mercy of the first United States commissioner who shall make his appearance on the Columbia.

We are sure that they have no intention to defraud the natives. Let them ask themselves, if any sum they or Mr. Kelley can raise, is a fair equivalent for the valley of the Multnomah? We ask them, if the twelve or eighteen thousand inhabitants of that valley will be likely to think so? Will what remains of two hundred thousand dollars, after the expenses of the expedition shall have been paid, suffice to furnish each native of that great valley with a single two-and-a-half-point blanket, not to say a gun? If those natives should not be inclined to receive what they may offer, will they be willing or able to use compulsion? If not, will they not have made their journey in vain? Are they not, now, about to quit a certainty for an uncertainty,-quitting a substance, to grasp at a shadow? Let them read Lewis and Clark, and see how far

they agree with Mr. Kelley.

Do they go as hunters? We will pass over the plain fact, that they are not qualified for the business, and tell them, that hunting and trapping on Indian lands are prohibited, in direct terms, by a law of the United States. It is, indeed, violated every day, the more shame on those whose bounden duty it is to put the laws in execution, and protect the savages. On the upper Mississippi, and the great lakes, no such iniquity is allowed; but large armed bands of hunters leave St. Louis every year, and ravage the Missouri, and the country beyond the Rocky Mountains. It is a manifest wrong and injustice. It takes from the savages their means of subsistence. Yet it is done, before the eyes of the officers of government, on the Missouri, for which we hope to see them punished one day.

However, these very hunters do not, at least not many of them, go so far as Oregon. Oregon is not a profitable hunting ground. Vide Lewis and Clark.

Do our friends believe, that the officers of the Oregon Colonization Society have more wisdom than the whole nation beside? Do they not know, that Congress has repeatedly refused to aid or sanction their scheme, and that unless they obtain the sanction of Congress, they will become law-breakers, and amenable to the penalties in such cases made and provided? Have they no reason to fear that the time will come, when Indians will be protected?

"Falsehood flies half round the globe, while Truth is putting on her sandals." The fallacies of Mr. Kelley have been received as truth, by the whole country, and there is reason to fear that interference may come too late. We assure those of our fellow-countrymen, who have thrown twenty dollars into this unlawful gambling speculation, that we have no lands to sell, either in Maine, or any where else,-no, not a foot. We have no acquaintance with any of the persons in whom they trust; we have no personal interest in detaining them. As we would call to those we might see approaching the verge of a precipice unwittingly, we call to them,-"Pause; read Lewis and Clark, and the intercourse laws."

W. J. S.

OUR BIRDS.

A TALK IN THE WAY OF ORNITHOLOGY.

PART IV.

THERE were grumblers in old time, you know, dear reader, who could go from Dan to Beersheba, and say 't was all barren. In like sort, there are not wanting some at the present day, who would travel from Berkshire to Cape Cod, and see no game upon the wing; being gifted, like their precious prototypes, with that unlucky torpor of the feeling and fancy, which neutralizes every fine impression. Yet to a man, with eye open and intellect awake, what lovely and magnificent scenes lie spread around! It is right joyous to me, dear reader, to perceive that you are not one of the apathetic, but a being of right human sympathies, and one whom the gods have made romantical, and a good shot.

Truly, honest friend, we have made a busy jaunt of it; and little did I imagine, on taking the field, the extent of the campaigning we should carry through together. We have accomplished no dawdling affair; and, to tell the truth, and encourage young beginners, you have fleshed your maiden fowling-piece in most creditable style; although that was an awkward concern when you blazed away at a grey squirrel with six fingers of powder too much in the charge, thereby getting a kick which set you spinning backward somersets down hill. I cannot, moreover, praise your dexterity in the affair of the woodcock which you came upon in a blundering way, and shot dead upon the wing, as you thought, by the two discharges of your double barrel-finding, nevertheless, that you had only slain a red-hipped bumble-bee, on the top of a thistle. But all these, and sundry other gaucheries,—which I here pretermit, out of pure good will and affection toward so clever a fellow in the mainare ordinary trips and stumblings in the path of a young sportsman, and mere cakes and gingerbread to the mishaps which I have known befall mighty men of valor, in the gunning way.

Our battalion of wild fowl have gone through a tolerable review, yet there remain divers unmentioned, which, for habit and localities, may be considered of kindred race to those already introduced to your notice. The WILD SWAN is a noble fellow, whose long and slender neck, snow-white plumage, and majestic motion upon the water, are of course, most learned reader, well known to you, whether having been favored with a sight of him or not; although 't is fifty to one you have never seen him, he being specially rare in Massachusetts, passing the summer in the northern regions, and the winter in the southern part of the United States. Now and then a few linger in our waters, during the passage, and one was shot near the mouth of the Merrimac, last year; but this is a rare occurrence. Swans have all been white till the discovery of New-Holland, and there, forsooth, are found black swans. This, by the way, is also the country where the rivers rise on the coast, run inland, and get lost among the marshes; and where a quadruped stares honest men in the face, with a duck's bill, a cat's claw, and a seal's body!

But what think you of OwLs, good reader? There is not a more comical sea-fowl, than your owl, to be seen along shore. "Doubted,

Mr. Moderator," say you; "owl is no sea-bird, but a most arrant landlubber." Hereanent gather and surmise. On Deer Island, in Boston harbor, a person,, straying along the shore a few weeks since, observed on the beach, close to the water, one of the oddest figures imaginable, for all the world like unto a little old woman cut shorter, most dowdily mobbed up in a white loose gown, and a night-cap. There she sat, squat upon the sand, bobbing her head up and down, in a very portentous and ghost-like solemnity, now and then making an odd sort of a hitch along shore, something between a stride and a tumble. Our hero was struck all of a heap at the sight, not being able to conjecture, for the life of him, what Pagan had come to land; and, presently, fetching his musket, gave the apparition a knock-down at the first shot. It turned out to be an enormous SNOWY OWL, who had come all the way from the North-Pole, to snuff the sea-breezes in Boston harbor! He had been several days sharking about the islands, making night hideous, and rioting in a fat lent, upon the products of the sea-shore, gobbling up muscles, cracking clam-shells, untwisting cockles, and picking lobsters' pockets. Owls of ordinary ambition, are content with "rats and mice, and such small deer," but this was a most gluttonous fellow. Nevertheless, it would be somewhat interesting to know what odd affair sent his gravity upon so long a journey.

It is a great rarity to see one of these birds in our neighborhood. Their home is in the North, about Hudson's Bay, where, in the neighborhood of the settlements, they are known for a piece of right cunning impudence, in following the hunter, and stealing his game as he shoots it. Stories are told of their gormandizing capacity, in swallowing partridges and rabbits whole, which I cannot exactly vouch for ; but it is well known, that an owl commonly despatches his dinner in such a hurry, as to swallow the feathers and all, of the bird he is devouring; all indigestible matter is cast up, rolled into a ball; wherever an owl's nest is found, hundreds of these pellets are sure to be discovered.

And now, to pass from great things to small, here are mighty flocks of beach birds, which, at Nantasket, or Barnstable, you may enumerate in varieties manifold quæ nunc perscribere longum esset. Possibly, too, you care little for such insignificant game as the sand-pipers, brown-backs, ring-necks, et cetera, although a snipe, or plover, is not to be despised. If you desire to practise a little upon the wing, let me recommend you this last, as, on common occasions, you must take him singly. Colonel Short, of the Oldtown Blues, whom I hold to be the arch Nimrod of all the shooters in the county of Essex,-not intending, at the same time, to imply anything to the disparagement of Major Thurlow, of the Joppa battalion, who hath slain his thousands ;-the Colonel, I say, was my Magnus Apollo, in the rudiments of shooting, and set me, first of all, to waylay a plover. Well do I remember the time, no less than another occasion, when I first had the glory to bring down a wild fowl, being an unfortunate little ox-eye, whom I slaughtered by a thundering discharge within half pistol shot, and mauled so abominably, that there was no more head or tail to be made of him, than there is to one of John Randolph's speeches.

There is a great, awkward, long-shanked fellow, called a HERON, whom you may sec, at times, standing on the shore, or the edge of

a marsh, stiff as a poker, demure as a quaker, and, to appearance, most stoically and heroically bent upon doing nothing. Hour after hour you behold him keeping his station immoveable; do not imagine, however, that this moping dunderpate is asleep. Though his chin is sunk upon his breast, though his long neck is doubled up, and lying mightily at ease, depend upon it, old stick-in-the-mud is wide awake; his eye is bent upon the waters, his mandibles are set for a quick snap. Wo to the luckless lizard, frog, minnow, or tadpole, that approaches his stand; a dark and narrow passage awaits them, in the rigmarole twistings of his interminable throat. The NIGHT-HERON is another fellow, laboring in the same vocation, but he prefers skulking, and scours the country under cloud of night. This individual goes also by the name of the QUA-BIRD, from the delightful music of that note of his, which goes, quaw, quaw, quaw, combining the melody of the carrion-crow with the soft tone of the screech-owl. The habits of this charming songster are no less engaging and amiable than his music. In some dark and dismal woody swamp, inaccessible and inscrutable, from quagmires beneath and shadows above, whole flocks of these lovely creatures make their home during the day, sallying forth at night, when every well-meaning frog and tadpole in the neighborhood has gone to bed in his ditch. Then dire destruction and slaughter fall upon the sleeping small fry. There is an island, surrounded by a marshy tract, in the westerly part of Cambridge, which is a great rendezvous for these caitiffs. On approaching this quarter, while the Herons are holding a town-meeting, your ears will be regaled with a Babylonish hubbub, surpassing the Sunday evening serenades of Broad

street.

Another of these worthies, who shows a great fondness for dabbling in mud at night, is the RAIL, a long-clawed, stout-legged, short-winged, bob-tailed wight, thin, to a proverb, slipping between the reeds and bushes, where you would imagine a snake could not penetrate. You may hear his melody, late at night, from a salt marsh, or the sedgy margin of a creek, as he jerks out a rattling falsetto of cutticuttée, not inferior in symphony to the notes of a watchman's rattle. In the Southern states, these birds are very numerous, and Rail shooting is one of the chief occupations of the sportsmen in the low and marshy districts toward the sea. In New-England, they are more rare, and their flesh is little esteemed. In the South, the markets are well supplied with them.

And now, dear reader, me seemeth, I have, in some sort, redeemed the promise I made thee, when I took thy hand at the beginning of this pleasant journey. Things both rare and fair have I made to flit before thee, and thou hast proved thyself a genuine child of nature, and a sportsman true, by the fond enthusiasm with which thou hast followed my steps. Would that geese were swans, and owls were peacocks, for thy sake. I have set before thee the choicest game that the mountains and shores of our New-England have to offer. Had I a mammoth ostrich, or a bird of paradise, he should be heartily at thy service; and depend upon it, should I catch a brood of young condors, or a sucking albatross, in my next bird's-nesting campaign upon Milton Hills, or Nantasket, I will e'en send thee one for a pet. Farewell!

SPRING.

THE shabby gentleman, as he looks out upon nature, which is his almanac, remarks with varied and conflicting emotions, the change of the seasons. The trees, whose branches are seen here and there above the slated roof and aspiring chimney, are trimming their brown livery with green; the common, which is his terrace, is brushing up its faded embroidery, and the species, of which he is a disconsolate member, is emulating these attempts at ornament. But he, of whom we are speaking, changes not; and when the pictured models of vernal elegance are fading in the tailor's window, when silks and stuffs that have received the signet of Parisian taste have already reached the sources of the Merrimac and the Connecticut, when the warm sun of May is bleaching the beavers of manhood, and thinning the drapery of woman, he may be seen still gathering his camlet around him, like a chrysalis in a garden of butterflies.

I have mentioned to the public,-what the public, alas! may have forgotten, that my window is a central and commanding point of observation. I have also mentioned that it has been my habit for some time, to record the appearance and actions of such pedestrians as have any peculiarity rendering them worthy of notice; recording them not by their names, of which 1 am ignorant, and which might be libelous if detected, to the great damage of myself and the notable scandal of the metropolis; but appropriating to each a certain number, which stands as his representative. I shall take this opportunity to give the reasons which prompted me to this measure. I had remarked that certain faces, unless my eyes deceived me, were always to be seen, and I thought that a series of accurately recorded observations, would explain the mystery. I had observed that others were always abroad at certain hours, at different parts of the day, and I wished to ascertain why they chose these different periods. I noticed young men, who looked under every bonnet, and I chose to have an eye on the conduct of these city inspectors of God's image. I noticed young women, who discharged a similar office towards my own sex, and I determined to collect data from which I might infer their object. Some individuals walked, and some dressed, in a manner which rendered them worthy of note. Among the latter, were some of the softer sex, whose liberality has afforded me the opportunity of making several valuable anatomical observations. People from a distance, too, some coming to see lions, and some to be lions, were well worth labeling and attending to. When I grow old, and lose my memory, these little reminiscences will acquire some value.

And so much for our digression! Spring, as I said before, is a sad time for a shabby gentleman. In winter, booted, buttoned, and tippeted, the secrets of his bosom are hid from the eyes of the curious. But if his finances can circumvent a cloak-O there is no telling how respectable, how imposing, how august he may render his appearance. Happy, happy autumnal pauper! At the first breath, which sickens the faint cheek of the most languishing exotic, he wraps himself in the mantle which covers all deficiences, and suns himself in the smile of public toleration. When the last icicle is melting from the tresses of May, he resigns it once more to the solitude of his wardrobe.