Early Naturalists 25 



to a new world on his great work : his heart expanding with 

 excitement and joy as he headed toward the unexplored wil- 

 derness of the Mississippi Valley. 



''Wondrous experiences were his: from the densely wooded 

 shores there would reach him as he drifted down the whistle 

 of the red bird those first spring notes so familiar and so 

 welcome to us on mild days toward the last of February. 

 Away off in dim forest valleys, between bold headlands, he 

 saw the rising smoke of sugar camps. At other openings on 

 the landscape grotesque leg cabins looked like dcg-houses un- 

 der impending mighty mountains. His rapidly steered skiff 

 passed flotillas of Kentucky arks heavily making their way 

 southward, transporting men and women and children the 

 moving pioneers of the young nation : the first river merchant- 

 marine of the new world ; carrying horses and plows to clear- 

 ings yet to be made for homesteads in the wilderness ; trans- 

 porting mill-stones for mills not yet built on any wilderness 

 stream. . . . 



"He records what to us now sounds incredible, that 

 on March fifth he saw a flock of parrokeets. Think of parro- 

 keets on the Ohio River in March ! . . . Once he encountered 

 a storm of wind and hail and snow and rain, during which 

 the river foamed and rolled like the sea and he had to make 

 good use of his tin to keep the skiff baled out till he could put 

 in to shore. The call of wild turkeys enticed him now toward 

 the shore of Indiana, now toward the shore of Kentucky, but 

 before he reached either they had disappeared. His first 

 night on the Kentucky shore he spent in the cabin of a squat- 

 ter and heard him tell tales of bear-treeing and wildcat-hunt- 

 ing and wolf-baiting. All night wolves howled in the forests 

 near by and kept the dogs in an uproar ; the region swarmed 

 with wolves and wildcats 'black and brown.' 



' ' On and on, until at last the skiff reached the rapids of the 

 Ohio at Louisville and he stepped ashore and sold his frail 

 savior craft, which, at starting, he had named the Orni- 

 thologist. The Kentuckian who bought it as the Ornithologist 

 accepted the droll name as that of some Indian chief. He 

 soon left Louisville, having sent his baggage on by wagon, 

 and plunged into the Kentucky forest on his way to Lexing- 

 ton. 3 



After Wilson's death, the remaining volumes of his work 

 were completed by his friend, Charles Lucien Bonaparte, the 

 Prince of Cannino and nephew of Napoleon, who in early 



3 From the "Kentucky Warbler," pp.. 82-88, by permission of the 

 author and Doubleday, Page and Co. 



