ALEXANDER WILSON. xcv ii 



creeks, the darkness of night obscures every object around. On 

 emerging from one of the worst of these, I met General Wade 

 Hampton, with two servants and a pack-horse, going, as he said, 

 towards Nashville. I told him of the mud campaign immediately 

 before him ; I was covered with mire and wet, and I thought he 

 looked somewhat serious at the difficulties he was about to engage. 

 He has been very sick lately. About half an hour before sunset, 

 being within sight of the Indian's where I intended to lodge, the 

 evening being perfectly clear and calm, I laid the reins on my horse's 

 neck, to listen to a mocking bird, the first I had heard in the western 

 country, which, perched on the top of a dead tree before the door, 

 was pouring out a torrent of melody. I think I never heard so 

 excellent a performer. I had alighted, and was fastening my horse, 

 when, hearing the report of a rifle immediately beside me, I looked 

 up, and saw the poor mocking bird fluttering to the ground : one 

 of the savages had marked his elevation, and barbarously shot him. 

 I hastened over to the yard, and, walking up to him, told him that 

 was bad, very bad, that this poor bird had come from a far distant 

 country to sing to him, and that, in return, he had cruelly killed 

 him. I told him the Great Spirit was offended at such cruelty, 

 and that he would lose many a deer for so doing. The old Indian, 

 father-in-law to the bird killer, understanding, by the negro inter- 

 preter, what I said, replied, that, when these birds come singing 

 and making a noise all day near the house, somebody will surely 

 die, which is exactly what an old superstitious German, near 

 Hampton, in Virginia, told me. This fellow has married the two 

 eldest daughters of the old Indian, and presented one of them with 

 the bird he had killed. The next day I passed through the Chicka- 

 saw Bigtown, which stands on the high open plain that extends 

 through the country, three or four miles in breadth, by fifteen in 

 length. Here and there you perceive little groups of miserable huts, 

 formed of saplings, and plastered with mud and clay. About these 

 are generally a few peach and plum trees. Many ruins of others 

 stand scattered about, and I question whether there were twenty 

 inhabited huts within the whole range of view. The ground was 

 red with strawberries, and the boatmen were seen, in straggling 

 parties, feasting on them. Now and then a solitary Indian, wrapt 

 in his blanket, passed sullen and silent. On this plain are beds of 



