322 



THE OOLOGIST. 



at Baltimore our traveller hopefully 

 turned his face in the direction of An- 

 napolis. Here he passed his book 

 through both houses of the State Legis- 

 lature which was then in session, but as 

 far as securing subscribers was con- 

 cerned the sages of Maryland might 

 just as well have been somewhere else, 

 as the negatives were everything and 

 the affirmatives nothing. Every Law- 

 yer on the bench examined the book 

 with the utmost deliberation, but the 

 enormous sum of one hundred and 

 twenty dollars for a book ^eemed to 

 them wholly out of the bounds of rea- 

 son, and Wilson was- obliged to depart 

 without a single name being added to 

 the list. At Baltimore he met with 

 flattering success, at Annapolis with a 

 most discouraging failure. Where so 

 many wise men were assembled one 

 would suppose his book would be fa- 

 vorably received, but in this case as in 

 innumerable others the sum of one 

 hundred and twenty dollras arose like 

 an evil geuius between him and his 

 hopes. Still our hero for such he de- 

 serves to be called was in no wise dis- 

 • couraged by the deision of the people 

 of Annapolis, but with determined step 

 he pursued his route through tobacco 

 fields, sloughs, and swamps of this il- 

 literate corner of the State, as he chose 

 to call it, to Washington a distance of 

 thirty-eight miles. This journey was 

 attended with considerable inconvenir 

 ence and misery there being but a few 

 miles of road, and a poor substitute for 

 a road at that. He writes that on the 

 way he saluted and opened fifty-five 

 gates with all the patience he could 

 muster, each one compelling him to de- 

 scend into the mud to open it. The 

 Negroes were particularly numerous 

 in this region and he declares them as 

 being wretchedly clad, in some cases 

 their filthy bundle of rags being scarce- 

 ly sufficient to cover their nakedness, 

 yet-the negroes were extremely oblidg- 

 ■ ing and kind and very civilly showed 



our traveler the road, when he halted 

 before their miserable huts to inquire 

 the way. 



The Capitol City Washington present- 

 ed a much different appearance at the 

 time Wilson entered it, than it does to- 

 day. The Capitol buildings were new 

 and about the only edifices of any ac- 

 count then in the city. Wilson says, 

 that the only improvement going on 

 was the building of one brick house. 

 Thomas Jefferson was then President 

 and it was he to whom Wilson applied 

 for encouragment. Jefferson was a 

 great lover of birds, in fact he had cor- 

 responded with Wilson previously in 

 reference to a strange bird seen in his 

 native state, Virginia, and which Wil- 

 son was enabled to identify as the 

 Wood Thrush. The President received 

 Wilson with marked respect and kind- 

 ness; their conversation being much on 

 the subject of ornithology, which sub- 

 ject Jefferson was deeply interested in 

 and to which he paid considerable at- 

 tention to, even with the more import- 

 ant duties of Executive to look after. 



At this time there was living in Vir- 

 ginia a person who had spent the whole 

 of his life in the interesting study of or- 

 nithology, and who was occupied with 

 collecting information on the subject 

 for the President. To this gentleman 

 the President gave Wilson a letter of 

 introduction and intrusted the commis- 

 sion of gathering the information to 



him. 

 From Washington the Ornithologist 



pushed his way to Norfolk, Virginia, 

 where he had considerable success in 

 exhibiting his book. He found the 

 streets of Norfolk, as were the majority 

 of the city streets in the south at that 

 time, little better than mud holes 

 through which he urged his horse with 

 difficulty. 



It may be well to insert in this con- 

 nection a brief account of the general 

 features of the country and its inhabi- 

 tants in order that the reader may form 



