in power of flight and vision as in daring, leads but a trembling and
precarious life. He would die of hunger had he not the industry to
create for himself a purveyor, whom he cheats of his food. His ignoble
resource, alas, is to attack a dull and timorous bird, the noddy,
famous as a fisher. The frigate-bird, which is of no larger dimensions,
pursues him, strikes him on the neck with his beak, and constrains him
to yield up his prey. All these incidents transpire in the air; before
the fish can fall, he catches it on its passage.
If this resource fail, he does not shrink from attacking man. "On
landing at Ascension Island," says a traveller, "we were assailed by
some frigate-birds. One tried to snatch a fish out of my very hand.
Others alighted on the copper where the meat was being cooked to carry
it off, without taking any notice of the sailors who were around it."
Dampier saw some of these birds, sick, aged, or crippled, perched upon
the rocks which seemed their sanatorium, levying contributions upon the
young noddies, their vassals, and nourishing themselves on the results
of their fishing. But in the vigour of their prime they do not rest
on earth; living like the clouds, constantly floating on their vast
wings from one world to the other, patiently awaiting their fortune,
and piercing the infinite heaven--the infinite waters--with implacable
glance.
The lord of the winged race is he who does not rest. The chief of
navigators is he who never reaches his _bourne_. Earth and sea are
almost equally prohibited to him. He is for ever banished.
[Illustration]
Let us envy nothing. No existence is really free here below, no career
is sufficiently extensive, no power of flight sufficiently great, no
wing can satisfy. The most powerful is but a temporary substitute. The
soul waits, demands, and hopes for others:--
"Wings to soar above life:
Wings to soar beyond death!"
[NOTE.--_The Frigate-Bird._ This interesting bird (_Tachypetes_)
is allied to the cormorants, but differs from them in the
possession of a forked tail, short feet, a curved beak, and
extraordinary spread of wing. Its plumage is coloured of a rich
purple black, but the beak is varied with vermilion red, and
the throat with patches of white. It is an inhabitant of the
Tropics, where it lives a predatory life, forcing the gannet and
the gull to disgorge their prey, and retiring to breed in lonely
uninhabited islands.
Of its voracity, Dr. Chamberlaine gives a curious illustration.
When the fishermen are pursuing their vocation on the sand-banks
in Kingston Harbour, Jamaica, the gulls, pelicans, and other
sea-birds gather round in swarms, and as the loaded net is hauled
ashore, pounce upon their struggling prey. But no sooner does this
take place, than the frigate-birds attack them with such furious
violence that they are glad to surrender their hard-earned booty
to antagonists so formidable.
The lightness of his body, his short tarsi, his enormous spread
of wing, together with his long, slender, and forked tail,
all combine to give this bird a superiority over his tribe,
not only in length and swiftness of flight, but also in the
capability of maintaining himself on extended pinions in his
aerial realm, where, at times, he will soar so high that his
figure can scarce be discerned by the spectator in this nether
world.--_Translator._]
[Illustration: THE SHORES.]
[Illustration]
THE SHORES.
DECAY OF CERTAIN SPECIES.
I have frequently observed, in my days of sadness, a being sadder
still, which Melancholy might have chosen for its symbol: I mean, the
Dreamer of the Marshes, the meditative bird that, in all seasons,
standing solitarily before the dull waters, seems, along with his
image, to plunge in their mirror his monotonous thought.
His noble ebon-black crest, his pearl-gray mantle--this semi-royal
mourning contrasts with his puny body and transparent leanness. When
flying, the poor heron displays but a couple of wings; low as is the
elevation to which he rises, there is no longer any question of his
body--he becomes invisible. An animal truly aerial, to bear so light
a frame, the heron has enough, nay, he has a foot too many; he folds
under his wing the other; and nearly always his lame figure is thus
defined against the sky in a fantastical hieroglyph.
[Illustration]
Whoever has lived in history, in the study of fallen races and empires,
is tempted to see herein an image of decay. Yonder bird is a great
ruined lord, a dethroned king, or I am much mistaken. No creature
issues from Nature's hands in so miserable a condition. Therefore
I ventured to interrogate this dreamer, and I said to him from a
distance the following words, which his most delicate hearing caught
exactly:--"My fisher-friend, wouldst thou oblige me by explaining
(without abandoning thy present position), why, always so melancholy,
thou seemest doubly melancholy to-day? Hath thy prey failed thee? Have
the too subtle fish deceived thine eyes? Does the mocking frog defy
thee from the bottom of the waters?"
"No; neither fish nor frogs have made sport of the heron. But the heron
laughs at himself, despises himself, when he remembers the glory of his
noble race, and the bird of the olden times.
"Thou wouldst know wherefore I dream? Ask the Indian chief of the
Cherokees, or the Iowas, why for long days he leans his head upon his
hand, marking on the tree before him an object which was never there?
"The earth was our empire, the realm of the aquatic birds in the
Transitional age when, young and fresh, she emerged from the waters.
An era of strife, of battle, but of abundant subsistence. Not a heron
then but earned his life. There was need neither to attack nor pursue;
the prey hunted the hunter; it whistled, or it croaked on every
side. Millions of creatures of undefined natures, bird-frogs, winged
fish, infested the uncertain limits of the two elements. What would
ye have done, ye feeble mortals, the latest-born of the world? The
Bird prepared earth for ye. Colossal encounters were waged against
the enormous monster-births of the ooze; the son of air, the bird,
attaining the dimensions of an Anak, shrunk not from battle with the
giant. If your ungrateful histories have not traced these events,
God's grand record narrates them in the depths of the earth, where she
deposits the conquered and the conquerors, the monsters exterminated by
us, and we who have exterminated them.
"Your lying myths make us contemporaries of a human Hercules. What had
his club availed against the plesiosaurus? Who would have met, face to
face, the horrible leviathan? The capacity of flight was absolutely
needed, the strong intrepid wing which from the loftiest height bore
downwards the Herculean bird, the epiornis, an eagle twenty feet in
stature, and fifty feet from wing-tip to wing-tip, the implacable
hunter, who, lord of three elements, in the air, in the water, and in
the deep slime, pursued the dragon with ceaseless hostility.
"Man had perished a hundred times. Through our agency man became
possible on a pacified earth. But who will be astonished that these
awful wars, which lasted for myriads of years, spent the conquerors,
wearied the winged Hercules, transformed him into a feeble Perseus, a
pale and lustreless memory of our heroic times?
"Lowered in strength and stature, but not in heart, famished by our
very victory, by the disappearance of evil races, by the division of
the elements which held our prey concealed at the bottom of the waters,
we in our turn were hunted upon the earth, in the forests and the
marsh, by those new-comers who, without our help, had never been. The
malice and dexterity of the woodman were fatal to our nests. Like a
coward, in the thick of the branches which impede flight and shackle
combat, he laid his hand on our young ones. A new war, and a less
fortunate one, this, which Homer calls the War of the Pigmies and the
Cranes. The lofty intelligence of the cranes, their truly military
tactics, have not prevented man their enemy from gaining the advantage
by a thousand execrable arts. Time was on his side, and earth, and
nature: she moves forward, drying up the earth, exhausting the marshes,
narrowing the undefined region where we reigned. It will be with us,
in the end, as with the beaver. Many species perish: another century,
perhaps, and the heron _will have_ lived."
The story is too true. Except those species which have taken their
side, have abandoned earth, have given themselves up frankly and
unreservedly to the liquid element; except the divers, the cormorant,
the wise pelican, and a few others, the aquatic tribes seem in a state
of decay. Restlessness and sobriety maintain them still. It is this
persistent anxiety which has gifted the pelican with a peculiar organ,
hollowing for her under her distended beak a movable reservoir, a
living sign of economy and of attentive foresight.
Others, skilful voyagers, like the swan, live by constantly changing
their abode. But the swan herself, which, though uneatable, is trained
by man on account of her beauty and her grace--the swan, formerly so
common in Italy, and to which Virgil so constantly refers, is now very
rare there. In vain the traveller would seek for those snow-white
flotillas which covered with their sails the waters of the Mincio, the
marshes of Mantua; which mourned for Phaëton in despite of his sisters,
or in their sublime flight, pursuing the stars with harmonious song,
repeated to them the name of Varus.[20]
That song, of which all antiquity speaks, is it a fable? These organs
of singing, which are so largely developed in the swan, were they
always useless? Did they never disport themselves in happy freedom when
enjoying a more genial atmosphere, and spending the greater portion of
the year in the mild climates of Greece and Italy? One might be tempted
to believe it. The swan, driven back to the north, where his amours
secure mystery and repose, has sacrificed his song, has gained the
accent of barbarism, or become voiceless. The muse is dead; the bird
has survived.
[Illustration]
Gregarious, disciplined, full of tactic and resources, the crane, the
superior type of intelligence among these species, might contrive, one
would fancy, to prosper, and to maintain herself everywhere in her
ancient royalty. She has lost two kingdoms, however: France, where
she now only appears as a bird of passage; England, where she rarely
ventures to deposit her eggs.
The heron, in the days of Aristotle, was full of industry and
sagacity. The ancients consulted him in reference to fine weather
or tempest, as one of the gravest of augurs. Fallen in the mediæval
days, but preserving his beauty, his heavenward flight, he was still
a prince, a feudal bird; kings esteemed it kingly sport to hunt him,
and considered him a meet quarry for the noble falcon. And so keenly
was he hunted, that already, in the reign of Francis I., he had grown
rare: that monarch lodged him near his own palace at Fontainebleau,
and established there some heronries. Two or three centuries pass,
and Buffon can still believe that there are no provinces in France
where heronries could not be found. In our own days, Toussenel knows
of but one in all the country--at least in its northern districts, in
Champagne: a wood between Rheims and Epernay conceals the last asylum
where the poor lonely bird still dares to hide his loves.
[Illustration]
Lonely! In that lies his condemnation. Less gregarious than the crane,
less domesticated than the stork, he seems to have grown harsh towards
his progeny, towards the mate whom he loves. His brief rare fits of
desire scarcely beguile him for a day from his melancholy. He cares
little for life. In captivity he often refuses nourishment, and pines
away without complaint and without regret.
The aquatic birds, creatures of great experience, for the most part
reflective and learned in two elements, were, at their palmiest epoch,
more advanced than many others. They well deserved the care of man. All
of them possessed merits of diverse originality. The social instinct of
the cranes, and their various imitative talent, rendered them amusing
and agreeable. The joviality of the pelican, and his joyous humour;
the tenderness of the goose, and his strong faculty of attachment;
and, finally, the good disposition of the storks, their piety towards
their aged parents, confirmed by so many witnesses, formed between this
world and our own firm ties of sympathy, which human levity ought not
barbarously to have rent asunder.
[Illustration]
[NOTE.--_Heronries in England._ The heron, though rare in England,
is certainly not so scarce as he seems to be in France, perhaps
because it is against the laws of sport to hunt him. In some
districts the man who shot a heron would be regarded with as much
scorn as if he had killed a fox. He is a very rapacious bird, and
it is asserted that, on an average, he will destroy daily half a
hundred small roach and dace.
There is a fine heronry at Cobham, near Gravesend, in Kent, the
seat of the Earl of Darnley. Another, in Great Sowdens Wood, on
the Rye road, one mile from Udimere, in Sussex, contains fully
four hundred nests. That at Parham, the Hon. R. Curzon's beautiful
seat has quite a history.
The original birds were brought from Wales to Penshurst, by the
Earl of Leicester's steward, in the reign of James I. Thence, some
two centuries later, they migrated to Michel Grove, at Angmering.
It may be about twenty years since that the Duke of Norfolk
caused two or three trees to be felled near their retreat, and
the offended birds immediately commenced their migrations, and,
in the course of three seasons, all assembled in Parham Woods.
Here, in the thick shelter of pine and spruce-fir, are now about
fifty-seven nests. (See Knox's "Ornithological Rambles in Kent and
Sussex.")--_Translator._]
[Illustration]
[Illustration: THE HERONRIES OF AMERICA.]
[Illustration]
THE HERONRIES OF AMERICA.
WILSON, THE ORNITHOLOGIST.
The decay of the heron is less perceptible in America. He is not so
frequently hunted. The solitudes are of vaster dimensions. He can
still find, among his beloved marshes, gloomy and almost impenetrable
forests. In these shadowy recesses he is more gregarious: ten or
fifteen "domestic exiles" establish themselves in the same locality, or
at but a short distance from each other. The complete obscurity which
the huge cedars throw over the livid waters re-assures and rejoices
them. Towards the summit of these trees they build with sticks a wide
platform, which they cover with small branches: this is the residence
of the family, and the shelter of their loves; there, the eggs are
laid and hatched in quiet, the young are taught to fly, and all those
paternal lessons are given which will perfect the young fisher. They
have little cause to fear the intrusion of man into their peaceful
retreats: these they find near the sea-shore, especially in North and
South Carolina, in low swampy levels, the haunt of yellow fever. Such
morasses--an ancient arm of the sea or a river, an old swamp left
behind in the gradual recession of the waters--extend sometimes over
a length of five or six miles, and a breadth of one mile. The entry
is not very inviting: a barrier of trees confronts you, their trunks
perfectly upright and stripped of branches, fifty or sixty feet high,
and bare to the very summit, where they mingle and bring together
their leafy arches of sombre green, so as to shed upon the waters an
ominous twilight. What waters! A seething mass of leaves and débris,
where the old stems rise pell-mell one upon another; the whole of a
muddy yellow colour, coated on the surface with a green frothy moss.
Advance, and the seemingly firm expanse is a quicksand, into which you
plunge. A laurel-tree at each step intercepts you; you cannot pass
without a painful struggle with their branches, with wrecks of trees,
with laurels constantly springing up afresh. Rare gleams of light
shoot athwart the darkness, and the silence of death prevails in these
terrible regions. Except the melancholy notes of two or three small
birds, which you catch at intervals, or the hoarse cry of the heron,
all is dumb and desolate; but when the wind rises, from the summit
of the trees comes the heron's moans and sighs. If the storm bursts,
these great naked cedars, these tall "ammiral's masts," waver and clash
together; the forest roars, cries, groans, and imitates with singular
exactness the voices of wolves, and bears, and all the beasts of prey.
It was not then without astonishment that, about 1805, the heron, thus
securely settled, saw a rare face, a man's, roaming under their cedars,
and in the open swamp. One man alone was capable of visiting them in
their haunts, a patient indefatigable traveller, no less courageous
than peaceable--the friend and the admirer of birds, Alexander Wilson.
If these people had been acquainted with their visitor's character, far
from feeling terrified at his appearance, they would undoubtedly have
gone forth to meet him, and, with clapping of wings and loud cries,
have given him an amicable salute, a fraternal ovation.
[Illustration]
In those terrible years when man waged against man the most destructive
war that had ever been known, there lived in Scotland a man of peace.
A poor Paisley weaver,[21] in his damp dull lodging, he dreamed of
nature, of the infinite liberty of the woods, and, above all, of the
winged life. A cripple, and condemned to inactivity, his very bondage
inspired him with an ecstatic love of light and flight. If he did not
take to himself wings, it was because that sublime gift is, upon earth,
only the dream and hope of another world.
At first he attempted to gratify his love of birds by the purchase
of those illustrated works which pretend to represent them. Clumsy
caricatures, which convey but a ridiculous idea of their form, and none
at all of their movement; and what _is_ the bird deprived of grace
and motion? These did not suffice. He took a decisive resolution: to
abandon everything, his trade, his country. A new Robinson Crusoe,
he was willing, by a voluntary shipwreck, to exile himself to the
solitudes of America; where he might see with his own eyes, observe,
describe, and paint. He then remembered one little fact: that he
neither knew how to draw, to paint, or to write. But this strong and
patient man, whom no difficulties could discourage, soon learned to
write, and to write an excellent style. A good writer, a minutely
accurate artist, with a delicate and certain hand, he seemed, under
the guidance of Nature, his mother and mistress, less to learn than to
remember.
Provided with these weapons, he plunges into the desert, the forest,
and the pestiferous savannahs; becomes the friends of buffaloes and the
guest of bears; lives upon wild fruits, under the splendid ceiling of
heaven. Wherever he chances to observe a rare bird, he halts, encamps,
and is "at home." What, indeed, is to there hurry him onward? He has no
house to recall him, and neither wife nor child awaits him. He has a
family, it is true: that great family which he observes and describes.
And friends, he has _them_, too: those which have not yet learned to
mistrust man, and which perch upon his tree, and chatter with him.
And, O birds, you are right; you have there a truly loyal friend, who
will secure you many others, who will teach men to understand you,
being himself as a bird in thought and heart. One day, perhaps, the
traveller, penetrating into your solitudes, and seeing some of you
fluttering and sparkling in the sun, will be tempted with the hope of
spoil, but will bethink himself of Wilson. Why kill the friends of
Wilson? And when this name flashes on his memory, he will lower his
gun.
I do not see, let me add, why we should extend to infinity our massacre
of birds, or, at least, of these species which are represented in our
museums, or in the museums painted by Wilson, and his disciple Audubon,
whose truly royal book, exhibiting both race, and the egg, the nest,
the forest, the very landscape, is a rivalry with nature.
[Illustration]
These great observers have one speciality which separates them from all
others. Their feeling is so delicate, so precise, that no generalities
could satisfy it; they must always examine the individual. God, I
think, knows nothing of our classifications: he created such and such a
creature, and gives but little heed to the imaginary lines with which
we isolate the species. In the same manner, Wilson knew nothing of
birds in the mass; but such an individual, of such an age, with such
plumage, in such circumstances. He knows it, has seen it, has seen it
again, and again, and he will tell you what it does, what it eats,
how it comports itself, and will relate certain adventures, certain
anecdotes of its life. "I knew a woodpecker. I have frequently seen
a Baltimore." When he uses these expressions, you may wholly trust
yourself to him; they mean that he has held close relations with them
in a species of friendly and family intimacy. Would that we knew the
men with whom we transact business as well as Wilson knew the bird
_qua_, or the heron of the Carolinas!
It is easily understood, and not difficult to imagine, that when this
_bird-man_ returned among men, he met with none that could comprehend
him. His peculiarly novel originality, his marvellous exactness, his
unique faculty of _individualization_ (the only means of re-making of
re-creating the living being), were the chief obstacles to his success.
Neither publishers nor public cared for more than noble, lofty, and
vague generalities, in faithful observance of Buffon's precept: To
generalize is to ennoble; therefore, adopt the word "general."
It required time, and, more than all, it required that this fertile
genius should after his death inspire a similar genius, the accurate
and patient Audubon, whose colossal work has astonished and subjugated
the public, by demonstrating that the true and living in representation
of individuality is nobler and more majestic than the forced products
of the generalizing art.
Wilson's sweetness of disposition, so unworthily misunderstood, shines
forth in his beautiful preface. To some it may appear infantine, but no
innocent heart can be otherwise than moved by it.
"On a visit to a friend, I found that his young son, about eight or
nine years of age, who had been brought up in the town, but was then
living in the country, had just collected, while wandering in the
fields, a fine nosegay of wild-flowers of every hue. He presented it to
his mother, with the greatest animation, saying: 'Dear mamma, see what
beautiful flowers I have gathered! Oh, I could pluck a host of others
which grow in our woods, and are still more lovely! Shall I not bring
you some more, mamma?' She took the nosegay with a smile of tenderness,
silently admired the simple and touching beauty of nature, and said to
him, 'Yes, my son.' The child started off on the wings of happiness.
"I saw myself in that child, and was struck with the resemblance. If
my native country receive with gracious indulgence the specimens which
I now humbly offer it, if it express a desire that _I should bring it
some more_, my highest ambition will be satisfied. For, as my little
friend said, our woods are full of them; I can gather numerous others
which are still more beautiful."--(Philadelphia, 1808.)
[Illustration]
[Illustration: THE COMBAT.]
[Illustration]
THE COMBAT.
THE TROPICAL REGIONS.
A lady of our family, who resided in Louisiana, was nursing her young
child. Every night her sleep was troubled by the strange sensation of
a cold gliding object which sought to draw the milk from her breast.
On one occasion she felt the same impression, and it aroused her. She
sprang up, summoned her attendants; a light was brought; they search
every corner, turn over the bed, and at last discover the frightful
nursling--a serpent of great size and of a dangerous species. The
horror which she felt instantly dried up her milk.
Levaillant relates that at the Cape of Good Hope, in a circle of
friends, and during a quiet conversation, the lady of the house turned
pale, and uttered a terrible cry. A serpent had crept up her legs,
one of those whose sting is death in a couple of minutes. With great
difficulty it was killed.