In these days of successful application of mechanical inventions, but few persons can realize the amount of distrust and opposition against which a Watts or a Fulton had to contend while forcing upon an illiberal and unappreciative public the valuable results of their busy brains and fertile genius. It is well for us who now enjoy these blessings,--the utilized ideas of a lifetime of unrequited labors,--to look back upon the epoch of history so full of gloom for the men to whom we owe so much.
At the beginning of the present century the navigation of the Ohio was limited to canoes, bateaux, scows, rafts, arks, and the rudest models of sailing-boats. The ever downward course of the strong current must be stemmed in ascending the river. Against this powerful resistance upon tortuous streams, wind, as a motor, was found to be only partially successful, and for sure and rapid transit between settlements along the banks of great waterways a most discouraging failure. Down-river journeys were easily made, but the up-river or return trip was a very slow and unsatisfactory affair, excepting to those who travelled in light canoes.
The influx of population to the fertile Ohio valley, and the settling up of the rich bottoms of the Mississippi, demanded a more expeditious system of communication. The necessities of the people called loudly for this improvement, but at the same time their prejudices and ignorance prevented them from aiding or encouraging any such plans.
The hour came at length for the delivery of the people of the great West, and with it the man. Fulton, aided by Watts, offered to solve the problem by unravelling rather than by cutting the "Gordian knot."
It was whispered through the wilderness that a fire-ship, called the "Clermont," built by a crazy speculator named Fulton, had started from New York, and, steaming up the Hudson, had forced itself against the current one hundred and fifty miles to Albany, in thirty-six hours.
This was in September, 1807.
The fool and the fool"s fire-ship became the b.u.t.t of all sensible people in Europe as well as in America. Victor Hugo remarks that, "In the year 1807, when the first steamboat of Fulton, commanded by Livingston, furnished with one of Watts"s engines sent from England, and manoeuvred, besides her ordinary crew, by two Frenchmen only, Andr Michaux and another, made her first voyage from New York to Albany, it happened that she set sail on the 17th of August. The ministers took up this important fact, and in numberless chapels preachers were heard calling down a malediction on the machine, and declaring that this number seventeen was no other than the total of the ten horns and seven heads of the beasts in the Apocalypse. In America they invoked against the steamboat the beast from the book of Revelation; in Europe, the reptile of the book of Genesis. The SAVANS had rejected steamboats as impossible; the PRIESTS had anathematized them as impious; SCIENCE had condemned, and RELIGION consigned them to perdition."
"In the archipelago of the British Channel islands," this learned author goes on to say, "the first steamboat which made its appearance received the name of the "Devil Boat." In the eyes of these worthy fishermen, once Catholics, now Calvinists, but always bigots, it seemed to be a portion of the infernal regions which had been somehow set afloat. A local preacher selected for his discourse the question of, "Whether man has the right to make fire and water work together when G.o.d had divided them." (Gen. ch. i. v.4.) No; this beast composed of iron and fire did not resemble leviathan! Was it not an attempt to bring chaos again into the universe?"
So much for young America, and so much for old mother England! Now listen, men and women of to-day, to the wisdom of France--scientific France. "A mad notion, a gross delusion, an absurdity!" Such was the verdict of the Academy of Sciences when consulted by Napoleon on the subject of steamboats early in the present century.
It seems scarcely credible now that all this transpired in the days of our fathers, not so very long ago. Time is a great leveller. Education of the head as well as of the heart has liberalized the pulpit, and the man of theoretical science to-day would not dare to stake his reputation by denying any apparently well-established theory, while the inventors of telephones, perpetual-motion motors, &c., are gladly hailed as leaders in the march of progress so dear to every American heart. The pulpit is now on the side of honest science, and the savant teaches great truths, while the public mind is being educated to receive and utilize the heretofore concealed or undeveloped mysteries of a wise and generous Creator, who has taught his children that they must labor in order to possess.
The Clermont was the pioneer steamer of the Hudson River, and its trial trip was made in 1807. The first steamboat which descended the Ohio and Mississippi rivers was christened the New Orleans." It was designed and built by Mr. N.J. Roosevelt, and commenced its voyage from Pittsburgh in September, 1811. The bold proprietor of this enterprise, with his wife, Mrs. Lydia M. Roosevelt, accompanied the captain, engineer, pilot, six hands, two female servants, a man waiter, a cook, and a large Newfoundland dog, to the end of the voyage. The friends of this lady--the first woman who descended the great rivers of the West in a steamboat--used every argument they could offer to dissuade her from undertaking what was considered a dangerous experiment, an absolute folly. The good wife, however, clung to her husband, and accepted the risks, preferring to be drowned or blown up, as her friends predicted, rather than to desert her better- half in his hour of trial. A few weeks would decide his success or failure, and she would be at his side to condole or rejoice with him, as the case might be.
The citizens of Pittsburgh gathered upon the banks of the Monongahela to witness the inception of the enterprise which was to change the whole destiny of the West. One can imagine the criticisms flung at the departing steamer as she left her moorings and boldly faced her fate.
As the curious craft was borne along the current of the river, the Indians attempted to approach her, bent upon hostile attempts, and once a party of them pursued the boat in hot chase, but their endurance was not equal to that of steam. These children of the forest gazed upon the snorting, fire-breathing monster with undisguised awe, and called it "Penelore"--the fire-canoe. They imagined it to have close relationship with the comet that they believed had produced the earthquakes of that year. The voyage of the "New Orleans" was a romantic reality in two ways. The wonderful experiment was proved a success, and its originator won his laurel wreath; while the bold captain of the fire-ship, falling in love with one of the chambermaids, won a wife.
The river"s travel now became somewhat monotonous. I had reached a low country, heavily wooded in places, and was entering the great prairie region of Illinois. Having left my island camp by starlight on Tuesday morning, and having rowed steadily all day until dusk, I pa.s.sed the wild-looking mouth of the Wabash River, and went into camp behind an island, logging with pleasure my day"s run at sixty-seven miles. I was now only one hundred and forty-two miles from the mouth of the Ohio, and with the rising and rapidly increasing current there were only a few hours" travel between me and the Mississippi.
Wednesday morning, December 29th, I discovered that the river had risen two feet during the night, and the stump of the tree to which I had moored my boat was submerged. The river was wide and the banks covered with heavy forests, with clearings here and there, which afforded attractive vistas of prairies in the background. I pa.s.sed a bold, stratified crag, covered with a little growth of cedars. These adventurous trees, growing out of the crevices of the rock, formed a picturesque covering for its rough surface. A cavern, about thirty feet in width, penetrated a short distance into the rock. This natural curiosity bore the name of "Cave-in-Rock," and was, in 1801, the rendezvous of a band of outlaws, who lived by plundering the boats going up and down the river, oftentimes adding the crime of murder to their other misdeeds. Just below the cliff nestled a little village also called "Cave-in-Rock."
Wild birds flew about me on all sides, and had I cared to linger I might have had a good bag of game. This was not, however, a gunning cruise, and the temptation was set aside as inconsistent with the systematic pulling which alone would take me to my goal. The birds were left for my quondam friends of the shanty-boat, they being the happy possessors of more TIME than they could well handle, and the killing of it the aim of their existence.
The soft sh.o.r.es of alluvium were constantly caving and falling into the river, bringing down tons of earth and tall forest-trees. The latter, after freeing their roots of the soil, would be swept out into the stream as contributions to the great floating raft of drift-wood, a large portion of which was destined to a long voyage, for much of this floating forest is carried into the Gulf of Mexico, and travels over many hundreds of miles of salt water, until it is washed up on to the strands of the isles of the sea or the beaches of the continent.
Having tied up for the night to a low bank, with no thought of danger, it was startling, to say the least, to have an avalanche of earth from the bank above deposit itself upon my boat, so effectually sealing down my hatch-cover that it seemed at first impossible to break from my prison. After repeated trials I succeeded in dislodging the ma.s.s, and, thankful to escape premature interment, at once pushed off in search of a better camp.
A creek soon appeared, but its entrance was barred by a large tree which had fallen across its mouth. My heavy hatchet now proved a friend in need, and putting my boat close to the tree, I went systematically to work, and soon cut out a section five feet in length. Entering through this gateway, my labors were rewarded by finding upon the bank some dry fence-rails, with which a rude kitchen was soon constructed to protect me from the wind while preparing my meal. The unusual luxury of a fire brightened the weird scene, and the flames shot upward, cheering the lone voyager and frightening the owls and c.o.o.ns from their accustomed lairs. The strong current had been of great a.s.sistance, for that night my log registered sixty-two miles for the day"s row.
Leaving the creek the next morning by starlight, I pa.s.sed large flocks of geese and ducks, while Whooping-cranes (Grus America.n.u.s) and Sand- hill cranes (Grus Canadensis), in little flocks, dotted the gra.s.sy prairies, or flew from one swamp to another, filling the air with their startling cries. Both these species are found a.s.sociated in flocks upon the cultivated prairie farms, where they pillage the grain and vegetable fields of the farmer. Their habits are somewhat similar, though the whooping-crane is the most wary of the two. The adult Whooping-cranes are white, the younger birds of a brownish color. This species is larger than the Sand-hill Crane, the latter having a total length of from forty to forty-two inches. The Sand-hill species may be distinguished from the Whooping-crane by its slate-blue color. The cackling, whooping, and screaming voices of an a.s.sembled mult.i.tude of these birds cannot be described. They can be heard for miles upon the open plains. These birds are found in Florida and along the Gulf coast as well as over large areas of the northern states. They feed upon soft roots, which they excavate from the swamps, and upon bugs and reptiles of all kinds. It requires the most cautious stalking on the part of the hunter to get within gunshot of them, and when so approached the Whooping-crane is usually the first of the two species which takes to the wing. The social customs of these birds are most entertaining to the observer who may lie hidden in the gra.s.s and watch them through a gla.s.s. Their tall, angular figures, made up of so much wing, leg, neck, and bill, counterpoised by so little body, incline the spectator to look upon them as ornithological caricatures. After balancing himself upon one foot for an hour, with the other drawn up close to his scanty robe of feathers, and his head poised in a most contemplative att.i.tude, one of these queer birds will suddenly turn a somersault, and, returning to his previous posture, continue his cogitations as though nothing had interrupted his reflections. With wings spread, they slowly winnow the air, rising or hopping from the ground a few feet at a time, then whirling in circles upon their toes, as though going through the mazes of a dance. Their most popular diversion seems to be the game of leap-frog, and their long legs being specially adapted to this sport, they achieve a wonderful success. One of the birds quietly a.s.sumes a squatting position upon the ground, when his sportive companions hop in turn over his expectant head. They then pirouette, turn somersaults, and go through various exercises with the skill of gymnasts. Their sportive proclivities seem to have no bounds; and being true humorists, they preserve through their gambols a ridiculously sedate appearance. Popular accounts of the nidification of these birds are frequently untrue. We are told that they build their cone-shaped nests of mud, sticks, and gra.s.s in shallow water, in colonies, and that their nests, BEING PLACED ON RAFTS of buoyant material, float about in the bayous, and are propelled and guided at the will of the sitting bird by the use of her long legs and feet as oars. The position of the bird upon the nest is also ludicrously depicted. It is described as sitting astride the nest, with the toes touching the ground; and to add still more comicality to the picture, it is a.s.serted that the limbs are often thrust out horizontally behind the bird. The results of close observations prove that these accounts are in keeping with many others related by parlor naturalists. The cranes sit upon their nests like other birds, with their feet drawn up close to the body. The mound- shaped nests are built of sticks, gra.s.s, and mud, and usually placed in a shallow pond or partially submerged swamp, while at times a gra.s.sy ha.s.sock furnishes the foundation of the structure. In the saucer-shaped top of the nest two eggs are deposited, upon which the bird sits most a.s.siduously, having no time at this season for aquatic amus.e.m.e.nts, such as paddling about with her nest.
[Popular idea of the nesting of cranes.]
The young birds are most hilarious babies, for they inherit the social qualities of their parents, and are ready to play or fight with each other before they are fairly out of the nest. A close observer of their habits writes from the prairies of Indiana: "When the young get a little strength they attack each other with great fury, and can only be made to desist by the parent bird separating them, and taking one under its fostering care, and holding them at a respectable distance until they reach crane-hood, when they seem to make up in joyous hilarity for the quarrelsome proclivities of youth."
Like geese and ducks, cranes winter in one locality so long as the ponds are open, but the first cold snap that freezes their swamp drives them two or three degrees further south. From this migration they soon return to their old haunts, the first thawing of the ice being the signal.
The mouths of the Tennessee and c.u.mberland rivers were pa.s.sed, and the Ohio, widening in places until it seemed like a lake, a.s.sumed a new grandeur as it approached the Mississippi. Three miles below Wilkinsonville, but on the Kentucky side, I stole into a dark creek and rested until the next morning, Friday, December 31st, which was to be my last day on the Ohio River.
I entered a long reach in the river soon after nine o"clock on Friday morning, and could plainly see the town of Cairo, resting upon the flat prairies in the distance. The now yellow, muddy current of the Ohio rolled along the great railroad dike, which had cost one million dollars to erect, and formed a barrier strong enough to resist the rushing waters of the freshets. Across the southern apex of this prairie city could be seen the "Father of Waters," its wide surface bounded on the west by the wilderness. A few moments more, and my little craft was whirled into its rapid, eddying current; and with the boat"s prow now pointed southward, I commenced, as it were, a life of new experiences as I descended the great river, where each day I was to feel the genial influences of a warmer climate.
The thought of entering warm and sunny regions was, indeed, welcome to a man who had forced his way through rafts of ice, under cloudy skies, through a smoky atmosphere, and had partaken of food of the same chilling temperature for so many days. This prospect of a genial clime, with the more comfortable camping and rowing it was sure to bring, gave new vigor to my arms, daily growing stronger with their task, and each long, steady pull TOLD as it swept me down the river.
The faithful sneak-box had carried me more than a thousand miles since I entered her at Pittsburgh. This, of course, includes the various detours made in searching for camping-grounds, frequent crossings of the wide river to avoid drift stuff; &c. The descent of the Ohio had occupied about twenty-nine days, but many hours had been lost by storms keeping me in camp, and other unavoidable delays. As an offset to these stoppages, it must be remembered that the current, increased by freshets, was with me, and to it, as much as to the industrious arms of the rower, must be given the credit for the long route gone over in so short a time, by so small a boat.
[Stern-wheel Western tow-boat pushing flatboats.]
CHAPTER VI.
DESCENT OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER
LEAVE CAIRO, ILLINOIS.-- THE LONGEST RIVER IN THE WORLD.-- BOOK GEOGRAPHY AND BOAT GEOGRAPHY.-- CHICKASAW BLUFF.-- MEETING WITH THE PARAKEETS.-- FORT DONALDSON.-- EARTHQUAKES AND LAKES.-- WEIRD BEAUTY OF REELFOOT LAKE.-- JOE ECKEL"S BAR.-- SHANTY-BOAT COOKING.-- FORT PILLOW.-- MEMPHIS.-- A NEGRO JUSTICE.-- "DE COMMON LAW OB MISSISSIPPI."
MY floating home was now upon the broad Mississippi, which text-book geographers still insist upon calling "the Father of Waters--the largest river in North America." Its current was about one-third faster than that of its tributary, the Ohio. Its banks were covered with heavy forests, and for miles along its course the great wilderness was broken only by the half-tilled lands of the cotton- planter.
From Cairo southward the river is very tortuous, turning back upon itself as if imitating the convolutions of a crawling serpent, and following a channel of more than eleven hundred and fifty miles before its waters unite with those of the Gulf of Mexico. This country between the mouth of the Ohio and the Gulf of Mexico is truly the delta of the Mississippi, for the river north of Cairo cuts through table-lands, and is confined to its old bed; but below the mouth of the Ohio the great river persistently seeks for new channels, and, as we approach New Orleans, we discover branches which carry off a considerable portion of its water to the Gulf coast in southwestern Louisiana.
It is always with some degree of hesitation that I introduce geographical details into my books, as I well know that a taste for the study of physical geography has not been developed among my countrymen. Where among all our colleges is there a well-supported chair of physical geography occupied by an American? We sometimes hear of a "Professor of Geology and Physical Geography," but the last is only a sort of appendage--a tail--to the former. When a student of American geography begins the study in earnest, he discovers that our geographies are insufficient, are filled with errors, and that our maps possess a greater number of inaccuracies than truths. When he goes into the field to study the physical geography of his native land, he is forced to go through the disagreeable process of unlearning all he has been taught from the poor textbooks of stay-at- home travellers and closet students, whose compilations have burdened his mind with errors. In despair he turns to the topographical charts and maps of the "United States Coast and Geodetic Survey," and of the "Engineer Corps of the United States Army," and in the truthful and interesting results of the practical labors of trained observers he takes courage as he enters anew his field of study. The cartographer of the shop economically constructs his unreliable maps to supply a cheap demand; and strange to say, though the results of the government surveys are freely at his disposal, he rarely makes use of them. It costs too much to alter the old map-plates, and but few persons will feel sufficiently interested to criticise the faults of his latest edition.
"How do you get the interior details?" I once asked the agent of one of the largest map establishments in the United States. "Oh," he answered, "when we cannot get township details from local surveys, we sling them in anyhow." An error once taught from our geographies and maps will remain an error for a generation, and our text-book geographers will continue to repeat it, for they do not travel over the countries they describe, and rarely adopt the results of scientific investigation. The most unpopular study in the schools of the United States is that of the geography of our country. It does not amount merely to a feeling of indifference, but in some colleges to a positive prejudice. The chief mountain-climbing club of America, counting among its members some of the best minds of our day, was confronted by this very prejudice. "If you introduce the study of physical geography in connection with the explorations of mountains, I will not join your a.s.sociation," said a gentleman living almost within the shadow of the buildings of our oldest university.
A committee of Chinese who called upon the school authorities of a Pacific-coast city, several years since, respectfully pet.i.tioned that "you will not waste the time of our children in teaching them geography. You say the world is ROUND; some of us say it is FLAT. What difference does it make to our business if it be round or flat? The study of geography will not help us to make money. It may do for Melican man, but it is not good for Chinese."
I once knew a chairman of the school trustees in a town in New Jersey to remove his daughters from the public school simply because the teacher insisted that it was his duty to instruct his pupils in the study of geography. "My boys may go to sea some day, and then geography may be of service to them," said this chairman to the teacher, "but if my daughters study it they will waste their time. Of what use can geography be to girls who will never command a vessel?"
While conscious that I may inflict an uninteresting chapter upon my reader who may have accompanied me with a commendable degree of patience so far upon my lonely voyage, I nevertheless feel it a duty to place on record a few facts that are well known to scientific men, if not to the writers of popular geographies, regarding the existence within the boundaries of our own country of the longest river in the world. It is time that the recognition of this fact should be established in every school in the United States. As this is a very important subject, let us examine it in detail.
THE MISSOURI IS THE LONGEST RIVER IN THE WORLD, AND THE MISSISSIPPI IS ONLY A BRANCH OF IT. The Mississippi River joins its current with that of the Missouri about two hundred miles above the mouth of the Ohio; consequently, as we are now to allow the largest stream (the Missouri) to bear its name from its source all the way to the Gulf of Mexico, it follows that the Ohio flows into the Missouri and not into the Mississippi River. The Missouri, and NOT the Mississippi, is the main stream of what has been called the Mississippi Basin. The Missouri, when taken from its fountain-heads of the Gallatin, Madison, and Red Rock lakes, or, if we take the Jefferson Fork as the princ.i.p.al tributary, has a length, from its source to its union with the Mississippi, of above three thousand miles. The United States Topographical Engineers have credited it with a length of two thousand nine hundred and eight miles, when divested of some of these tributary extensions. The same good authority gives the Mississippi a length of thirteen hundred and thirty miles from its source to its junction with the Missouri.
At this junction of the two rivers the Missouri has a mean discharge of one hundred and twenty thousand cubic feet of water per second, or one-seventh greater than that of the Mississippi, which has a mean discharge of one hundred and five thousand cubic feet per second. The Missouri drains five hundred and eighteen thousand square miles of territory, while the Mississippi drains only one hundred and sixty- nine thousand square miles. While the latter river has by far the greatest rainfall, the Missouri discharges the largest amount of water, and at the point of union of the two streams is from fifteen to seventeen hundred miles the longer of the two. Therefore, according to natural laws, the Missouri is the main stream, and the smaller and shorter Mississippi is only a branch of it. From the junction of the two rivers the current, increased by numerous tributaries, follows a crooked channel some thirteen hundred and fifty-five miles to the Gulf of Mexico. The Missouri, therefore, has a total length of four thousand three hundred and sixty-three miles, without counting some of its highest sources.
The learned Professor A. Guyot, in a treatise on physical geography, written for "A. J. Johnson"s New Ill.u.s.trated Family Atlas of the World," informs us that the Amazon River, the great drainer of the eastern Andes, is three thousand five hundred and fifty miles long, and is the LONGEST RIVER IN THE WORLD.
According to the figures used by me in reference to the Missouri and Mississippi, and which are the results of actual observations made by competent engineers, the reader will find, notwithstanding the statements made by our best geographers in regard to the length of the Amazon, that there is one river within the confines of our country which is eight hundred and thirteen miles longer than the Amazon, and is the longest though not the widest river in the world. The rivers of what is now called the Mississippi Basin drain one million two hundred and forty-four thousand square miles of territory, while the broader Amazon, with its many tributaries, drains the much larger area of two million two hundred and seventy-five thousand square miles.
A century after the Spaniard, De Soto, had discovered the lower Mississippi, and had been interred in its bed, a French interpreter, of "Three Rivers," on the northern bank of the St. Lawrence River, named Jean Nicollet, explored one of the northern tributaries of the Mississippi. This was about the year 1639.
It was reserved for La Salle to make the first thorough exploration of the Mississippi. A few months after he had returned, alone, from his examination of the Ohio as far as the falls at Louisville, in 1669-70, this undaunted man followed the Great Lakes of the north to the western sh.o.r.e of Lake Michigan, and making a portage to a river, "evidently the Illinois," traversed it to its intersection with another river, "flowing from the north-west to the south-east," which river must have been the Mississippi, and which it is affirmed La Salle descended to the thirty-sixth degree of lat.i.tude, when he became convinced that this unexplored stream discharged itself, not into the Gulf of California, but into the Gulf of Mexico. So La Salle was the discoverer of the Illinois as well as of the Ohio; and during his subsequent visits to the Mississippi gave that river a thorough exploration.
My entrance to the Mississippi River was marked by the advent of severe squalls of wind and rain, which drove me about noon to the shelter of Island No. 1, where I dined, and where in half an hour the sun came out in all its glory. Many peculiar features of the Mississippi attracted my notice. Sand bars appeared above the water, and large flocks of ducks and geese rested upon them. Later, the high Chickasaw Bluff, the first and highest of a series which rise at intervals, like islands out of the low bottoms as far south as Natchez, came into view on the left side of the river. The mound- builders of past ages used these natural fortresses to hold at bay the fierce tribes of the north, and long afterward this Chickasaw Bluff played a conspicuous part in the civil war between the states.
Columbus, a small village, and the terminus of a railroad, is at the foot of the heights.
A little lower down, and opposite Chalk Bluff, was a heavily wooded island, a part of the territory of the state of Illinois, and known as Wolf Island, or Island No. 5. At five o"clock in the afternoon I ran into a little thoroughfare on the eastern side of this island, and moored the duck-boat under its muddy banks. The wind increased to a gale before morning, and kept me through the entire day, and until the following morning, an unwilling captive. Reading and cooking helped to while away the heavy hours, but having burned up all the dry wood I could find, I was forced to seek other quarters, which were found in a romantic stream that flowed out of a swamp and joined the Mississippi just one mile above Hickman, on the Kentucky side. Having pa.s.sed a comfortable night, and making an early start without breakfast, I rowed rapidly over a smooth current to the stream called Bayou du Chien Creek, in which I made a very attractive camp among the giant sycamores, sweet-gums, and cotton-woods. The warm sunshine penetrated into this sheltered spot, while the wind had fallen to a gentle zephyr, and came in refreshing puffs through the lofty trees. Here birds were numerous, and briskly hopped about my fire while I made an omelet and boiled some wheaten grits.
[Meeting with the parakeets.]
In this retired haunt of the birds I remained through the whole of that sunny Sunday, cooking my three meals, and reading my Bible, as became a civilized man. While enjoying this immunity from the disturbing elements of the great public thoroughfare, the river, curious cries were borne upon the wind above the tall tree-tops like the chattering calls of parrots, to which my ear had become accustomed in the tropical forests of Cuba. As the noise grew louder with the approach of a feathered flock of visitors, and the screams of the birds became more discordant, I peered through the branches of the forest to catch a glimpse of what I had searched for through many hundred miles of wilderness since my boyhood, but what had so far eluded my eager eyes. I felt certain these strange cries must come from the Carolina Parrot, or Parakeet (Conurus Carolinensis), which, though once numerous in all the country west of the Alleghanies as far north as the southern sh.o.r.es of the Great Lakes, has so rapidly diminished in number since 1825, that we find it only as an occasional inhabitant of the middle states south of the Ohio River. In fact, this species is now chiefly confined to Florida, western Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, and the Indian Territory. That careful and reliable ornithologist, Dr. Elliot Coues, seems to doubt whether it is now ent.i.tled to a place in the avi-fauna of South Carolina, where it was once found in large flocks.
The birds soon reached the locality of my camp, and circling through the clear, warm atmosphere above the tree-tops, they gradually settled lower and lower, suspiciously scanning my fire, screaming as though their little throats would burst, while the sunlight seemed to fill the air with the reflections of the green, gold, and carmine of their brilliant plumage. They dropped into the foliage of the grove, and for a moment were as quiet as though life had departed from them, while I kept close to my hiding-place behind an immense fallen tree, from beneath which I could watch my feathery guests.
The bodies of the adult birds were emerald green, with bright blue reflections. The heads were yellow, excepting the forehead and cheeks, which were scarlet. The large, thick, and hooked bill was white, as well as the bare orbital s.p.a.ce around the eye. The feet were a light flesh-color. The length from tip of bill to end of tail was about fourteen inches. The young birds could be easily distinguished from the adults by their short tails and the uniform coat of green, while in some cases the frontlet of scarlet was just beginning to show itself. The adult males were longer than the females.
The Carolina Parrot does not put on its bright-yellow hues until the second season, and its most brilliant tints do not come to perfection until the bird is fully two years old. They feed upon the seeds of the c.o.c.kle-burrs, which grow in abandoned fields of the planter, as well as upon fruits of all kinds, much of which they waste in their uneconomical method of eating. The low alluvial bottom-lands of the river, where pecan and beech nuts abound, are their favorite hunting- grounds.