28 The Passenger Pigeon 



am going to relate is fact. Yet I have seen it all, and 

 that, too, in the company of persons who, like myself, 

 were struck with amazement. 



In the autumn of 1813, I left my house at Hender- 

 son, on the banks of the Ohio, on my way to Louis- 

 ville. In passing over the Barrens a few miles beyond 

 Hardensburgh, I observed the pigeons flying from 

 northeast to southwest, in greater numbers than I 

 thought I had ever seen them before, and feeling an 

 inclination to count the flocks that might pass within 

 the reach of my eye in one hour, I dismounted, seated 

 myself on an eminence, and began to mark with my 

 pencil, making a dot for every flock that passed. In a 

 short time, finding the task which I had undertaken im- 

 practicable, as the birds poured in in countless multi- 

 tudes, I rose, and counting the dots then put down, 

 found that one hundred and sixty-three had been made 

 in twenty-one minutes. I traveled on, and still met more 

 the farther I proceeded. The air was literally filled 

 with pigeons; the light of noonday was obscured as by 

 an eclipse; the dung fell in spots, not unlike melting 

 flakes of snow; and the continued buzz of wings had a 

 tendency to lull my senses to repose. 



Whilst waiting for dinner at Young's Inn, at the con- 

 fluence of Salt River with the Ohio, I saw, at my leisure^ 

 immense legions still going by, with a front reaching 

 far beyond the Ohio on the west, and the beechwood 

 forests directly on the east of me. Not a single bird 



