Such were the thoughts that revolved in my mind while sitting upon one of the wagons, and dividing my attention between the tent pitching going on under the trees and the shaggy thousands which, feeding against the horizon, seemed to grow larger as the sun went down behind them and they stood out in deepening relief in the long autumn twilight. These solitudes made me think of Du Chaillu on the African deserts when night set in, and I wondered if the brute denizens there could be more interesting than those which surrounded us. Had a lion roared, I doubt whether it would have struck me as unnatural, although it might have induced a speedy change of base. It begets a peculiar feeling in one's mind, I thought, when the lower brutes surround him and his fellow-creature alone is absent. Animal organizations are every-where, blood throbbing and limbs moving, and yet the world is as solitary to him as if the planet had been sent whirling into space and no living being upon it except himself. A handkerchief, a hat, any thing which his brother man may have worn, yields more of companionship than all the life around him. And now, through the trees, we saw several of our men running with their weapons in hand, and immediately afterward heard the rapid reports of their revolvers and rifles from the creek just below, followed by the fluttering, noisy exit of turkeys from among the trees. Some flew away, but most of them were running, and, in their fright, passed directly among the wagons. One old gobbler, with a fine glossy tuft hanging at his breast, had a hard time of it in running the gauntlet of our camp-followers, narrrowly escaping death by a frying pan hurled from the vigorous grasp of Shamus. This class of our game birds is noted the continent over for its wildness and cunning, these qualities furnishing old hunters with material for numberless yarns, as they gather around the camp-fires and weave their fancies into connected sequence. Thus it has become a matter of veritable history that knowing gobblers sometimes examine the tracks that hunters have left to see which way they are going.