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William Priest - Travels in the United States of America
I am
Yours sincerely, &c.
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"There be also store of frogs, which in the spring time will chirp, and whistle like birds: there be also
toads, that will creep to the top of trees, and sit there croaking, to the wonderment of strangers!"
"To a stranger walking for the first time in these woods during the summer, this appears the land of
enchantment: he hears a thousand noises, without being able to discern from whence or from what
animal they proceed, but which are, in fact, the discordant notes of five different species of frogs!"
Philadelphia, April 27th, 1794.
DEAR FRIEND,
Previous to my coming to this country, I recollect reading the foregoing passages, the first in a history of
New England, published in London, in the year 1671; and the other in a similar production of a later date.
Prepared as I was to hear something extraordinary from these animals, I confess the first frog
concert I heard in America was so much beyond any thing I could conceive of the powers of
these musicians, that I was truly astonished. This performance was al fresco, and
took place on the night of the 18th instant, in a large swamp, where there were at least ten
thousand performers; and I really believe not two exactly in the same pitch, if the octave
can possibly admit of so many divisions or shades of semitones. An hibernian musician, who, like
myself, was present for the first time at this concert of antimusic, exclaimed, "By Jasus
but they stop out of tune to a nicety!"
I have been since informed by an amateur, who resided many years in this country, and made this
species of music his peculiar study, that on these occasions the treble is performed by the
tree-frogs, the smallest and most beautiful species; they are always of the same colour as the bark
of the tree they inhabit, and their note is not unlike the chirp of a cricket: the next in size are our
counter tenors; they have a note resembling the setting of a saw. A still larger species
sing tenor; and the under part is supported by the bull-frogs; which are as large as a man's
foot, and bellow out the bass in a tone as loud and sonorous as that of the animal from
which they take their name.
To an Englishman lately arrived in this country there are other phenomena, equally curious; as
fire-flies, night-hawks &c.; but, above all, such tremendous peals of thunder and flashes of lightning,
as can be conceived only by those who have been in southern latitudes.
I have often thought, if an enthusiastic cockney, of weak nerves, who had never been out of the
sound of Bow bell, could suddenly be conveyed from his bed, in the middle of the night, and laid, fast
asleep, in an american swamp, he would, on waking, fancy himself in the infernal regions: his first
sensation would be from the stings of a myriad of mosquitoes; waking with the smart, his ears would be
assailed with the horrid noises of the frogs; on lifting up his eyes he would have a faint view of the
night-hawks, flapping their ominous wings over his devoted head, visible only from the glimmering light
of the fire-flies, which he would naturally conclude were sparks from the bottomless pit. Nothing would
be wanting at this moment to complete the illusion, but one of those dreadful explosions of thunder and
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