THE NATURALIST AND THE BIRD. 
501 
Audubon, “is a particular favourite of mine, as I am 
much indebted to her. How often has her bright song 
restored my exhausted spirits, after a restless night in 
the forest! Badly sheltered from the pitiless storm, 
I have spent many a miserable night under cover of 
a wretched hut of branches which I have constructed, 
through which, however, the rain streamed with such 
violence as to put out my fire. I saw neither heaven 
nor earth; it would seem as though the ‘ Deluge 5 had 
commenced again: now and then a flash of lightning 
would make darkness visible, while the vivid passing 
ray would seem to render the scene more horrid, the 
night more black; while the trees cracked and sighed 
under the power of the driving hurricane, which rent 
them from the crown to the very roots. Far from my 
people, cut off from the entire human race, sometimes I 
thought the end of the world had come, and cursed the 
hour when I first determined to set out on my adventurous 
journey ! But no sooner did I hear my friend, the Thrush, 
heralding the dawn, than my spirit rose again with every 
note,—as they increased in power, so did I gain strength 
and heart. With warm devotion I hear this morning 
song, and blessed the hand of the Creator, who had 
placed the bird in these dense, solitary forests to comfort 
me, and at the same time teach me never to despair. 
‘ Oh ! when I think on the happy hours , 5 says the elder 
Naumann, ‘ I passed in the swamp, I even now wish 
myself back again . 5 And I, myself, without wishing to 
appear vain-glorious, may say that I have worked and 
suffered in the cause of science; and yet I now look back 
with pleasure to the days when I was bowed down with 
fever in the primaeval forest of the interior of Africa. 
And why ? Because each day brought me something 
