American savages retain the same method of computation. A Seminole of Florida will tell you that his daughter was married at the arrival of the humming-bird;-his child died in the moulting season of the nonpareil;-his mother had as many young warriors as there are eggs in the nest of the pelican.

The savages of Canada mark the sixth hour after noon by the moment when the wood-pigeon repairs to the stream to drink, and the savages of Louisiana by that in which the day-fly issues from the waters. The passage of various birds regulates the season of the chase; and the time for reaping the crops of corn, maple-sugar, and wild oats, is announced by certain animals, which never fail to appear at the hour of the banquet.

CHAPTER IX.

THE SUBJECT OF MIGRATIONS CONCLUDED-QUADRUPEDS.

MIGRATION is more frequent among fishes and birds than among quadrupeds, on account of the multiplicity of the former, and the facility of their journeys through the two elements by which the earth is surrounded. There is nothing astonishing in all this but the certainty with which they reach the shores to which they are bound. It appears natural that an animal, driven by hunger, should leave the country he inhabits in search of food and shelter; but is it possible to conceive that matter causes him to arrive at one place rather than another, and conducts him, with wonderful precision, to the very spot where this food and shelter are to be found? How should he know the winds and the tides, the equinoxes and the solstices? We have no doubt that if the migratory tribes were abandoned for a single moment to their own instinct, they would almost all perish. Some, wishing to pass to a colder climate, would reach the tropics; others, intending to proceed under the line, would wander to the poles. Our redbreasts, instead of passing over Alsace and Germany in search of little insects, would themselves become the prey of some enormous beetle in Africa; the Greenlander, attracted by a plain

tive cry issuing from the rocks, would draw near, and find poor philomela in the agony of death.

Such mistakes are not permitted by the Almighty. Every thing in nature has its harmonies and its relations: zephyrs accord with flowers, winter is suited to storms, and grief has its seat in the heart of man. The most skilful pilots will long miss the desired port before the fish mistakes the longitude of the smallest rock in the ocean. Providence is his polar star, and, whatever way he steers, he has constantly in view that luminary which never sets.

The universe is like an immense inn, where all is in motion. You behold a multitude of travellers continually entering and departing. In the migrations of quadrupeds, nothing perhaps can be compared to the journeys of the bisons across the immense prairies of Louisiana and New Mexico. When the time has arrived for them to change their residence, and to dispense abundance to savage nations, some aged buffalo, the patriarch of the herds of the desert, calls around him his sons and daughters. The rendezvous is on the banks of the Meschacebe; the close of day is fixed for the time of their departure. This moment having arrived, the leader, shaking his vast mane, which hangs down over his eyes and his curved horns, salutes the setting sun with an inclination of the head, at the same time raising his huge back like a mountain. With a deep, rumbling sound, he gives the signal for departure. Then, suddenly plunging into the foaming waters, he is followed by the whole multitude of bulls and heifers, bellowing after him in the expression of their love.

While this powerful family of quadrupeds is crossing with tremendous uproar the rivers and forests, a peaceful squadron is seen moving silently over the solitary lake, with the aid of the starlight and a favorable breeze. It is a troop of small, black squirrels, that having stripped all the walnut trees of the vicinity, resolve to seek their fortune, and to embark for another forest. Raising their tails, and expanding them as silken sails to the

I The bison is the wild bull or ox, from which several races of common cattle are descended. It is found wild in many parts of the old and new continents, and is distinguished by its large size and the shagginess of its hair about the head, neck, and shoulders. In the western territories of the United States they are seen in herds innumerable, intermixed with deer.

wind, this intrepid race boldly tempt the inconstant waves. 0 imprudent pirates, transported by the desire of riches! The tempest arises, the waves roar, and the squadron is on the point of perishing. It strives to gain the nearest haven, but sometimes an army of beavers oppose the landing, fearful lest these strangers are come to pillage their stores. In vain the nimble battalions, springing upon the shores, think to escape by climbing the trees, and from their lofty tops to defy the enemy. Genius is superior to artifice;-a band of sappers advance, undermine the oak, and bring it to the ground, with all its squirrels, like a tower, filled with soldiers, demolished by the ancient battering-ram.

Our adventurers experience many other mishaps, which, however, are in some degree compensated by the fruit they have discovered and the sports in which they indulge. Athens, reduced to captivity by the Lacedemonians, was not, on that account, of a less amiable or less frivolous character.

In ascending the North River in the packet-boat from New York to Albany, we ourselves beheld one of these unfortunate squirrels, which had attempted to cross the stream. He was unable to reach the shore, and was taken half-drowned out of the water; he was a beautiful creature, black as ebony, and his tail was twice the length of his body. He was restored to life, but lost his liberty by becoming the slave of a young female passenger.

The reindeer of the north of Europe, and the elks of North America, have their seasons of migration, invariably calculated, like those of birds, to supply the necessities of man. Even the white bear of Newfoundland is sent by a wonderful Providence to the Esquimaux Indians, that they may clothe themselves with its skin. These marine monsters are seen approaching the coasts of Labrador on islands of floating ice, or on fragments of vessels, to which they cling like sturdy mariners escaped from shipwreck. The elephants of Asia also travel, and the earth shakes beneath their feet, yet man has nothing to fear; chaste, tender, intelligent, Behemoth is gentle because he is strong; peaceful, because he is powerful. The first servant of man, but not his slave, he ranks next to him in the scale of the creation. When the animals, after the original fall, removed from the habitation of man,

the elephant, from the generosity of his nature, appears to have retired with the greatest reluctance; for he has always remained near the cradle of the world. He now goes forth occasionally from his desert, and advances toward an inhabited district, to supply the place of some companion that has died without progeny in the service of the children of Adam.1

CHAPTER X.

AMPHIBIOUS ANIMALS AND REPTILES.

IN the Floridas, at the foot of the Appalachian Mountains, there are springs which are called natural wells. Each well is scooped out of the centre of a hill planted with orange-trees, evergreen oaks, and catalpas. This hill opens in the form of a

1 The eloquent writers who have described the manners of this animal render it unnecessary for us to enlarge on the subject. We shall merely observe that the conformation of the elephant appears so extraordinary to us, only because we see it separated from the plants, the situations, the waters, the mountains, the colors, the light, the shade, and the skies, which are peculiar to it. The productions of our latitudes, planned on a smaller scale, the frequent roundness of objects, the firmness of the grasses, the slight denticulation of the leaves, the elegant bearing of the trees, our languid days and chilly nights, the fugitive tints of our verdure, in short, even the color, clothing and architecture of Europeans, have no conformity with the elephant. Were travellers more accurate observers, we should know in what manner this quadruped is connected with that nature which produces him. For our own part, we think we have a glimpse of some of these relations. The elephant's trunk, for example, has a striking coincidence with the wax-tree, the aloe, the lianne, the rattan, and in the animal kingdom with the long serpents of India; his ears are shaped like the leaves of the eastern fig-tree; his skin is scaly, soft, and yet rigid, like the substance which covers part of the trunk of the palm, or rather like the ligneous coat of the cocoanut; many of the large plants of the tropics support themselves on the earth in the manner of his feet, and have the same square and heavy form; his voice is at once shrill and strong, like that of the Caffre in his deserts, or like the war-cry of the Sepoy. When, covered with a rich carpet, laden with a tower resembling the minarets of a pagoda, he carries some pious monarch to the ruins of those temples which are found in the peninsula of India, his massive form, the columns which support him, his irregular figure, and his barbarous pomp, coincide with the colossal structure formed of hewn rocks piled one upon another. The vast animal and the ruined monument both seem to be relics of the giant age.

crescent toward the savanna, and at the aperture is a channel through which the water flows from the well. The foliage of the trees bending over the fountain causes the water beneath to appear perfectly black; but at the spot where the aqueduct joins the base of the cone, a ray of light, entering by the bed of the channel, falls upon a single point of the liquid mirror, which produces an effect resembling that of the glass in the camera obscura of the painter. This delightful retreat is commonly inhabited by an enormous crocodile, which stands motionless in the centre of the basin; and from the appearance of his greenish hide, and his large nostrils spouting the water in two colored ellipses, you would take him for a dolphin of bronze in some grotto among the groves of Versailles.

The crocodiles or caymans of Florida live not always in solitude. At certain seasons of the year they assemble in troops, and lie in ambush to attack the scaly travellers who are expected to arrive from the ocean. When these have ascended the rivers, and, wanting water for their vast shoals, perish stranded on the shores, and threaten to infect the air, Providence suddenly lets loose upon them an army of four or five thousand crocodiles. The monsters, raising a tremendous outcry and gnashing their horrid jaws, rush upon the strangers. Bounding from all sides, the combatants close, seize, and entwine each other. Plunging to the bottom of the abyss, they roll themselves in the mud, and then to the surface of the waves. The waters, stained with blood, are covered with mangled carcasses and reeking with entrails. It is impossible to convey an idea of these extraordinary scenes described by travellers, and which the reader is always tempted to consider as mere exaggerations. Routed, dispersed, and panic-struck, the foreign legions, pursued as far as the Atlantic, are obliged to return to its abyss, that by supplying our wants at some future period, they may serve without injuring us.

This species of monsters has sometimes proved a stumblingblock to atheistic minds; they are, however, extremely necessary in the general plan. They inhabit only the deserts where the absence of man requires their presence: they are placed there

1 See Bartram, Voyage dans les Carolines et dans les Florides.

2 The immense advantages derived by man from the migrations of fishes are so well known that we shall not enlarge on that subject.