170 AMERICAN FLAMINGO. 



Egan, however, assured us that they would fly round the Key, and alight 

 not far from us, in less than ten minutes, which in fact they did, although to 

 me these minutes seemed almost hours. "Now they come," said the pilot, 

 "keep low." This we did; but, alas! the Flamingoes were all, as I suppose, 

 very old and experienced birds, with the exception of one, for on turning 

 round the lower end of the Key, they spied our boat again, sailed away 

 without flapping their wings, and alighted about four hundred yards from us, 

 and upwards of one hundred from the shore, on a "soap flat" of vast extent, 

 where neither boat nor man could approach them. I however watched their 

 motions until dusk, when we reluctantly left the spot and advanced toward 

 Indian Key. Mr. Egan then told me that these birds habitually returned 

 to their feeding-grounds toward evening, that they fed during the greater 

 part of the night, and were much more nocturnal in their habits than any of 

 the Heron tribe. 



When I reached Key West, mjr first inquiries, addressed to Dr. Benjamin 

 Strobel, had reference to the Flamingoes, and I felt gratified by learning 

 that he had killed a good number of them, and that he would assist us in 

 procuring some. As on that Key they are fond of resorting to the shallow 

 ponds formerly kept there as reservoirs of water, for the purpose of making 

 salt, we visited them at different times, but always without success; and, 

 although I saw a great number of them in the course of my stay in that 

 country, I cannot even at this moment boast of having had the satisfaction 

 of shooting a single individual. 



A very few of these birds have been known to proceed eastward of the 

 Floridas beyond Charleston in South Carolina, and some have been pro- 

 cured there within eight or ten years back. None have ever been observed 

 about the mouths of the Mississippi; and to my great surprise I did not 

 meet with any in the course of my voyage to the Texas, where, indeed, I 

 was assured they had never been seen, at least as far as Galveston Island. 

 The western coast of Florida, and some portions of that of Alabama, in the 

 neighbourhood of Pensacola, are the parts to which they mostly resort; but 

 they are said to be there always extremely shy, and can be procured only 

 by waylaying them in the vicinity of their feeding-grounds toward evening, 

 when, on one occasion, Dr. Strobel shot several in the course of a few 

 hours. Dr. Leitner also procured some in the course of his botanical 

 excursions along the western coast of the Floridas, where he was at last 

 murdered by some party of Seminole Indians, at the time of our last dis- 

 astrous war with those children of the desert. 



Flamingoes, as I am informed, are abundant on the Island of Cuba, more 

 especially on the southern side of some of its shores, and where many islets 

 at some distance from the mainland afford them ample protection. In their 



