III


It is time, indeed, that we made the discovery that Crevecoeur was a
modern. He was, too, a dweller in the young republic--even before it
WAS a republic. Twice a year he had "the pleasure of catching
pigeons, whose numbers are sometimes so astonishing as to obscure
the sun in their flight." There is, then, no poetic licence about
Longfellow's description, in Evangeline, of how--

"A pestilence fell on the city Presaged by wondrous signs, and
mostly by flocks of wild pigeons, Darkening the sun in their flight,
with naught in their craws but an acorn."

Longfellow could have cited as his authority for this flight of
pigeons Mathew Carey's Record of the Malignant Fever lately
Prevalent, published at Philadelphia, which, to be sure, discusses a
different epidemic, but tells us that "amongst the country people,
large quantities of wild pigeons in the spring are regarded as
certain indications of an unhealthy summer. Whether or not this
prognostic has ever been verified, I cannot tell. But it is very
certain that during the last spring the numbers of these birds
brought to market were immense. Never, perhaps, were there so many
before."

Carey wrote in 1793, the year, as has been noted, of the first
American reprint of the Letters, that had first been published at
London. Carey was himself Crevecoeur's American publisher; and he
may well have thought as he wrote the lines quoted of Crevecoeur's