the sky. I gave up all hope and stowing my
gun away in the bow was eating some lunch
when Manual suddenly exclaimed in a stage
whisper "see that Turkey". I secured the gun and
looked in every direction but the right one. "In the
top of that cypress on the right" again spoke my
prompter. Then I made him out, a big black
object squatted on a horizontal branch of a
tall cypress half concealed by a bunch of moss
over which he craned his long neck to get a
better view of the boat which by this time had
actually passed the tree. In vain I tried to put
the gun on him - I could not turn far enough
to the right. Manual, however, speedily swept
the boat around, I drew a careful sight on the
birds neck and pulled the left barrel of the
old [Yorks?] gun. There was a blinding flash then
through the gloom we saw the big bird come
crashing down striking a branch and [delete]finally[/delete]
a cypress tree before he finally reached the
water. We paddled to him and I lifted him
into the boat with difficulty for he weighed,
as we afterwards found, only an ounce or two
short of eighteen pounds. Hartsfield said that
he was fully three years old. The fore part
of his head was blue, the hind neck purplish
red, the wattles white. All this I learned
next day for it was too dark at the time
I shot him to make out color at all. I
found he was  ruined for a specimen as the
feathers over a large space on the left side
of the breast were completely rubbed off by his
fall. However, I finally made a good skin of him.
[margin]Gray Squirrels were very numerous along the banks of this river. I saw
at least twenty. Two that I shot were hardly larger than our 
Red Squirrel although Manual pronounced them fully grown.
After dark we smelt an alligator, a strong fishy smell with a tinge of musk about it.[/margin]
[margin]Shooting a 
Turkey[/margin]