed 

 round to make its part in the measured whole of that great cycle 

 of animal life, of which man knows but a few members, and whose 

 rules of revolution seem to his dull vision to be the mere instinct 

 of appetite. 



" Bar ! " said Mike, interrupting my reflections. 



"Where?" said I. 



" Smell him." 



" Nonsense ! " 



"Yah! ha! ha! ha!" said Caesar, tugging at the leathern 

 leash by which he held Mike's hound ; " Yowler smell him too ! " 



Mike took the strap in his hands, and we silently followed the 

 lead of the dog. In a moment we passed a tree that had been 

 stripped of its bark for a distance of five feet from the ground, and 

 the bark scattered all about, while the hard inner wood of the tree 

 was furrowed by the nails of the animal 



" An old He," said Mike. 



" How do you know that ? " 



" The she ones are 'bout havin' young, and are hid in the big 



