NATURAL HISTORY. 311 



cooking utensils, many of them accompanied by the greater 

 part of their families, and encamped for several days at this 

 immense nursery. Several of them informed me that the 

 noise in the woods was so great as to terrify their horses, and 

 that it was difficult for one person to hear another speak, 

 without bawling in his ear. The ground was strewed with 

 broken limbs of trees, eggs, and young squab pigeons, which 

 had been precipitated from above, and on which herds of hogs 

 .were fattening. Hawks, buzzards, and eagles, were sailing 

 about in great numbers, and seizing the squabs from their 

 nests at pleasure ; while from twenty feet upwards to the 

 tops of the trees, the view through the woods presented per- 

 petual tumult of crowding and fluttering multitudes of pigeons, 

 their wings roaring like thunder, mingled with the frequent 

 crash of falling timber, for now the axe men were at work 

 cutting down those trees that seemed to be most crowded with 

 nests, and contrived to fell them in such a manner, that in 

 their descent they might bring down several others, by which 

 means the falling of one large tree sometimes produced two 

 hundred squabs, little inferior in size to the old ones, and 

 almost one mass of fat. 



" All accounts agree in stating that each nest contains only 

 one young squab. These are so extremely fat, that the 

 Indians and many of the whites are accustomed to melt 

 down the fat for domestic purposes, as a substitute for butter 

 and lard." 



A few observations on the mode of flight of these birds 

 must not be omitted. " A column, eight or ten miles in 

 length, would appear from Kentucky, high in air, steering 

 across to Indiana. The leaders of this great body would 

 sometimes gradually vary their course, until it formed a large 

 bend of more than a mile in diameter, those behind tracing 

 the exact route of their predecessors. This would continue 

 sometimes long after both extremities were beyond the reach 

 of sight, so that the whole, with its glittering undulations, 

 marked a space on the face of the heavens, resembling the 

 windings of a vast and majestic river. . . . Sometimes a hawk 

 would make a sweep on a particular part of the column, from 

 a great height, when, almost as quick as lightning, that part 

 shot downwards out of the common track, but soon rising 



