On January 30, 1810, a man of rather coarse features, with a head of sandy hair, and possessed of manners that could be winning or aggressive according to his mood, might have been seen leaving Philadelphia afoot, for he had planned to keep his expenses down to a dollar a day and traveling by coach or on horseback suited neither his purse nor the objects of his mission. His clothing was coarse; his luggage, with the exception of a fowling-piece and two red-backed volumes of quarto size, was of the lightest description. But, could we have peered between the covers of those books, our curiosity would have been whetted, for they were filled with colored plates of American birds, the first-fruits of their bearer's untrained eye and hand; the text, moreover, was printed in a style which would have done honor to any country. This man was Alexander Wilson, who, like Audubon, was a pioneer in the study of the birds of his adopted land, but who was twenty years his predecessor in point of publication. The books which he then carried were part of the first edition of his now famous _American Ornithology_, the second volume of which had appeared in Philadelphia at the beginning of that year. Though not destined to be completed until after his death, this work was to become one of the scientific and literary treasures of the nation, but it is not likely that one in ten thousand had then ever heard of him, whether as poet or as ornithologist, or cared anything about his work or his mission. Wilson at that moment was starting on his last long journey through the West and South, in search of new birds. He also carried in his pocket a subscription list, and therefore belonged to that class of visitor which is seldom welcomed with rapture. At Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Wilson's first important stopping-place, and at that time the capital of the State, Governor Snyder put down his name for $120, the price of the completed work. This seemed a good omen, but, at Hanover, in the same state, an incident occurred which might have discouraged a less determined man; the interview has become historical, and we shall give Wilson's own relation of it:[178]