John James Audubon described the weather as “shocking – rainy, foggy, dark and cold” on the morning of June 28, 1833, at American Harbor (present-day Île-Michon in the Gulf of St. Lawrence). But at least the winds shifted in the direction for Ripley to weigh anchor and continue east along the coast of Labrador. At 2:00pm, Ripley safely made her way out of American Harbor into the tumbling waters of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The return to sea afforded Audubon and his fellow explorers respite for their tired legs and feet and refuge from the hordes of fierce insects but not without exposing them to more bouts of sea sickness.
In the afternoon of June 29, Ripley slipped into an inlet that went by the name of Wapitiguan Harbor. The finch that John James Audubon found most abundant around Wapitiguan Harbor and throughout Labrador could not have been much farther from the town after which the bird received its name. In fact, the bird was so widespread that Audubon regarded the Savannah finch as “one of the most abundant of our Finches.” Counting the Savannah Finch (now a sparrow) requires mainly estimating the number of birds by sound rather than sight. The Savannah sparrow confines “itself principally to the ground, where it runs with extreme agility, lowering its body as if to evade your view, and when in danger hiding as closely as a mouse.” In the spring, the bird chirps almost incessantly like the “common cricket.” In the fall and winter, the Savannah sparrow sends out little more than a “cheep, which, although more sonorous, is not more musical.” The Savannah sparrow today is nowhere close to one of the most abundant sparrows in North America as marshes and grasslands in North America rapidly lose out to development and cropland.
For his drawing of the Savannah sparrow in Birds of America, Audubon placed the bird not hiding but in full view along with Indian pink (Spigelia marilandica) as drawn by Joseph Mason. In 1763, Dr. Alexander Garden (1730-1791) was living and working in Charleston, South Carolina. He wrote in a letter that “About forty years ago, the anthelmintic virtues of the root of this plant (also once known as “worm-grass”) were discovered by the Indians; since which time it has been much used here by physicians, practitioners, and planters.” When not recommending sweating or bleeding to cure patients from their ailments and illnesses, physicians frequently relied on the purging effects brought on by such plants as Indian Pink. Although if taken too liberally, Indian Pink can bring about hallucination or even death.