Professor Kalm, having obtained leave of the Swedish king,
set out from Upsala on October 16, 1747. Numerous excursions in Norway and vagaries
of weather forced him to stay over in England until August 15, 1748. He arrived
near Philadelphia on September 26 of the same year. He remained in various parts of America until
the spring of 1751 when he set sail for England, once again, and from there
back to Sweden.
Little known as is Peter Kalm’s journal of his travels
through North America, it may be the most precisely informative such work ever written
about the American colonies.
There is a certain quadruped which is pretty common not only
in Pensylvania but likewise in other provinces both of South and North America,
and goes by the name of polecat among the English. In New York they generally
call it skunk. The Swedes here, by way of nickname, called it siskatta, on
account of the horrid stench it sometimes causes, as I shall presently show.
The French in Canada, for the same reason, call it bête puante, or stinking
animal, and enfant du diable, or child of the devil. Some of them likewise
call it pekan: Catesby, in his Natural History of Carolina, has described
it in Vol. ii. p. 62. by the name of putorius Americanus striatus, and
drawn in plate 62. Dr. Linnaeus calls it viverra putorius. This animal which
is very similar to the marten, is of about the same size, and commonly black; on
the back it has a longitudinal white stripe, and two others on each side,
parallel to the former. Sometimes, but very seldom, some are seen which are
quite white. On our return to Philadelphia, we saw one of these animals not far
from town, near a farmer's house, killed by dogs; and afterwards I had, during
my stay in these parts, several opportunities of seeing it, and of hearing its
qualities. It keeps its young ones, in holes in the ground, and in hollow
trees; for it does not confine itself to the ground, but climbs up trees with
the greatest agility: it is a great enemy to birds, for it breaks their eggs,
and devours their young ones; and if it can get into a hen-roost, it soon destroys
all its inhabitants.
This animal has a particular quality by which it is
principally known: when it is pursued by
men or dogs, it runs at first as fast as it can, or climbs upon a tree; but if
it is so beset by its pursuers as to have no other way of making its escape, it
squirts its urine upon them. This, according to some, it does by wetting its
tail with the urine, whence, by a sudden motion, it scatters it abroad; but
others believe, that it could send its urine equally far without the help of
its tail: I find the former of these accounts to be the most likely. For some
credible people assured me, that they have had their faces wetted with it all
over, though they stood above eighteen feet off from the animal. The urine has so
horrid a stench that nothing can equal it: it is something like that of the
cranesbill or Linnasus’s geranium robertianum, but infinitely stronger. If
you come near a polecat when it spreads its stench you cannot breathe for a
while, and it seems as if you were stifled; and in case the urine comes into
the eyes, a person is likely to be blinded. Many dogs that in a chase pursue
the polecat very eagerly, run away as fast as they can when they are wetted;
however, if they be of the true breed, they will not give over the pursuit till
they have caught and killed the polecat; but they are obliged now and then to
rub their noses in the ground in order to relieve themselves.
Clothes which have been wetted by this animal retain the smell
for more than a month, unless they be covered with fresh soil, and suffered to
remain under it for twenty-four hours together, when it will, in a great measure,
be removed. Those likewise who have got any of this urine upon their face and
hands, rub them with loose earth; and some even hold their hands in the ground
for an hour, as washing will not help them so soon. A certain man of rank, who
had by accident been wetted by the polecat, stunk so ill, that on going into a
house, the people either ran away, or, on his opening the door, rudely denied
him entrance. Dogs that have hunted a polecat are so offensive, for some days
afterwards, that they cannot be borne in the house. At Philadelphia I once saw
a great number of people on a market-day, throwing at a dog that was so
unfortunate as to have been engaged with a polecat just before, and to carry
about him the tokens of its displeasure. Persons when travelling through a forest,
are often troubled with the stink which this creature makes; and sometimes the
air is so much infected that it is necessary to hold one's nose. If the wind
blows from the place where the polecat has been, or if it be quite calm, as at
night, the smell is more strong and disagreeable. [Continued>>>]
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