put up for the night, comforted by a roaring fire and the pleasant faces of three plump children—though the owner’s tales of hunting wolves and wildcats in the area troubled their thoughts when they finally lay down to sleep. As they walked off down the road the next morning, a grouse flushed close by, going up on pounding wings, cackling as it rose into the chilly air. Wilson, snapping his gun up, brought the bird down in a roar and a puff of feathers that drifted slowly to the ground.
In a maple wood, near the banks of the Susquehanna River, the party came into a glen filled with spice and dogwood. Brilliant yellow leaves lay on the path. Wilson, stepping smartly along this shimmering carpet, was startled when the ground in front of him shifted oddly. In an instant he saw a shape at his feet twist into life as a rattlesnake, perfectly camouflaged on the trail, slithered away at an angle. It looked to be at least nine feet long. When Wilson jumped back and reflexively brought up his gun, the snake stopped short and threw itself into a threatening coil, tail buzzing ominously. Wilson squinted down the length of his barrels and thumbed one hammer. The rattling tail moved so quickly it was an almost invisible blur. Blood pulsed in Wilson’s temples. But then he felt Duncan next to him. Don’t shoot, Duncan pleaded. Rattlesnakes don’t want trouble, he said, only to be left in peace. We’re the ones who don’t belong here, Duncan whispered, not him. Wilson took a deep breath and lowered his gun.
Days passed in a hypnotic rhythm of long marches and dazzling scenery. Sometimes the trio walked easily along smooth trails through agreeable woods; other days they scrambled up sheer mountains. They came to streams alive with trout, and upon finding a small boat on the shore of a marsh-fringed lake, whiled away a few hours shooting ducks. They spent a nervous night surrounded by howling wolves, and once thought they heard a panther creeping into their camp. They met with a few Indians and many farmers, and platonically eyed one or two of the farmers’ daughters. They endured a wild ride on a small ship that bore them across Lake Ontario. At last they reached Niagara Falls, covering the final miles enveloped by a growing roar they could scarcely believe.
Wilson and his friends stood transfixed before the cataract. The falling waters rose back up from the river far below in a great billow of white, roiling vapors. The noise was deafening, and rainbows hovered in the mist. Bald eagles and ravens and vultures soared above the falls. They were feasting on fish in the river, and also on carrion from the many animals that must have tried to swim the river above the falls and were instead carried over the precipice. The three friends made a harrowing descent to the base of the falls by means of a slippery, chancy-looking ladder that was hung from a tree root at the edge of the chasm. Then Wilson and Duncan walked hand-in-hand along the glistening rocks until they entered into the dark, wondrous space behind the falls, between the trembling earth and the crushing waters—a place Wilson later described as the “porch of death,” where they stood paralyzed amid whirling floods and terrible sounds, and where they could not see or hear or even breathe.
Wilson’s return from Niagara was a remarkable trek. He and Leech parted company with Duncan at Aurora, New York, on the shore of Lake Cayuga, north of Ithaca. It was now mid-November. The travelers washed in an icy stream, then found a tavern where they could warm up by a fire. Wilson was annoyed at the drunken tradesmen carousing there until late at night. At five the next morning they were on their way again. Wilson set a brutal pace, taking Leech’s gun from him when the boy fell behind. They held to this for several days, with Leech grunting and struggling to keep up. The road worsened, and it began to snow. Wilson sang to encourage his young friend onward, ignoring his own condition, which was not so good. Wilson’s threadbare pantaloons had worn through and the soles of his boots were gone, leaving him all but barefoot in the icy slush. One evening they arrived on the east bank of the Mohawk River, where Wilson shot a medium-sized bird he could not recognize. He skinned it for a closer inspection after he got home. The next day the road became a muddy rut, and it was all Wilson could do to keep Leech moving. At noon he shot three more birds—these were like jays—including the one he later drew for Thomas Jefferson.
At Schenectady they caught a stagecoach for Albany, where they remained two days before boarding a sloop that took them down the Hudson to New York City. Wilson spent $12 on new trousers and boots, leaving him unable to afford coach fare the rest of the way. He said goodbye to Leech and set off for Philadelphia on foot, arriving at Gray’s Ferry a week later with seventy-five cents in his pocket. On the last day, he walked forty-seven miles. In all, Wilson had traveled nearly thirteen hundred miles in two months, mostly on foot. He told Bartram he couldn’t wait to make a longer trip:
Though in this tour I have had every disadvantage of deep roads and rough weather; hurried marches, and many other inconveniences to encounter, yet so far am I from being satisfied with what I have seen, or discouraged by the fatigues which every traveler must submit to, I feel more eager than ever to commence some more extensive expedition, where scenes and subjects entirely new, and generally unknown, might reward my curiosity, and where perhaps my humble acquisitions might add something to the stores of knowledge.
Wilson said he planned to work hard to improve his drawing for this purpose. Over the winter, he practiced. It was a cold season. Both the Schuylkill and the Delaware froze solid, and Wilson hunched over his drawing table. He also wrote—this time an epic poem of more than two thousand lines titled The Foresters, which described the trip to Niagara. He told his nephew Duncan that he worked harder on this than on any poem he’d ever written and that if it wasn’t any good he’d never write one that was.
Wilson gave the stuffed skin of his unknown species of bird to Charles Willson Peale for display to the public. Peale, part naturalist and part showman, had opened his famous Philadelphia Museum in 1786. It had become one of the wonders of the modern world, housing the first complete reconstruction of a mastodon skeleton, plus an enormous collection of living and stuffed animals, including many that had been brought back by the Lewis and Clark expedition. The museum was well known even in Europe, where it was said to be worth a trip across the Atlantic. Peale’s collections were so extensive that many naturalists, including Wilson, used them to study specimens that were difficult to locate or draw in nature.
Wilson also sent drawings of twenty-eight birds to William Bartram, asking his honest opinion. These, Wilson said, represented birds that were found in Pennsylvania or that passed through the state. He also sent more drawings to Thomas Jefferson—as an apology for his earlier mistake with the Canada jay. Meanwhile, Wilson talked Alexander Lawson into giving him instruction in engraving and set about making several copper plates of his drawings. Wilson was convinced that, if he did the engraving himself as Catesby had, it would be possible to publish a ten-volume work incorporating hand-colored plates of all the American birds into a letterpress giving a written natural history for each species—and to make the venture profitable with as few as two hundred subscribers. Once the first volume was completed, he could use it to sell the rest. Concerned that his firsthand observations were still limited to Pennsylvania and upstate New York, Wilson also began thinking about an expedition to the frontier—the real frontier, beyond the settled territories just west of the mountains. Early in 1806, Wilson suggested to Bartram that they undertake a journey down the Ohio River, at least as far as St. Louis and possibly down the Mississippi to New Orleans.
Wilson had recently spoken with a local man who’d made this trip only a year before. He told Wilson that nothing could have been simpler or more pleasant. The Ohio was a gentle waterway, easily navigated in a small boat. The weather never got too cold nor the mosquitoes too fierce. One could sleep in the open without worries. The man, who had no interest in natural history, said he hadn’t even bothered taking a gun or fishing tackle along. Wilson was excited. Perhaps, he suggested to Bartram, they could get President Jefferson to endorse the expedition in some official way—or at a minimum to provide advice and introductions to influential citizens they might call on during their travels.
By chance, just as Wilson was mulling this idea, news circulated that President Jefferson planned to send a team of explorers to the West the following summer, on a mission to investigate the length of the Mississippi and several of its major tributaries and surrounding regions. Wilson
