A little lower down, and opposite Chalk Bluff, was a heavily wooded island, a part of the territory of the state of Illinois, and known as Wolf Island, or Island No. 5.  At five o’clock in the afternoon I ran into a little thoroughfare on the eastern side of this island, and moored the duck-boat under its muddy banks.  The wind increased to a gale before morning, and kept me through the entire day, and until the following morning, an unwilling captive.  Reading and cooking helped to while away the heavy hours, but having burned up all the dry wood I could find, I was forced to seek other quarters, which were found in a romantic stream that flowed out of a swamp and joined the Mississippi just one mile above Hickman, on the Kentucky side.  Having passed a comfortable night, and making an early start without breakfast, I rowed rapidly over a smooth current to the stream called Bayou du Chien Creek, in which I made a very attractive camp among the giant sycamores, sweet-gums, and cotton-woods.  The warm sunshine penetrated into this sheltered spot, while the wind had fallen to a gentle zephyr, and came in refreshing puffs through the lofty trees.  Here birds were numerous, and briskly hopped about my fire while I made an omelet and boiled some wheaten grits.

[Meeting with the parakeets.]

In this retired haunt of the birds I remained through the whole of that sunny Sunday, cooking my three meals, and reading my Bible, as became a civilized man.  While enjoying this immunity from the disturbing elements of the great public thoroughfare, the river, curious cries were borne upon the wind above the tall tree-tops like the chattering calls of parrots, to which my ear had become accustomed in the tropical forests of Cuba.  As the noise grew louder with the approach of a feathered flock of visitors, and the screams of the birds became more discordant, I peered through the branches of the forest to catch a glimpse of what I had searched for through many hundred miles of wilderness since my boyhood, but what had so far eluded my eager eyes.  I felt certain these strange cries must come from the Carolina Parrot, or Parakeet (Conurus Carolinensis), which, though once numerous in all the country west of the Alleghanies as far north as the southern shores of the Great Lakes, has so rapidly diminished in number since 1825, that we find it only as an occasional inhabitant of the middle states south of the Ohio River.  In fact, this species is now chiefly confined to Florida, western Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, and the Indian Territory.  That careful and reliable ornithologist, Dr. Elliot Coues, seems to doubt whether it is now entitled to a place in the avi-fauna of South Carolina, where it was once found in large flocks.

The birds soon reached the locality of my camp, and circling through the clear, warm atmosphere above the tree-tops, they gradually settled lower and lower, suspiciously scanning my fire, screaming as though their little throats would burst, while the sunlight seemed to fill the air with the reflections of the green, gold, and carmine of their brilliant plumage.  They dropped into the foliage of the grove, and for a moment were as quiet as though life had departed from them, while I kept close to my hiding-place behind an immense fallen tree, from beneath which I could watch my feathery guests.