It was not then without astonishment that, about 1805, the heron, thus securely settled, saw a rare face, a man's, roaming under their cedars, and in the open swamp. One man alone was capable of visiting them in their haunts, a patient indefatigable traveller, no less courageous than peaceable--the friend and the admirer of birds, Alexander Wilson.
If these people had been acquainted with their visitor's character, far from feeling terrified at his appearance, they would undoubtedly have gone forth to meet him, and, with clapping of wings and loud cries, have given him an amicable salute, a fraternal ovation.
In those terrible years when man waged against man the most destructive war that had ever been known, there lived in Scotland a man of peace. A poor Paisley weaver,[21] in his damp dull lodging, he dreamed of nature, of the infinite liberty of the woods, and, above all, of the winged life. A cripple, and condemned to inactivity, his very bondage inspired him with an ecstatic love of light and flight. If he did not take to himself wings, it was because that sublime gift is, upon earth, only the dream and hope of another world.
At first he attempted to gratify his love of birds by the purchase of those illustrated works which pretend to represent them. Clumsy caricatures, which convey but a ridiculous idea of their form, and none at all of their movement; and what _is_ the bird deprived of grace and motion? These did not suffice. He took a decisive resolution: to abandon everything, his trade, his country. A new Robinson Crusoe, he was willing, by a voluntary shipwreck, to exile himself to the solitudes of America; where he might see with his own eyes, observe, describe, and paint. He then remembered one little fact: that he neither knew how to draw, to paint, or to write. But this strong and patient man, whom no difficulties could discourage, soon learned to write, and to write an excellent style. A good writer, a minutely accurate artist, with a delicate and certain hand, he seemed, under the guidance of Nature, his mother and mistress, less to learn than to remember.
Provided with these weapons, he plunges into the desert, the forest, and the pestiferous savannahs; becomes the friends of buffaloes and the guest of bears; lives upon wild fruits, under the splendid ceiling of heaven. Wherever he chances to observe a rare bird, he halts, encamps, and is "at home." What, indeed, is to there hurry him onward? He has no house to recall him, and neither wife nor child awaits him. He has a family, it is true: that great family which he observes and describes. And friends, he has _them_, too: those which have not yet learned to mistrust man, and which perch upon his tree, and chatter with him.