CHAPTER XIX. 

 THE PIGEONS, GROUSE, AND SHORE-BIRDS. 



THE PIGEONS. 



Most educated Americans are familiar with accounts of the 

 enormous numbers of Passenger Pigeons which formerly in- 

 habited many of our States. Some of the stories seem almost 

 incredible, but there can be no doubt that they are substantially 

 true. Audubon's graphic description is well worth quoting 

 in this connection. 



" Let us now inspect the places of nightly rendezvous. 

 One of these curious roosting places on the bank of the 

 Green River in Kentucky I repeatedly visited. It was, as is 

 always the case, in a portion of the forest where the trees are 

 of great magnitude and where there was little underwood. 

 I rode through it upward of forty miles, and, crossing it in 

 different parts, found its average breadth to be rather more 

 than three miles. My first view of it was about a fortnight 

 subsequent to the period when they had made a choice of it, 

 and I arrived there two hours before sunset. Few pigeons 

 were to be seen, but a great number of persons, with horses 

 and wagons, guns and ammunition, had already established 

 encampments on the borders. Two farmers from the vicinity 

 of Russelsville, distant more than a hundred miles, had driven 

 upward of three hundred hogs to be fattened on the pigeons 

 which were to be slaughtered. Here and there the people em- 

 ployed in plucking and salting what had already been procured 

 were seen sitting in the midst of large piles of these birds. 

 The dung lay several inches deep, covering the whole extent of 

 the roosting place like a bed of snow. Many trees I observed 

 were broken off at no great distance from the ground ; and 

 the branches of many of the largest and tallest had given 



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