Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/418

404 his sister and her children, who were living on a farm that Wilson and his nephew William had bought together. He made his way home down the Mohawk Valley to Albany, and thence by boat to New York. In this journey, occupying two months, he traversed over twelve hundred miles. Winter overtook him in the midst of it, so that the latter part of it was made "through deep snows and almost uninhabited forests; over stupendous mountains and down dangerous rivers." The trip seems to have benefited both his health and spirits, for in his account of it, written to Bartram,he expresses eagerness for wider explorations and new discoveries. "With no family to enchain my affections, no ties but those of friendship, and the most ardent love of my adopted country; with a constitution which hardens amid fatigues, and a disposition sociable and open, which can find itself at home by an Indian fire in the depth of the woods, as well as in the best apartment of the civilized [world], I have at present a real design of becoming a traveler. But I am miserably deficient in many acquirements absolutely necessary for such a character. Botany, mineralogy, and drawing I most ardently wish to be instructed in, and with these I should fear nothing." How oblivious to matters of detail his enthusiasm made him can be judged, Ord remarks, from the fact that at this time Wilson's available cash amounted to seventy-five cents.

Two of the birds which he shot in New York, one being the Canada jay, were unknown to Wilson's associates. He made careful drawings-of them, and got Mr. Bartram to send them to President Jefferson, whom Wilson much admired. The President, who was quite an amateur naturalist, replied with a very appreciative letter, in which he put Wilson on the track of a certain sweet-singing and very unapproachable bird. He had "followed it for miles without ever, but once, getting a good view of it," and had for twenty years tried to get a specimen without success. "After many inquiries and unwearied research," says Ord, "it turned out that this invisible musician was no other than the wood robin, a bird which, if sought for in those places which it affects, may be seen every hour of the day." The next summer Wilson announced to Bartram his determination to make a collection of drawings of the birds of Pennsylvania, and sent him twenty-eight for criticism. The scope of his undertaking was extended, within a few months, so as to include the whole United States. He had planned an expedition down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers for the summer of 1806 with Bartram; but the latter, who was nearly seventy years old, gave up the idea. Wilson, who had heard that explorers were to be sent up the Red and Arkansas Rivers,