AMERICAN ROBIN OR MIGRATORY THRUSH. 15 



and soon inspired me with resolution to persevere in my hazardous enter- 

 prise. 



The traveller who, for the first time in his life, treads the wastes of 

 Labrador, is apt to believe that what he has been told or read of it, must be 

 at least in part true. So it was with me: I had conceived that I should meet 

 with numberless Indians who would afford me much information respecting 

 its rivers, lakes, and mountains, and who, like those of the far west, would 

 assist me in procuring the objects of my search. But alas! how disappointed 

 was I when, in rambling along three hundred miles of coast, I scarcely met 

 with a single native Indian, and was assured that there were none in the 

 interior. The few straggling parties that were seen by my companions or 

 myself, consisted entirely of half-bred descendants of "the mountaineers;" 

 and, as to Esquimaux, there were none on that side of the country. Rivers, 

 such as the Natasguan, which on the maps are represented as of considerable 

 length, degenerated into short, narrow, and shallow creeks. Scarcely any 

 of its innumerable lakes exceeded in size what are called ponds in the 

 Southern States; and, although many species of birds are plentiful, they are 

 far less numerous than they were represented to us by the fishermen and 

 others before we left Eastport. But our business at present is with the 

 Robin, which greeted our arrival. 



This bird breeds from North Carolina, on the eastern side of the Alleghany 

 Mountains, to the 56th degree of north latitude, and perhaps still farther. 

 On the western side of those mountains, it is found tolerably abundant, from 

 the lower parts of Kentucky to Canada, at all times of the year; and, not- 

 withstanding the snow and occasional severe winters of Massachusetts and 

 Maine, flocks remain in those States the whole season. Thousands, how- 

 ever, migrate into Louisiana, the Floridas, Georgia, and the Carolinas, where, 

 in winter, one cannot walk in any direction without meeting several of them. 

 While at Fayetteville, in North Carolina, in October 1831, I found that the 

 Robins had already arrived and joined those which breed there. The 

 weather was still warm and beautiful, and the woods, in every direction, 

 were alive with them, and echoed with their song. They reached Charles- 

 ton by the end of that month. Their appearance in Louisiana seldom takes 

 place before the middle of November. In all the Southern States, about 

 that period, and indeed during the season, until they return in March, their 

 presence is productive of a sort of jubilee among the gunners, and the havoc 

 made among them with bows and arrows, blowpipes, guns, and traps of 

 different sorts, is wonderful. Every gunner brings them home by bagsful, 

 and the markets are supplied with them at a very cheap rate. Several per- 

 sons may at this season stand round the foot of a tree loaded with berries, 



