Vultures 



about the streets as familiarly as chickens to pick up the scraps 

 of food that so quickly become putrid in a warm climate ; or, 

 perched upon the chimney tops, drying and warming their grim, 

 spectre-like bodies. Every market place is haunted by them 

 more persistently than by the turkey buzzard ; for the carrion 

 crows will be walked on by the crowd rather than leave the 

 refuse of the butcher's stalls. One bird in Charleston^ S. C, has 

 visited a certain butcher regularly for twenty years. While both 

 species are cowards, it is the black vulture that invariably secures 

 the tidbit in the refuse heap from under the very beak of the 

 turkey buzzard that stands in ridiculous awe of its heavy weight. 

 But it is only at feeding time that these two vultures associate. 

 The black vulture is decidedly the more gregarious. A carcass 

 of horse or hog will sometimes be entirely concealed under an 

 animate mass of these sable scavengers, perhaps two hundred or 

 more fiercely clawing at the loathsome food. They gave the 

 final touch of horror to the scene after the destruction of the 

 Spanish fleet at Santiago when the sailors were washed ashore, 

 and to the battlefields where our own dead soldiers lay. One of 

 the Rough Riders who had shown magnificent courage in the 

 presence of the enemy, went into violent hysterics at the sight 

 of the vultures hovering over his fallen friends in the underbrush 

 about Baiquiri. 



308 



