BARRENS OF KENTUCKY. 83 
of a gigantic serpent. Multitudes are seen, some 
times, in groups, at the estimate of a hundred 
and sixty-three flocks*in twenty-one minutes, 
The noonday light is then darkened as by an 
eclipse, and the air filled with the dreamy buz 
zing of their wings. 
Not unfrequéntly a terrible massacre of these 
birds takes place, when an armed company.of 
men and boys assemble on the banks of the 
Ohio for their destruction. Great pomp attends 
the cruel victory—a camp is formed, fires are 
lighted, and overpowering is the din and con- 
fusion of the contest. Enormous quantities are 
destroyed, aud the remains left unappropriated 
on the ground. Spite of these devastations, the 
number of the birds is always doubled, and often 
quadrupled yearly. 
But more terrible to the winged tribes, than 
forest crusades, sweeping with desolation through 
the woods like tornadoes, are the earthquakes, 
which menace a traveller over those vast and 
dreary plains—the famed Barrens of Kentucky. 
Wandering over them one November afternoon, 
Audubon was surprised by a sudden and stranga 
darkness, spreading from the western horizon. 
Regarding it as the forerunner only of one of 
the hurricanes, a storm to which he was well 
ased, without further apprehension, he merely 
spuited his horse to reach the sheltering roof of 
a 
