578 FLIGHT OF THE FASSENGER FIGEOK 



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 top of the trees, the 

 view through the woods presented a perpetual tumult of crowding and fluttering multi- 

 tudes 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 which 

 seemed to be most crowded with nests, and contriving 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. 



On some single trees upwards of one hundred nests were found, each containing one 

 young only, a circumstance in the history of this bird not generally known to naturalists. 

 It was dangerous to walk under these flying and fluttering millions, from the frequent fall 

 of large branches, broken down by the weight of the multitudes above, and which, in 

 their descent, often destroyed numbers of the birds themselves. 



I had left the public road to visit the remains of the breeding place, near Shelbyville, 

 and was traversing the woods with my gun, on my way to Frankfort, when, about one 

 o'clock, the pigeons which I had observed flying the greater part of the morning northerly 

 began to return in such immense numbers as I never before had witnessed. Coming 

 to an opening by the side of a creek called the Benson, I was astonished at their 

 appearance. 



They were flying with great steadiness and rapidity, at a height beyond gunshot, in 

 several strata deep, and so close together that could shot have reached them, one discharge 

 would not have failed of bringing down several individuals. From right to left, as far as 

 the eye could reach, the breadth of this vast procession extended, seeming everywhere 

 equally crowded. 



Curious to determine how long this appearance would continue, I took out my watch 

 to note the time, and sat down to observe them. It was then half-past one. I sat for 

 more than an hour, but instead of a diminution of this prodigious procession, it seemed 

 rather to increase both in numbers and rapidity ; and anxious to reach Frankfort before 

 night, I rose and went on. About four o'clock in the afternoon, I crossed the Kentucky 

 river, at the town of Frankfort, at which time the living torrent above my head seemed 

 as numerous and as extensive as ever. The great breadth of front which this mighty 

 multitude preserved would seem to intimate a corresponding breadth of their breeding 

 place, which by several gentlemen who had lately passed through part of it, was stated to 

 me at several miles." 



A few observations on the mode of flight of these birds must not be omitted. 



" The appearance of large detached bodies of them in the air, and the various evolutions 

 they display, are strikingly picturesque and interesting. In descending the Ohio by 

 myself in tlie month of February, I often rested on my oars to contemplate their aerial 

 manoeuvres. 



A column, eight or ten miles in length, would appear from Kentucky, high in air, 

 steering over 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. When this bend became very great, the birds, as if sensible 

 of the unnecessarily circuitous course they were taking, suddenly changed their direction, 

 so that what was in column before became an immense front, straightening all its 

 indentures until it swept the heavens in one vast and infinitely extended line. 



Other lesser bodies united with each other as they happened to approach, with 

 such ease and elegance of evolutions, forming new figures, and varying them as they 

 united or se})arated, that I w^as never tired of contemplating them. Sometimes a hawk 

 would miike a sweep on a particular part of the column, when, almost as quick as 



