368 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 
The Indians, he says, are dying fast; they seem to pine and 
die whenever the white population approaches them. The 
Shawanese, who amounted, Mr. Audubon says, to some thou- 
sands within his memory, are almost extinct, and so are vari- 
ous other tribes. Mr. Audubon could never hear any tradition 
about the mammoth, though he made anxious inquiries. He 
gives no countenance to the idea that the red Indians were ever 
a more civilized people than at this day, or that a more civilized 
people had preceded them in North America. He refers the 
bricks, etc., occasionally found, and appealed to in support of 
this opinion, to the earlier settlers,—or, where kettles and other 
‘utensils may have been found, to the early trade between the 
Indians and the Spaniards. 
Audubon was anxious to receive a written recom- 
mendation from the great “Wizard of the North” touch- 
ing the merits of his work, the publication of which had 
just begun, but Sir Walter Scott sensibly demurred, on 
the ground that his knowledge of natural history was 
insufficient to qualify him to pass expert judgment. 
“But,” he added, “I can easily and truly say, that what 
I have had the pleasure of seeing, touching your talents 
and manners, corresponds with all I have heard in your 
favor; and I am a sincere believer in the extent of your 
scientific attainments.” 
While Audubon was playing the réle of society’s 
pet lion at Edinburgh in the winter of 1827, he was 
painting to meet the expense of engraving his first 
plates, and writing at odd times of the day or night. 
On February 20 he recorded that his paper on the 
“Habits of the Wild Pigeon of America” was begun on 
the previous Wednesday, and finished at half past three 
in the morning; so completely, said he, was he trans- 
ported to the woods of America and to the pigeons, 
that his ears “were as if really filled with the noise of 
