COLUMBINE. 143 



period when they had made choice of it, and I arrived there 

 nearly two hours before sunset. Pew pigeons were then to 

 be seen ; but a great number of persons, with horses and 

 waggons, guns and ammunition, had already established 

 encampments on the borders. Two farmers from the vici- 

 nity of Russelville, distant more than a hundred miles, had 

 driven upwards of three hundred hogs to be fattened on the 

 pigeons that were to be slaughtered. . . . The sun was lost 

 to our view, yet not a pigeon had arrived. . . . Suddenly 

 there burst forth a general cry of ' Here they come V The 

 noise which they made, though yet distant, reminded me 

 of a hard gale at sea passing through the rigging of a 

 close-reefed vessel. . . . The pigeons, arriving by thousands, 

 alighted everywhere, one above another, until solid masses 

 as large as hogsheads were formed on the branches all 

 round. Here and there the perches gave way with a crash, 

 and, falling on the ground, destroyed hundreds of the birds 

 beneath, forcing down the dense groups with which every 

 stick was loaded. . . . The pigeons were constantly coming, 

 and it was past midnight before I perceived a decrease in 

 the number of those that arrived. Towards the approach of 

 day, the noise in some measure subsided ; long before ob- 

 jects were distinguishable, the pigeons began to move off in 



