their nests, being placed on rafts of buoyant material, float about in the bayous, and are propelled and guided at the will of the sitting bird by the use of her long legs and feet as oars.  The position of the bird upon the nest is also ludicrously depicted.  It is described as sitting astride the nest, with the toes touching the ground; and to add still more comicality to the picture, it is asserted that the limbs are often thrust out horizontally behind the bird.  The results of close observations prove that these accounts are in keeping with many others related by parlor naturalists.  The cranes sit upon their nests like other birds, with their feet drawn up close to the body.  The mound-shaped nests are built of sticks, grass, and mud, and usually placed in a shallow pond or partially submerged swamp, while at times a grassy hassock furnishes the foundation of the structure.  In the saucer-shaped top of the nest two eggs are deposited, upon which the bird sits most assiduously, having no time at this season for aquatic amusements, such as paddling about with her nest.

[Popular idea of the nesting of cranes.]

The young birds are most hilarious babies, for they inherit the social qualities of their parents, and are ready to play or fight with each other before they are fairly out of the nest.  A close observer of their habits writes from the prairies of Indiana:  “When the young get a little strength they attack each other with great fury, and can only be made to desist by the parent bird separating them, and taking one under its fostering care, and holding them at a respectable distance until they reach crane-hood, when they seem to make up in joyous hilarity for the quarrelsome proclivities of youth.”

Like geese and ducks, cranes winter in one locality so long as the ponds are open, but the first cold snap that freezes their swamp drives them two or three degrees further south.  From this migration they soon return to their old haunts, the first thawing of the ice being the signal.

The mouths of the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers were passed, and the Ohio, widening in places until it seemed like a lake, assumed a new grandeur as it approached the Mississippi.  Three miles below Wilkinsonville, but on the Kentucky side, I stole into a dark creek and rested until the next morning, Friday, December 31st, which was to be my last day on the Ohio River.

I entered a long reach in the river soon after nine o’clock on Friday morning, and could plainly see the town of Cairo, resting upon the flat prairies in the distance.  The now yellow, muddy current of the Ohio rolled along the great railroad dike, which had cost one million dollars to erect, and formed a barrier strong enough to resist the rushing waters of the freshets.  Across the southern apex of this prairie city could be seen the “Father of Waters,” its wide surface bounded on the west by the wilderness.  A few moments more, and my little craft was whirled into its rapid, eddying current; and with the boat’s prow now pointed southward, I commenced, as it were, a life of new experiences as I descended the great river, where each day I was to feel the genial influences of a warmer climate.