Part 13

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.

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, 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.

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.)

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.

In India, a French soldier, resuming his knapsack which he had placed on the ground, discovered behind it the dangerous black serpent, the most venomous of his tribe. He was about to cut it in two when a merciful Hindu interposed, obtained its pardon, and took up the serpent. Stung by it, he died immediately.

Such are the terrors of nature in those formidable climates. But reptiles, now-a-days rare, are not the greatest curse. In all places and at all times it is now the insect. Insects everywhere, and in everything; they possess an infinity of means for attacking you; they walk, swim, glide, fly; they are in the air, and you breathe them. Invisible, they make known their presence by the most painful wounds. Recently, in one of our sea-ports, an official of the customs opened a parcel of papers brought from the colonies a long time previously. A fly furiously darted out of it; it pursued, it stung him; two days afterwards he was a corpse.

The hardiest of men, the buccaneers and filibusters, declared that of all dangers and of all pains they dreaded most the wounds of insects.

Frequently intangible, invisible, irresistible, they are destruction itself under an unavoidable form. How shall you oppose them when they make war upon you in legions? Once, at Barbadoes, the inhabitants observed an immense army of great ants, which, impelled by unknown causes, advanced in a serried column and in the same direction against the houses. To kill them was only trouble lost. There were no means of arresting their progress. At last an ingenious mind fortunately suggested that trains of gunpowder should be laid across their route, and set on fire. These volcanoes terrified them, and the torrent of invasion gradually turned aside.

No mediæval armoury, with all the strange weapons then made use of; no chirurgical implement factory, with the thousands of dreadful instruments invented by modern art, can be compared with the monstrous armour of Tropical insects--their pincers, their nippers, their teeth, their saws, their horns, their augers, all their tools of combat, of death, and of dissection, with which they come armed to the battle, with which they labour, pierce, cut, rend, and finely partition, with skill and dexterity equal to their furious blood-thirstiness.

Our grandest works may not defy the energetic force of these terrible legions. Give them a ship of the line--what do I say? a town--to devour, and they charge at it with eager joy. In course of time they have excavated under Valentia, near Caraccas, vast abysses and catacombs; the city is now literally suspended. A few individuals of this voracious tribe, unfortunately transported to Rochelle, have set to work to eat up the place, and already more than one edifice trembles upon timbers which are only externally sound, and at the core are rotten.

What would be the fate of a man given up to the insects? One dares not think of it. An unfortunate wretch, while intoxicated, fell down near a carcass. The insects which were devouring the dead could not distinguish from it the living; they took possession of his body, entered at every avenue, filled all the natural cavities. It was impossible to save him. He expired in the midst of frightful convulsions.

In those lands of fire, where the rapidity of decomposition renders every corpse dangerous, where all death threatens life, these terrible accelerators of the disappearance of animal bodies multiply ad infinitum. A corpse scarcely touches the earth before it is seized, attacked, disorganized, dissected. Only the bones are left. Nature, endangered by her own fecundity, invites, stimulates, encourages them by the heat, by the irritation of a world of spices and acrid substances. She makes them furious hunters, insatiable gluttons. The tiger and the lion, compared with the vulture, are mild, sober, moderate creatures; but what is the vulture in the presence of an insect which, in four-and-twenty hours, consumes thrice its own weight?

Greece personified nature under the calm and noble image of Cybele chariot-drawn by lions. India dreams of her god Siva, the divinity of life and death, who incessantly winks his eye, never gazing fixedly, because his single glance would reduce all the worlds to dust. How weak these fancies of men in the presence of the reality! What avail their fictions before the burning centre where, by atoms or by seconds, life dies, is born, blazes, scintillates? Who could sustain the thunderous flash without reeling and without terror?