OF NORTH CAROLINA. 233 



come, and so successfully one after another for 

 great part of the morning. It is observable that 

 wherever these fowl come in such numbers, as I 

 saw them then, they clear all before them, scarce 

 leaving one acorn upon the ground, which would, 

 doubtless, be a great prejudice to the planters that 

 should seat there, because their swine would be 

 thereby deprived of their mast. When I saw such 

 flocks of the pigeons I now speak of, none of our 

 company had any other sort of shot than that 

 which is cast in moulds, and was so very large that 

 we could not put above ten or a dozen of them 

 into our largest pices ; wherefore we made but an 

 indifferent hand of shooting them ; although we 

 commonly killed a pigeon for every shot. They 

 were very fat and as good pigeons as ever I eat. 

 I enquired of the Indians that dwelled in those parts, 

 where it was that those pigeons bred, and they 

 pointed toward the vast ridge of mountains and 

 said they bred there. Now, whether they make 

 their nests in the holes in the rocks of those moun- 

 tains or build in trees, I could not learn ; but they 

 seem to me to be a wood pigeon that build in trees, 

 because of their frequent sitting thereon, and their 

 roosting on trees always at night, under which 

 their dung commonly lies half a foot thick, and 

 kills everything that grows where it falls. 



Turtle doves are here very plentiful ; they de- 

 vour the peas ; for which reason people make 

 traps and catch them. 



