EXPERIMENTS IN TRADE 239 
day’s sport was over,” he said, ‘“we counted more than 
fifty of these beautiful birds whose skins were intended 
for the ladies of Europe. There were plenty of geese 
and ducks, but no one condescended to give them a shot.” 
This was Audubon in 1810, when such “sport” was re- 
garded as legitimate enough, and the feather-hunting 
of such Indians was not considered the nefarious trade 
that it proved to be. If we shift the scene to twenty 
years later, when William MacGillivray needed thou- 
sands of specimens of American birds for his studies 
upon their anatomy and variability, we find Audubon 
supplying him liberally, but he could not then bear to see 
them killed wantonly or for mere sport; more than 
once, out of compassion for individual birds that he 
chanced to be studying, whether in Florida or in Labra- 
dor, he would not permit them to be shot even when 
needed for his collections. 
At the Shawnee Indian camp, to relate a character- 
istic anecdote, Audubon noticed that a squaw who “had 
been delivered of beautiful twins during the night” was 
busied on the next day at her usual task of tanning 
deer skins. “She cut two vines,” his record reads, “‘at 
the roots of opposite trees and made a cradle of the bark, 
in which the new born ones were wafted to and fro with 
a push of her hand, while from time to time she gave 
them the breast, and was apparently as unconcerned as 
if the event had not taken place.” 
When at last our adventurers gained the Mississippi, 
the mighty volume of which was running three miles an 
hour, the patron ordered all hands ashore to pull at the 
bow rope. This characteristic remark of the naturalist 
is delightful, as showing the “single eye” which it has 
been declared of old shall be “full of light”: “we made,” 
said Audubon, “‘seven miles a day up the famous river; 
