The Creeks or Muscogulges construct their royal standard of the tail feather of this bird, which is called by a name signifying the eagle’s tail; this they carry with them when they go to battle, but then it is painted with a zone of red within the brown tips; and in peaceable negociations it is displayed new, clean, and white: this standard is held most sacred by them on all occasions, and is constructed and ornamented with great ingenuity. These birds seldom appear but when the deserts are set on fire (which happens almost every day throughout the year, in some part or other, by the Indians, for the purpose of rousing the game, as also by the lightning:) when they are seen at a distance soaring on the wing, gathering from every quarter, and gradually approaching the burnt plains, where they alight upon the ground yet smoking with hot embers: they gather up the roasted serpents, frogs, and lizards; filling their sacks with them: at this time a person may shoot them at pleasure, they not being willing to quit the feast, and indeed seeming to brave all danger.
The other species may very properly be called the coped vulture, and is by the inhabitants called the carrion crow. As to bulk or weight, he is nearly equal to either of the others before-mentioned. His wings are not long and sharp pointed, but broad and round at their extremities, having a clumsy appearance; the tail is remarkably short, which he spreads like a little fan, when on the wing. They have a heavy laborious flight, flapping their wings, then sail a little and then flap their wings again, and so on as if recovering themselves when falling. The beak is very long and straight, until it makes a sudden hook at the point, in the manner of the other vultures. The whole bird is of a sable or mourning colour; the head and neck down to the breast is bare of feathers, and the skin wrinkled; this unfeathered skin is of a deep livid purple, appearing black and thinly set with short black hair. He has a ruff or tippet of long soft feathers, like a collar bearing on his breast, in which he can conceal his neck and head at pleasure.
Having agreeably diverted away the intolerable heats of sultry noon in fruitful fragrant groves, with renewed vigour I again resume my sylvan pilgrimage. The afternoon and evening moderately warm, and exceeding pleasant views from the river and its varied shores. I passed by Battle lagoon and the bluff, without much opposition; but the crocodiles were already assembling in the pass. Before night I came to, at a charming Orange grove bluff, on the east side of the little lake, and after fixing my camp on a high open situation, and collecting a plenty of dry wood for fuel, I had time to get some fine trout for supper and joyfully return to my camp.
What a most beautiful creature is this fish before me! gliding to and fro, and figuring in the still clear waters, with his orient attendants and associates: the yellow bream[[27]] or sun fish. It is about eight inches in length, nearly of the shape of the trout, but rather larger in proportion over the shoulders and breast; the mouth large, and the branchiostega opens wide; the whole fish is of a pale gold (or burnished brass) colour, darker on the back and upper sides; the scales are of a proportionable size, regularly placed, and every where variably powdered with red, russet, silver, blue, and green specks, so laid on the scales as to appear like real dust or opaque bodies, each apparent particle being so projected by light and shade, and the various attitudes of the fish, as to deceive the sight; for in reality nothing can be of a more plain and polished surface than the scales and whole body of the fish. The fins are of an orange colour; and, like all the species of the bream, the ultimate angle of the branchiostega terminates by a little spatula, the extreme end of which represents a crescent of the finest ultramarine blue, encircled with silver and velvet black, like the eye in the feathers of a peacock’s train. He is a fish of prodigious strength and activity in the water; a warrior in a gilded coat of mail, and gives no rest or quarters to small fish, which he preys upon. They are delicious food and in great abundance.
The Orange grove, is but narrow, betwixt the the river banks and ancient Indian fields, where there are evident traces of the habitations of the ancients, surrounded whith groves of Live Oak, Laurel Magnolia, Zanthoxylon, Liquidambar, and others.
How harmonious and soothing is this native sylvan music now at still evening! inexpressibly tender are the responsive cooings of the innocent dove, in the fragrant Zanthoxylon groves, and the variable and tuneful warblings of the nonpareil, with the more sprightly and elevated strains of the blue linnet and golden icterus: this is indeed harmony, even amidst the incessant croaking of the frogs: the shades of silent night are made more cheerful, with the shrill voice of the whip-poor-will[[28]] and active mock-bird.
My situation high and airy: a brisk and cool breeze steadily and incessantly passing over the clear waters of the lake, and fluttering over me through the srrounding groves, wings its way to the moon-light savannas, while I repose on my sweet and healthy couch of the soft Tillandsia usnea-adscites, and the latter gloomy and still hours of night pass rapidly away as it were in a moment; I arose, strengthened and cheerful, in the morning. Having some repairs to make in the tackle of my vessel, I paid my first attention to them; which being accomplished, my curiosity prompted me to penetrate the grove and view the illumined plains.
Ixia Cœlestina