PASSENGER PIGEON. igy 



The wild pigeon of the United States inhabits a wide and 

 extensive region of North America, on this side of the great 

 Stony Mountains, beyond which, to the westward, I have not 



" Before sunset I reached Louisville, distant from Hardensburg 

 fifty -five miles. The pigeons were still passing in undiminished num- 

 bers, and continued to do so for three days in succession. The people 

 were all in arms. The banks of the Ohio were crowded with men and 

 boys, incessantly shooting at the pilgrims, which there flew lower 

 as they passed the river. Multitudes were thus destroyed. For a 

 week or more, the population fed on no other flesh than that of 

 pigeons. The atmosphere, during this time, was strongly impregnated 

 with the peculiar odour which emanates from the species." In estimat- 

 ing the number of these mighty flocks, and the food consumed by them 

 daily he adds — " Let us take a column of one mile in breadth, which 

 is far below the average size, and suppose it passing over us at the rate 

 of one mile per minute. This will give us a parallelogram of 180 

 miles by 1, covering 180 square miles ; and allowing two pigeons to 

 the square yard, we have one billion one hundred and fifteen millions 

 one hundred and thirty-six thousand pigeons in one flock : and as 

 every pigeon consumes fully half a pint per day, the quantity required 

 to feed such a flock, must be eight millions seven hundred and twelve 

 thousand bushels per day." 



The accounts of their roosting places are as remarkable : — 

 "Let us now, kind reader, inspect their place of nightly rendezvous : 

 — It was, as is always the case, in a portion of the forest where the trees 

 were of great magnitude, and where there was little underwood. I 

 rode through it upwards of forty miles, and, crossing it at different 

 parts, found its average breadth to be rather more than three miles. 

 Few pigeons were to be seen before sunset ; but a great number of 

 persons, with horses and waggons, guns and ammunition, had already 

 established encampments on the borders. Two farmers from the 

 vicinity of Russelsville, distant more than a hundred miles, had driven 

 upwards of three hundred hogs, to be fattened on the pigeons which 

 were to be slaughtered. Here and there, the people employed in 

 plucking and salting what had already been procured were seen sit- 

 ting in the midst of large piles of these birds. The dung lay several 

 inches deep, covering the whole extent of the roosting place like a bed 

 of snow\ Many trees, two feet in diameter, I observed, were broken off 

 at no great distance from the ground ; and the branches of many of the 

 largest and tallest had given way, as if the forest had been swept by a 

 tornado. Everything proved to me that the number of birds resorting 

 to this part of the forest must be immense beyond conception. As the 

 period of their arrival approached, their foes anxiously prepared ^to 



