As James Fenimore Cooper Saw It 43 



"The fluttering was Incessant, and often startling as 

 we passed ahead, our march producing a movement in 

 the living crowd, that really became confounding. 

 Every tree was literally covered with nests, many having 

 at least a thousand of these frail tenements on their 

 branches, and shaded by the leaves. They often touched 

 each other, a wonderful degree of order prevailing 

 among the hundreds of thousands of families that were 

 here assembled. 



" The place had the odor of a fowl-house, and squabs 

 just fledged sufficiently to trust themselves in short 

 flights, were fluttering around us in all directions, in 

 tens of thousands. To these were to be added the par- 

 ents of the young race endeavoring to protect them and 

 guide them in a way to escape harm. Although the 

 birds rose as we approached, and the woods just around 

 us seemed fairly alive with pigeons, our presence pro- 

 duced no general commotion ; every one of the feathered 

 throng appearing to be so much occupied with its own 

 concerns, as to take little heed of the visit of a party of 

 strangers, though of a race usually so formidable to 

 their own. 



" The masses moved before us precisely as a crowd of 

 human beings yields to a pressure or a danger on any 

 given point; the vacuum created by its passage filling 

 in its rear as the water of the ocean flows into the track 

 of the keel. 



" The effect on most of us was confounding, and I 



