CHAPTER I.

[Illustration: ROBERT BARNWELL ROOSEVELT.]

FLORIDA

AND THE

GAME WATER-BIRDS

OF THE

ATLANTIC COAST AND THE LAKES OF THE UNITED STATES,

WITH

A FULL ACCOUNT OF THE SPORTING ALONG OUR SEASHORES

AND INLAND WATERS, AND REMARKS ON

BREECH-LOADERS AND HAMMERLESS GUNS.

BY

ROBERT BARNWELL ROOSEVELT,

AUTHOR OF “THE GAME-FISH OF NORTH AMERICA,” “SUPERIOR FISHING,”

“FIVE ACRES TOO MUCH,” “ISMS,” “POLYANTHUS,” ETC., ETC.

ILLUSTRATED.

[Illustration: colophon]

NEW YORK:

ORANGE JUDD COMPANY,

751 BROADWAY.

1884.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1884, by the

ORANGE JUDD COMPANY,

PREFACE.

In preparing this work, after I had written the account of Florida,

which, as a sporting country, had never been fully described, and was to

occupy the principal part of my attention, and when I came to the second

division, that relating to the game-birds of our waters and coasts

generally, I found so much in a book on a kindred subject, which I had

written years ago, that I concluded I could do no better than quote from

it freely. The directions therein given are as correct now as then, the

information as well founded, and I hope the reader will find the stories

of sporting excursions as interesting.

My main purpose is to call the attention of my brother sportsmen to that

paradise of the devotee of the rod and gun, the Southern Peninsula of

our Atlantic States. Game is disappearing from our home country;

woodcock and ruffed grouse have almost been exterminated; ducks are less

plentiful; bay snipe now make many of their flights directly at sea

without passing over the land; and if we are to obtain satisfactory

shooting, we must go some distance for it. Many persons who are fond of

outdoor life cannot stand exposure to cold weather, and still more, to

keep up their interest, must have the chance of making a larger bag than

they can count on at the North. Yachtsmen are in the habit of laying up

their craft during the best season of the year for the enjoyment of

sailing. They have looked upon the South either as an uninteresting or a

dangerous country, a land merely of alligators or of hurricanes. They

will be as surprised as pleased to learn that there is no better sailing

ground, and that the Southern waters in winter are as safe as Northern

waters in summer; so much so that small vessels and open boats have

braved their terrors, while their sporting advantages are not to be

surpassed, if they are to be equalled, by any in the world.

While not absolutely the pioneer in this exploration, I happen to be

nearly so, for no completed work or continued record has been published

which covers the ground described, or conveys the information contained

in these pages. No more delightful excursion can be conceived than that

to Florida during the winter, and no man can so thoroughly enjoy it as

the yachtsman. Thousands of tourists have been going there for years,

and their number is augmenting every season. But such persons merely

rummage a country; they do not possess it; they rush along sight-seeing

and curiosity-purchasing. Let the sportsman or the invalid go to remain

during the inclement winter weather, and they will never regret the

excursion.

THE AUTHOR.

PART I.

FLORIDA.

CONTENTS.

PART I.--FLORIDA.

PAGE

CHAPTER I.--Florida.--The Inland Passage 9

CHAPTER II.--In Florida 59

CHAPTER III.--Currituck Marshes 116

PART II.--THE GAME WATER-BIRDS.

CHAPTER I.--Game of Ancient and Modern Days.--Its Protection and

Importance.--The proper Shooting Seasons.--The Impolicy of Using

Batteries and Pivot-Guns 139

CHAPTER II.--Guns and Gunnery.--Breech-loaders compared

with Muzzle-loaders.--All the Late Improvements in

Breech-loaders.--Hammerless Guns 159

CHAPTER III.--Bay-snipe Shooting.--The Birds, their Habits,

Peculiarities, and places of Resort.--Stools and Whistles.--Dress and

Implements appropriate to their pursuit.--Their Names and Mode of

Capture 185

CHAPTER IV.--The New Jersey Coast.--Jersey Girls and their pleasant

ways.--The peculiarities of Bay-snipe further elucidated.--Mosquitoes

rampant.--Good Shooting and “Fancy” Sport.--Shipwrecks and

Ghosts 219

CHAPTER V.--Bay-Birds.--Particular Descriptions and Scientific

Characteristics.--A Complete Account of each Variety 261

CHAPTER VI.--Montauk Point.--American Golden Plover or Frost-Bird.--A

True Story of Three Thousand in a Flock.--Lester’s Tavern.--Good

Eating, Fine Fishing, and Splendid Shooting.--The Nepeague

Beach 301

CHAPTER VII.--Rail and Rail-Shooting.--Seasons, Localities,

and Incidents of Sport.--Use of Breech-loader or

Muzzle-loader.--Equipment 313

CHAPTER VIII.--Wild-Fowl Shooting.--General Directions, from

Boats, Blinds, or Batteries.--Retrievers from Baltimore and

Newfoundland.--Western Sport.--Equipment 328

CHAPTER IX.--Duck-Shooting on the Inland Lakes.--The Club

House.--Practical Views of Practical Men.--Moral Tales.--A Day’s

Fishing.--The Closing Scenes 344

CHAPTER X.--Suggestions to Sportsmen.--A Definition of the

Term.--Crack Shots.--The Art of Shooting.--The Art of not

Shooting 398

CHAPTER XI.--Directions for Building a Battery 415

FLORIDA.

CHAPTER I.

THE INLAND PASSAGE.

Florida--so named by its discoverers from the abundance, beauty and

fragrance of its flowers. The Land of Flowers--what a beautiful

sentiment. Alas, it was never called anything of the sort. Land

happening to be first seen by the brave and sturdy warrior but not

imaginative linguist, Juan Ponce de Leon, on Palm Sunday, his discovery

was called, with due and Catholic reverence, after the day and not after

any abundance of flowers, which were probably not abundant on the sand

spit where he planted his intrusive feet. But no matter about the origin

of the term, the epithet is more than justified, and the Peninsular

State is not only glorious in the endless beauty and variety of its

flowers--till in good old English it might be termed one huge

nosegay--but it is magnificent in the grandeur and originality of its

foliage. The jessamine climbs above the deep swamps and lights up their

darkness with its yellow stars; the magnolia towers in the open upland a

pyramid of vestal splendor; the cabbage palmetto waves its huge

fan-shaped leaves, seven feet long, like great green hands, and the moss

hangs and sways and covers the bare limbs with its ragged clothing.

To the rough, practical Northern mind, Florida is a land of dreams, a

strange country full of surprises, an intangible sort of a place, where

at first nothing is believed to be real and where finally everything is

considered to be possible. When the visitor first arrives he cannot be

convinced that the cows feed under water; before he leaves he is willing

to concede that alligators may live on chestnuts. The animals and birds

are as queer and unnatural as the herbage, or as a climate which

furnishes strawberries, green peas, shad, and roses at Christmas. There

is the Limpkin, the pursuit of which reminds one of hunting the Snark.

You are in continual terror of catching the Boojum. It is a bird about

the size of a fish-hawk, but it roars like a lion and screeches like a

wild-cat, although it occasionally whistles like a canary. It has a bill

like that of a curlew, adapted to probing in the sand, and yet it sits

on trees as though it were a woodpecker. It is conversational and talks

to you in a friendly way during daytime, but at night it harrows up your

soul and makes your blood run cold with the fearful noises it utters. If

you hear any charming note or awful sound, any pretty song or terrifying

scream, and ask a native Floridian, with pleased or trembling tongue,

“What is that?” he will calmly answer, “That? that is a Limpkin.” There

are no dangerous animals in Florida, only a few of Eve’s old enemies,

and the sportsman is safer in the woods at night under the moss-covered

trees and on his moss-constructed mattress than in his bed in the family

mansion on Fifth avenue. If he hears any unearthly noises, any

soul-curdling shrieks, he can turn to sleep again with the comfortable

assurance “that it is only a Limpkin.”

To the sportsman it is needless to say that Florida, when properly

investigated, is a Paradise. Birds and fish and game are only too

plentiful, till it has become a land of shameful slaughter. The brute

with a gun slays the less brutish animal for the mere pleasure of murder

when he cannot get, much less use, what he kills, till on most of the

pleasure steamers shooting has been prohibited; while the idiot with the

rod fills his boat with splendid fish that rot in the hot sun and have

to be thrown back, putrefying, into the water from which his

undisciplined passion hauled them. Sportsman should not come to this

land of promise and performance unless they can control their instincts,

for fear that they should degenerate into mere killers. In truth, the

excess of abundance takes away the keener zest of sport, which is

largely due to the difficulties that surround success. But for the

ordinary inhabitant of the rugged North, the quaintness of this border

land of the equator has an immense charm, while to the invalid the pure,

dry, warm air of both winter and summer brings balm and health. The

feeble and sickly, especially the consumptive, should seek Florida, for

to them it offers the fabled springs of perennial youth, which Ponce de

Leon sought more coarsely in vain. To the seeker after amusement, to the

man and woman of leisure, who wish to improve as well as enjoy

themselves, it is a very wonderland of delight. It has a store of

novelties which are absolutely exhaustless, and tracts of interesting

country which, while perfectly accessible, have never even been

explored.

To enjoy Florida, however, one must seek it aright. If the visitor

follows the beaten track, he will see the beaten things--well beaten by

many vulgar footsteps. If he takes the steamers and lives at the hotels,

he will make quick trips and have good, accommodations. If he wants

originality he must pursue original methods. There are many ways of

reaching this floral El Dorado--the ocean steamer will carry you to

Savannah, whence the steamboat will transport you through byways and

inside cuts to Jacksonville, or the railroad will drag and hurl you

through dust and dirt by day and night at headlong pace from the St.

Lawrence to the Gulf. But if you want to enjoy Florida, if you want to

go where no man has gone, and see what no eye has seen, and handle what

no hand has touched, then go there in a yacht--in a small yacht, just as

small and of as light draft of water as will accommodate comfortably the

party, that must be composed of individuals sufficiently accustomed to

one another to be sure they can live together for three months without

quarrelling. Then, indeed, will you learn what Florida is, will possess

its charms in close embrace and have experiences and pleasures never to

be forgotten and not otherwise to be obtained. How is this to be done,

you may ask, and the purpose of this chapter is to tell you exactly

how.

A wealthy magnate may go in a big yacht to Florida, give good dinners

aboard and live in grandeur and luxury, and he will see about as

much--not quite--as if he had left his yacht at home; or the

hasty-plate-of-soup man may take a little steam launch and stave her in

on the first snag or oyster rock he runs her against. But if the

traveller and his friends hire or buy a light-draught sailing vessel,

they will require more time, but they can go almost everywhere and see

absolutely everything. It was just such a vessel that I had built for

use in the shoal Great South Bay of Long Island--a sharpie, to give its

nautical appellation--of sixty feet length and fifteen beam, with two

state-rooms, a cabin having four comfortable berths and over six feet

head-room, and a cuddy for the men and for cooking, although we had an

auxiliary cook stove in the cabin. This vessel was intended to carry six

passengers and two men; but boats of seventeen feet length and a

catamaran have safely made the passage to the St. John’s River and are

there now, so that a much smaller craft would do. The advantage of the

sharpie style of construction was that the yacht only drew two feet of

water, and as I proposed to run entirely by chart, and not to use the

services of a pilot, this was an inestimable advantage. We could have

braved the battle and the breeze of the Atlantic and gone outside all

the way, but those who know most of the ocean care least to have to do

with it unless equipped on the most thorough basis to encounter its

buffets. As an old sea captain said to me:--“When I go to sea I want to

go in a steamer, and the biggest and strongest steamer at that.”

Moreover, the inside route is much the more interesting; there is

nothing very novel about the sea but the danger of it, whereas the bays,

creeks, canals and rivers furnish a fresh and continually changing

panorama. There is a frequent encounter with strange people, with

vessels of queer rigs and builds, an alternation of scenery, the arrival

at and departure from cities, the chance to occasionally kill a bird or

catch a mess of fish--something new happening every day. At sea there is

the ocean--a great deal of ocean--and nothing else.

There exists a complete inside route from New York to the St. John’s

River, with the exception of about a hundred miles south of Beaufort,

North Carolina, and on this stretch there are many accessible inlets

only a few miles apart, so that no vessel need be caught out overnight

or can fail to make a safe harbor in case of necessity. The charts are

nearly complete and enable a person of ordinary intelligence, in a

vessel drawing not over four feet of water, to be entirely independent

of pilots. The lighter the draught, however, the better, and I should

not advise the use of any boat which requires more than three feet to

float in, two feet being greatly preferable.

Do not start for the South before the first day of November unless you

wish to encounter a multiplicity, variety and intensity of fever that

would be the delight of the medical profession. Until frost comes,

there is waiting for you a choice between fever and ague, intermittent,

remittent, typhoid, putrid, break-bone, yellow, and _d’engue_ fevers,

each of which, when you have it, seems a little worse than all the

others until you have one of them also, an event which is very likely to

happen, when you discover that your first conclusions were erroneous.

Then before you start get good and ready. Look over your fishing tackle;

be sure you have cartridges enough, and load them all with powder, but

not shot, so as to avoid unpleasant explosions. Use your five hundred

pounds of shot for ballast.

Lay in a tub of Northern butter and some white potatoes, but do not

imagine you are going to a land of barbarism. You can get better hams,

better hard-tack, and as good and cheap canned goods in Norfolk as you

can in New York. Fresh eggs are to be had everywhere, turkeys and

chickens are fair, and are sold in market cleaned, and if Southern beef

is tough it has a peculiar game flavor which is very agreeable. Take in

a good supply of coal; use it for ballast if there is no other place to

stow it, for you may get frozen in during a cold spell, and will surely

want plenty of extraneous warmth before you reach the “Sunny South.”

Then when you are ready, sail up Raritan Bay, get a tow through the

Raritan and Delaware Bay Canal, and even across to Delaware City if you

please, and so across to the Chesapeake Bay, where your journey may be

said really to commence, for thenceforth you will have to rely on your

sails and your brains, your motive power and your charts. There are

very thorough and complete charts of the Chesapeake, six in number,

carrying you the entire way to Norfolk and insuring you a good and safe

harbor whenever you need it. Do not forget that this is a big sheet of

water, and that you are on a pleasure trip, and will be much more

comfortable if at anchor during the night. Besides, there is time

enough; you have all winter before you, as you cannot get back until

spring if you wanted to, now that Jack Frost is about shutting the

gates. From Norfolk you can take a tow through the Albemarle and

Chesapeake Canal or not, as you please; much better not if you happen to

have a good northerly wind, as there is only one lock, and you can make

the distance more pleasantly and safely under sail. If your vessel draws

less than three feet, you leave the canal when you reach North Landing

River, of which there is a chart, and you go down through Currituck

Sound by Van Slyck’s Landing, and thence through the Narrows. Beyond

that for some distance, as the chart says, you “can only carry three

feet of water, and that with difficulty.” If your vessel is of greater

draught, you must take the extension of the canal which carries you to

North River, from which point there is plenty of water all the way. You

can get a condensed chart from the Albemarle and Chesapeake Canal

Company, which will give you a general idea of the route from Norfolk to

Smithville, and which will be found very useful. But the Government

charts of Pamlico Sound, which were completed in the fall of 1883,

should by all means be taken also, as they are simply invaluable in case

of storm and the necessity of seeking harbor unexpectedly. Government

chart No. 40 or 140 (both numbers are used) will give you Currituck

Sound from just above Van Slyck’s, and also North River from the mouth

of the canal, all that is necessary of Albemarle Sound, Croatan and

Roanoke Sounds, either of which you may take, and the magnetic courses

and distances to steer by as far south as Roanoke Marshes Light. The

post office at Van Slyck’s Landing is called Poplar Branch Post Office,

Currituck County, N. C., and you can get your letters and coarse

supplies there, but no bread. The next good harbor is Kitty Hawk, where

there is also a store and post office. If you go through Roanoke Sound,

remember that below Shallowbag Bay the channel runs close along shore,

closer than it seems on the chart. You will have to feel your way

carefully across below Broad Creek. There is plenty of water if you find

it, but it is not easy to find. From the southerly end of Roanoke Island

to Long Shoal Light the course is south by west; from Roanoke Marshes

Light it is south, one half west. You can go a mile inside of this

light, but not further, as the shoal beyond has not a foot of water on

it. Just north of this light is Stumpy Point Bay, where you can make a

good harbor, carrying clear inside four feet of water. From Long Shoal

Light the course is south-west to a buoy on Bluff Shoal; but as there

is seven feet of water on the shoal, accuracy is not necessary, and the

same course continued will take you near Royal Shoal, which is easily

made out, as there are two lights on it. From this the course is south

by west to Harbor Island light, at the entrance of Core Sound. This

light is abandoned and is falling down, but during the day the building

is visible a long distance. If you can get a free wind, you can make the

run from Long Shoal to Harbor Island in a day, provided you get under

way early, which every sensible yachtsman is careful to do. If not, you

must hug the main shore and look out, as there are many shoals and no

tide to help you off if you get aground. The waters are salt and only

moved by the wind; and as Pamlico Sound is a miniature ocean and gets up

a big sea, it is well to be careful. If you are caught near Royal Shoal,

unless you are acquainted with the channels, steer for the beach, where

you can get holding ground if not much of a harbor. The charts of

Pamlico Sound are Nos. 42, 43, and 44.

There is a good chart of Core Sound, which is shallow but well staked

out, the stakes having hands on them to show on which side is the best

water. You can carry two feet of water close along the shore from the

buoy off the middle marshes, just west of Harker’s Island into Beaufort,

but the main channel is more to the southward and runs to the point of

Shackleford Banks. Then you go up Bulkhead Channel, keep along the north

shore of Town Marsh a hundred rods, and then northeast and keep the

lead going to Beaufort, N. C. From here you can either sail through

Bogue Sound, of which there is no chart, or go directly to sea. As the

land trends westward, it makes a lee even from a north-easter and is as

safe as any outside sailing can be.

There is a chart of Beaufort, N. C., which takes you a few miles into

Bogue Sound, but that is all. South of Bogue Inlet, New Topsail Inlet is

one of the best, then Masonboro, and from either of these a good wind

will carry you past Cape Fear, the only spot you have to dread and where

you must manage not to get caught. There is a good chart of Cape Fear,

but the rule of the local pilots is to follow the eighteen-foot shoal

down till you open Fort Caswell by the main Light on Bald Head, and then

steer straight for the Fort, which will give you six feet of water up to

the beach. But remember, there is shoal water outside of you, and you

must look out for breakers. The next harbor is Little River Inlet, and

then comes Winyah Bay, of which there is a chart, and then Bull’s Bay,

of which also you can get a chart.

From Bull’s Bay it is inside work and a shoal, but not a difficult

passage, to Charleston Harbor. Of this there is no chart yet printed,

and it ought to be run, if possible, in a tide which will help at both

ends by running up from Bull’s Bay and down into Charleston Harbor. You

come out at the cove near Fort Moultrie where it is well to stop, as

Charleston Harbor is a large place in rough weather for small boats.

Here you begin on Coast Chart No. 54 (or 154). Go up the Ashley River

till St. Michael’s Church (which has the whitest spire) opens to the

north of the rice mills, and steer into Wappoo Cut, which lies just

south of some prominent buildings on a point on the left shore. It will

carry you without trouble into the Stono River. Here the chart fails

you, you ascend the Stono, keeping a westerly course past the first

branch to the north which heads toward a railroad in full view. When a

large mill on the north side is reached a lead branches to the south.

This must be avoided, and a mill with a tower will soon be reached. This

is on Wadmelaw River, where the chart resumes its proper vocation.

Thence across the North Edisto, the Dawho River, thence into the South

Edisto, around Jehossee, but not through Wall’s Cut, which the natives

assured me was not open. Just at the south point of Jehossee Island,

Mosquito Creek enters the South Edisto; take the westerly lead where

they branch just inside the mouth, and then through Bull’s Cut into the

Ashepoo; down the Ashepoo and across St. Helena Sound and either up the

Coosaw and past Beaufort, S. C. The name of the town being pronounced

Bufort, which is about as short as any route, or across the Sound to

Harbor River and through it and Story and Station Creeks into Port Royal

Sound. This is a big place again and uncomfortable at night in a storm

with a heavy tide and sea.

You now take Coast Chart No. 55 (or 155). There is a special chart of

the route from St. Helena to Port Royal, but it is not necessary. You

steer nearly west from the buoys off the mouth of Station Creek to

Bobee’s Island at the mouth of Skull Creek. There is an oyster rock in

the middle of Skull Creek where it makes its first bend to the

southeast, and this is the only danger before reaching Calibogue Sound.

In crossing Tybee roads, keep well out to Red Buoy No. 2, whether you go

directly south or turn north to visit Savannah. If the latter, go by the

Light Beacon and to the westward of it, if the former, take Lazaretto

Creek into Tybee River and Warsaw Sound. Keep well out by the buoys

again and head for Romerly Marsh Creek.

If you have gone to Savannah, continue your journey by the way of

Wilmington River to the same place, unless your boat is small enough to

pole easily, in which case you can go through Skiddaway Narrows. Romerly

Marsh and Adams Creeks will bring you into Vernon River, when you steer

for Hell Gate, between Little Don Island and Raccoon Key. If you have

come through Skiddaway and down the Burnside and Vernon Rivers, you can

go inside of Little Don Island. Here you use chart No. 56 (or 156).

Cross the Ogeechee River, and follow up the west bank to Florida

Passage, through it and Bear River to St. Catharine’s Sound, across it

and up Newport River to Johnson’s Creek; thence down the South Newport

to Sapelo Sound.

There is good fishing in Barbour’s River, just above where the words

“Barbour’s Island” are on the chart. Continue across Sapelo Sound and

into Mud River; take the middle of this to New Teakettle Creek, which

will bring you into Doboy Sound. Keep to the north of Doboy town, which

is a prominent object on the flat meadows. Here chart No. 57 (or 157)

begins, and you go from Duboy straight through Little Mud River and the

same course across Altamaha Sound; then follow the channel northwesterly

into Buttermilk Sound; then either through Mackay’s or Frederica Rivers,

as the wind best serves, into St. Simon’s Sound. Here the water is

deeper and you can go directly across from the black buoy No. 7 to the

black buoy at the mouth of Jekyls Creek. There are two mouths to this

creek. Take the easterly one and run straight from the ranges on the

point. Follow across Jekyls and St. Andrew’s Sounds up Cumberland River.

At its head waters there are some islands; the channel is from a stake

on shore to the west of the eastermost island, then by ranges on the

point, which carry you past a little island with ranges which give you

the course south. Use the lead here. Thence down Cumberland Sound by

Dungeness, formerly the property of Gen. Nathaniel Green, and which is

much visited by tourist parties, across the St. Mary’s River and up the

Amelia to Fernandina.

Here chart No. 58 (or 158) begins. From the Amelia River you go to

Kingley’s Creek past two drawbridges. The railroad bridge is out of

order and will not open square with the bulkhead. Be careful here, as

several accidents have happened and the tide runs strong. Continue

across Nassau Sound to Sawpit Creek, at the mouth of which there is a

black buoy not laid down on the chart. Keep to the southward of this

buoy and run on through Gunnison’s Cut, which you will recognize by two

palmetto trees that look like gate-posts at a distance. Down Fort George

River to the Sisters Creek and thence to the St. John’s River where you

will find a dock--a watermark not to be forgotten on your return trip.

There are three charts of the St. John’s, which give it in full from its

mouth to Lake Harney; the points to remember are to cross from Hannah

Mills Creek to St. John’s Bluff, and thence back again to Clapboard

Creek, whence you follow up the north shore, keeping it as far as Dame

Point close aboard. Beyond this you can have no trouble as the St.

John’s has but one or two shoals where there is less than six feet of

water, and it is well marked out with buoys and beacons.

If this description sounds a little tedious to the reader, he will not

think it so when he makes the trip. If you want a pilot for any part of

the route, one can be had by applying to Captain Coste, of the

Lighthouse Service at Charleston; but there are few persons who know

what I have herein recorded, and none of those will tell. We have had a

long trip--for long as it has been on paper, it has been longer in

reality. Two weeks from New York to Beaufort, N. C.; ten days thence to

Charleston, and ten more to Jacksonville may be required, unless the

traveller is one of those lucky fellows who always have a free wind

through life. So he may want to rest, have his clothes washed, dress up

in “a boiled shirt” for a change, and revive the fact that he is one of

the aristocracy, not an ordinary seaman. He will soon tire of

civilization, however, and long for the pleasures of the chase. Then let

him ascend any of the tributaries of the St. John’s from San Pablo at

its mouth to Juniper Creek, which empties into the southerly end of Lake

George. It was on the latter stream that I nearly killed a Limpkin.

The man does not live who has actually caught or shot a Limpkin. There

are no Limpkins for sale in the curiosity shops, where almost every

other production of Florida is to be had. It is admitted that the

Limpkin, like the recognized ghost, is proof against powder and ball.

But the writer never misses--that is, on paper and when he is recording

his shots. All writers do the same. So when the Limpkin sat on a limb

and whistled and chuckled and bobbed and bowed and finally flew away

just before we were near enough, and I fired as he disappeared with

horrible screams through the forest, one leg dropped! I had not killed

him, but even a Limpkin was not quite proof against my aim. Mr. Seth

Green, who was with me at the time and can vouch for the truth of this

statement, remarked in a melancholy tone of voice that he wished he had

had his rifle. As he had not succeeded in hitting anything with his

rifle thus far since we started, although he had fired away half his

cartridges, there is a chance that he might have succeeded this time by

way of a change, and so I agreed with him heartily.

Alligators will not appear till warm weather--that is, till the middle

of January--by which time the tourists will think he has got into the

dog days, but fish are abundant in all the fresh-water streams. In that

very Juniper Creek we caught so many big-mouthed bass with fly and spoon

that we not only gave up fishing, but had to salt down dozens. And, by

the way, these fish are much more of game fish than they are at the

North; the smallest fight well, take the fly freely and jump out of

water as frequently and fiercely as the small-mouthed variety in our

waters.

Before leaving the instructive branch of my subject I wish to advise the

yachtsman against giving too much weight to the appearance of the

Southern sky. This will often cloud up toward evening in the most

threatening way. Such a heavenly monitor at the North would warn us to

make everything snug and get the best bower over, but in the South these

appearances signify nothing. After a most frightful-looking evening the

morning will break clear and warm and quiet. There are few storms in

Florida during the winter, a “norther” occasionally and possible a

thunder storm, but no fierce northeasters and no hurricanes. As to the

comparative advantages of working through the tortuous creeks with

changing tides, or running outside for short stretches, a preference

might be given to the latter were it not that the shoals off the mouths

of the inlets extend so far to sea. Many of the rivers have carried down

so much sediment that they have made shoals ten or fifteen miles off

shore. So that apart from questions of safety and comfort, the distance

by the inside passage is the shortest.

In going South the yachtsman will pass large and numerous flocks of bay

snipe on all the marshes south of Charleston. These marshes are muddy

islands and of a peculiar nature. On the surface when dry they are firm

enough for walking, but their shores are unfathomable ooze beneath which

a man would sink at once out of sight and into which an oar can be run

for its entire length without an effort. Curlew, willet, marlin, all

varieties down to the tiny ox-eye, and in immense flocks, frequent these

islands, where they seem to find food without stint. To stool them you

can set out your decoys in the thin grass and make a stand near by from

reeds or bushes. They are quite wary, however, and seem to have learned

the evil significance of a gun. These marshy islands are honeycombed

with the burrows of the fiddler crab, and mussels grow on their surface

in soft mounds of earth. They are covered by very high tides and are

always more or less damp. The bay snipe, however, do not seem to winter

here. They leave a small proportion of their numbers, but the main body

goes further South, possibly beyond the equator. There are no such

myriads as the Northern flight would require, and they grow fewer and

fewer as the season advances, till in March they are almost scarce. Let

the sportsman take his toll from them while he can; stopping amidst the

lonesomeness of these islands where it is certain death to pass a

summer, and few of which are inhabited, and where he may sail tens of

miles without seeing a man, white or black. Let him try the deep holes

alongside of bluffs or where two creeks meet for sheepshead, using for

bait the Southern prawn, that gigantic shrimp, with its body six inches

long and its feelers ten; and if he can catch no fish and misses the

birds, let him rejoice in knowing that there are millions of both in

Florida.

In describing my trip to Florida, I do not intend to pursue any

consecutive plan, or follow the positive order of events. It is not

important to know that we turned out--to use the proper nautical

term--at a certain hour in the morning of a certain day, and that we

turned in again at night at some other division of mean sidereal or

solar time, nor that we went a certain course or made so many miles one

day and so many more or less the next. That is, the reader does not want

to have too much of this, although a little now and then may tend to

give a general idea of the trials, difficulties, and enjoyments of a

yachtman’s life. But whether we arrived at a place at five P.M. or five

A.M., important as it may have been to us at the time, cannot, so far as

I can judge, interest the reader as deeply as I hope to interest him.

For all such information I will refer him to the ordinary books of

travel. That we did occasionally make fast time in our little half scow,

half yacht, that I built on the scheme of putting a sail in a canal

boat, will be proved by this single event; when running across St.

Simon’s sound in a fog, we passed a large steamer yacht, called the

“Gleam,” one of the largest and finest of Herreschoff’s productions. We

found her again in Jacksonville when we reached there. She had left

Savannah on the second of January, we had left Charleston on the tenth;

she had arrived two days ahead of us, so that by being able to keep

inside out of the storms and fogs of the Atlantic, we had actually gone

nearly double the distance in six days less time.

The personnel of our party was made up of a sporting medical man, Mr.

Seth Green, the famous fish-culturist, the ladies of the families and

myself. We went without any restriction as to time, which is a most

essential point in a yachting trip, and we stopped where we pleased, and

as long as we pleased, we shot where there were birds to shoot, we

fished where there were fish to catch, and where there were neither, we

lay in the shade of the awning, if the weather was warm, and smoked, or

ate those globes of concentrated lusciousness, the grape fruit when we

felt too energetic to loaf, and not energetic enough to fish or shoot.

Our trip was something of an exploring expedition, and we had possible

dangers and inevitable inconveniences to encounter. Other parties had

gone to Florida in the same way, but they had left no record of their

adventures, no guide-posts for those who should come after them. So far

as we were concerned, the country from North Carolina to the Land of

Flowers was a _terra incognita_. We knew that there were birds, and

beasts, and fish, in that equatorial region, but where to find them, how

to reach them, and by what methods to catch and kill them, were wholly

unknown to us. No one, after reading this record, will have the same

complaint to make. Several of the Government charts were not completed,

notably those of Pamlico Sound, and the corrections of that from

Charleston south, so as to show the inside route had not been made in

the year 1882, which was the one I had selected for the expedition.

We had sent the “Heartsease” to Norfolk, and were to meet her there, as

by so doing we would save time that could be better utilized than by

going over ground with which we were pretty well familiar--that of New

Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. At Norfolk, after we had purchased

what hard-bread, cake, pies, and other stores and luxuries we needed,

and had been through the fish market, and selected an abundance of the

largest “spot,” which is regarded as the most delicious native fish,

although it is nothing more than what we call the Lafayette fish at the

North, we engaged a tow and started on our journey. We had to go through

the Albemarle and Chesapeake canal, and made our first mistake in

supposing that a tow was a necessity for the operation. The puffy,

dirty, fussy, little steamboat ran us against everything that she came

near, and were it not that she was unable to attain any considerable

rate of speed, our journey might have terminated before it fairly

began. She jammed us against the dock when we were starting, banged us

into the first vessel we met on our way, bumped us into the banks of the

canal when we had entered it, dashed us into the only lock there was to

get foul of, and then rammed us against a dredging scow so fiercely,

that there was a momentary doubt whether we should not be dredged out as

an impediment to travel.

However, in spite of all these misadventures, we made Currituck before

night. We determined to stay there some days for duck shooting, but I

shall not stop to describe the sport we had. It is enough, that we

loaded down our vessel with provisions, which, as the weather came out

cold, kept till they were all consumed, and saved us from recourse to

those last resources of the way-farer, the insipid canned meats, which,

somehow, the manufacturers manage to make taste so nearly alike, that

one will answer for the other, whether it is called mutton, beef, or

fowl. Then we sped away south, running into Kittyhawk Bay for a harbor

and a turkey, for no one must imagine that it is necessary to starve in

the South, even amid the desolation of the desolate Eastern Shore. Not

only does the proverbial hospitality of the Southern people still exist

as far as the effect of a desolating war has left it a possibility, but

there are certain kinds of food to be got there more readily than even

at the North. It has heretofore been a reproach to our Southern colored

brother, that the attractions of a hen-roost and lusciousness of a fat

turkey gobbler were too much for his virtue. But this state of facts

and morals is changing, the darkey is turning poultry fancier, he is

getting to raise chickens and sell eggs, he is fast becoming a bloated

fowl holder, and regular goose and turkey wing clipper; in his eyes the

chicken is assuming a different status, and hen-roost marauding is fast

becoming a heinous crime, than which there is none more unpardonable. He

will soon be the fowl monopolist, and when that day comes I predict that

the chicken will be regarded as a sacred bird, and placed in the same

category as the ibis of Egypt. As it is, eggs can be obtained almost

anywhere, and wherever there is a darkey’s hut, there the voice of the

cackling hen ascends in welcome and suggestive music to high heaven,

resonant of omelettes plain, omelettes _aux fines herbes_, with ham or

with onion, of scrambled eggs, boiled, roasted eggs, of pan cakes and

sweet cakes, of custards, egg-nog, and all the thousands delicacies

towards which the hen contributes with enthusiastic zeal, and greatly to

the happiness of man.

The course of the contraband can be exemplified by that of the milk

farmer, if the story which I once heard from an eminent retired

politician is true, as I think it may be. Many of the farmers living in

the neighborhood of Utica were in the habit of supplying that city with

milk from the herds of cows that the magnificent meadows of the vicinity

easily supported. Those careful and conscientious gentlemen, aware of

the heating properties of milk in its strong and crude state, felt it

was but a duty they owed their fellow beings, and especially their

customers, to make sure that they did not incur the evils which were

certain to arise from the unguarded use of so deleterious a beverage.

They mixed the dangerous fluid with a sufficient proportion of water to

kill the germs of disease, and lest their motives should be

misunderstood, they did not mention their thoughtfulness to the

consumers. Hence it was that Utica enjoyed unexampled health, and it

would no doubt have continued in the same enjoyment except for a change

in the methods of milk culture. Milk, instead of being converted into

butter or sold in its natural state, came in time to be manufactured

into cheese. Great cheese dairies were established, to which the farmers

sent their milk, in place of disposing of it by local trade. Now it was

essential that the milk so delivered should be absolutely pure, for the

excellence of the product not only depended on this, but also in order

that the amount might be fairly credited to each of the persons

furnishing a share of the supply. Then the bucolic view that had

heretofore obtained in that neighborhood was modified, and of all the

sins in the decalogue, none was quite so heinious as the adulteration of

milk. I do not vouch for this story, although a long course of lactic

experience in the city of New York gives it an air of possibility.

Certain it is that since the introduction of cheese factories, the

health of Utica has declined, but then no one can positively say that

this change is due entirely to the purity of the milk.

On our way to Kitty Hawk, we had passed a number of nets which the local

fishermen were hauling, and Mr. Green, who had a mania for interviewing

every one he met, had promptly boarded the first of the boats, obtained

all the statistics, and even helped make one haul. He found out that

they caught what they called chub, the big-mouthed bass (_Grystes

salmoides_), as large as eight pounds; white perch; the robin, which is

our sunfish; red fin, our yellow perch; bull sucker, our black sucker;

sucker-mullet, our mullet, which were taken in the creeks and up in the

swamps, and nanny shad, which seemed to be our gizzard shad, known in

Baltimore as bream. As they did not have all these varieties in the boat

at the time, we were not quite sure as to the last. The fishermen knew

nothing of the spawning season, but we found roe three inches long in a

seven-pound big-mouthed black bass.

There is a club house at Kitty Hawk Bay, belonging to the Kitty Hawk

Ducking Club, but it was deserted when we were there by the club, and

given over to the possession of Captain Cain, who runs the principal

fishery in that part of the country. He told us that the bass spawned in

March, and that the same kinds of fish were caught near there which I

have described. While we were ashore enjoying his hospitality, a sudden

squall came up and blew most of the water out of the bay, so that the

small boat in which we had come ashore was left a hundred feet from the

edge of the water.

The next day, which was December 8th, we passed Nag’s-head Hotel, and

came to anchor in a perfect little harbor in the lower part of Roanoke

Island, where Captain Cain once had a terrapin farm. It was a charming,

though deserted, spot, a bay just large enough for the yacht to swing

in, and completely land-locked, the buildings tumbling to pieces, the

terrapin ponds still there, but with not only their occupants departed,

but the very fences falling down or being used for firewood. The

speculation had failed, because even there, in the very home and abiding

place of the terrapin, he had grown so scarce that a sufficient business

could not be done to make it profitable. Terrapins are taken, as Mr.

Green soon found out, in bag or trawl nets, that are drawn along the

bottom, as we at the North use a dredge for oysters. On the front of the

net, which hangs loosely behind, is an iron bar, of sufficient weight to

lie close to the bottom as it is being dragged; this slips under the

terrapins, which are thus carried into the net. We readily understood

that they were not plenty, when we were informed that “count” terrapins,

that is, those over six inches in length, bring on the ground one dollar

apiece.

The weather had become very cold for yachting. The thermometer fell to

eighteen degrees during the night, and we found that all the resources

of our vessel were hardly equal to keeping us warm in our berths. Early

next morning we obtained our first oysters. We had brought oyster tongs

with us; in fact, if there was any kind of rod, reel, line, net, hook,

sinker, swivel, or fishing device whatever that we had not brought I

should like to be informed of it. When Mr. Green joined the yacht and

produced from the bowels of an immense trunk, a luxury that in itself I

never knew him to allow himself before, and which was in our way the

entire journey till we got rid of it at Jacksonville, much to its

owner’s chagrin--first two breech-loaders, then a rifle and a hundred

weight of ammunition, then an immense bundle of sporting rods, next a

box of lines and reels, and finally an overgrown scrapbook filled with

all manner of gangs of hooks, the doctor and myself felt that the

sporting interest would not suffer. As I had sent him word that he need

bring neither guns, fishing tackle, nor ammunition, it was evident that

he intended we should not fall short. But now when our men began tonging

up the delicious bivalves which we had not seen for so many days, on

account of the freshness of the water, we felt thankful for one of our

precautions. Here let me warn the reader that he be sure to bring oyster

tongs with him. He will find it difficult to get them in the South at

all, and if he can they will be much heavier and more awkward than those

in use with us. Just South of the opening into our night’s harbor, and

in the main channel, we found a man at work oystering and we joined him

promptly, confident that where there was enough for one there was in

this matter enough for two. Either the oysters off the lower end of

Roanoke Island are very delicious, or else our appetites were sharp

from abstinence. For as fast as our man Charley brought them to the

surface and deposited them on the deck, we opened them with a skill

founded on some experience and more desire, and devoured them with

hearty gusto.

We loaded up with oysters and then started once more on our course, but

the wind fell off and we anchored in Stumpy Point Bay, some thirty miles

to the southward and on the main shore. At our last stopping place a

sick man had come aboard for advice, and here we not only found two

others, but were also informed that their mother was at the point of

death. There seemed to be a sublime faith in these people that all

Northerners must know something of medicine, as none of them had a

suspicion of our having a physician in the party. Indeed they came for

“a drawing of tea” as they called it, rather than for any special

medicine, for they appeared to consider sickness the natural condition

of man, as among those terribly unhealthy swamps and low lands it

probably is. After that almost everywhere we went we were asked for “a

drawing of tea” for some sick person.

Their ailments were evidently only too well founded, and as the people

were clearly not a complaining set, we were sorry that we had not

brought more of the coveted article with us. The whites of this coast

looked weazened, thin, yellow, and cadaverous, as if they had a

perpetual conflict with fever in which they invariably got the worst of

it. They had the shadow of death in their faces. In their motions they

exhibited a langour which strangers are apt to attribute to laziness,

but which I believe due to disease. Let a man once take the southern

fever, and it will be many months if not years before he feels like

himself again. Our latest patients were fishermen, and to Mr. Green’s

insatiable inquiries they explained that they caught in their seasons

shad; rock, our striped bass; trout, our weakfish; hickory shad, white

perch, mullet, spot, round-nosed shad and flat backs, though what these

latter were was more than we could guess. They said that the fishing had

fallen off greatly of late years, but that the prices had increased and

that now they were paid seventy five cents for a roe shad, and thirty

for bucks.

Next day was clear and cold, with a strong and favorable wind from the

north-west, so much so that even the imperturbable doctor was impatient

to be off, but Mr. Green had an idea, and when he has anything of that

sort he is the last man to part with it without full fruition. To our

proposal to get under weigh early he replied.

“Beyond this you tell me that we have a great stretch of open water?”

“Yes,” I answered, “the entire Pamlico Sound, which must be a hundred

and fifty miles long and fifty broad, so the more advantage we take of

this favorable wind the better.”

“Well, you expect to find ducks, don’t you, on the route?” he inquired

by way of response.

“I hardly know what we shall find,” I answered, “but I should like to

find ducks, and have heard that there are innumerable brant on the

ocean side.”

“That is just as I supposed,” was Mr. Green’s reply, as he took up the

axe that lay on the deck, “and as you have no battery, how do you expect

to kill them?”

The doctor and I had nothing to reply, and Mr. Green, carrying the axe,

called one of the men and rowed away to the shore in triumph. During his

absence the doctor, who is a _cordon bleu_, prepared the turkey that we

had purchased at Kitty Hawk for cooking, by stuffing it with the oysters

that we had tonged at Roanoke Island. By the time this culinary feat was

accomplished, our master of fish culture had returned. He had cut a

dozen stakes about eight feet long, which were to be used to improvise a

blind, by thrusting them into the bottom and tying strings around from

one to the other, and hanging reeds or grass tied in bunches over the

strings.

These precautionary measures being taken, we got under-way. The wind had

increased to almost a gale, and our brave little vessel fairly leaped

before it towards the South like a race horse. Quite a sea had made in

the broad expanse of Pamlico Sound, which can be stormy enough when in

the humor, and the waves rolled after us in vain and vindictive fury.

There were two large steamers going South, and we held them for some

time, and had hopes of keeping up with them, but they slowly drew ahead,

and left us alone in the waste of tumultuous waves.

[Illustration: ENGLISH SNIPE.]

We made one of our best runs that day. The weather was too perfect for

us to stop for fish or birds, although we saw clouds of the latter

rising up in the distance from the disturbed surface of the Sound. We

ought to have gone to Hatteras, or Roanoke Inlet, where we had been

assured by the residents the brant shooting was magnificent, but we

could not lose such unusually favorable weather, and sped on and on

through the seething waves, hour after hour, till when the sun was still

quite well above the horizon, we ran through the narrow channel into the

peaceful waters of Core Sound.

What a change came over the spirit of our sailing, from the boisterous

violence and rough seas that beat our vessel’s sides turbulently, or

followed us fiercely to the scarcely ruffled bosom of the small and

shallow bay, only a few miles wide, and shut in on all sides by the

land. We managed to reach Lewis’s Creek before sunset, where we saw a

number of working boats going to find security for the night. When we

had anchored among them, the fishermen told us that there were the usual

kinds of salt water fish, although there was no tide in Core Sound other

than that made by the wind. They said there was good oystering off the

point of Lewis’s Creek, and next day proved their words. It was a wild

spot. The only mark of human habitation being an old wind-mill, which

stood on the point. The weird effect was further heightened during the

darkness by the lighting of fires by the fishermen, who had no sleeping

accommodations on their boats, and who went ashore for the purpose.

“Would you like to kill an English snipe?” called out Seth Green to me

next morning from the shore, whither he had already gone with our

boatman, Charley. I had been busy, or perhaps, if the truth must be

confessed, sleepy, and had just come on deck.

“Of course,” was my instantaneous reply, the idea of any one not wanting

to kill an English snipe being too ridiculous to entertain for a moment.

“Then get your gun, and Charley will come for you in the boat.”

In five minutes the doctor and I were both ashore, and in less than as

many more we had put up and bagged our first bird. It seemed that

Charley, who, as I have already stated, was an old gunner, had heard the

bird as he flew over, and had seen him alight. He did not know that

there were more than one, but we found quite a flight of them. The spot

was not large, but it was evidently a favorite one. We had no dogs and

went floundering about through the mud, but at every few steps a bird

was flushed, and his appearance commemorated by the report of a gun or

the cheery cry of, “mark!” It was a delicious episode in our trip, for

no sport is more appreciated by the true sportsman than the killing of

our gamest of all game birds, the stylish English snipe. In two hours we

had bagged thirty-one. In fact we had killed them all, for if we did not

get them at the first rise, it was easy to follow them up, as they

seemed so fond of the place that they would not leave it. After we had

gone on board with our trophies, and while we were getting under way, we

saw new whisps arriving to take the place of those which we had killed,

as if they were informed of the event, and were anxious to profit by the

disasters of their friends, even at the peril of their own lives.

Core Sound was full of wild fowl, of which many were red-heads and

canvas-backs, and had we had a battery, we could have killed unlimited

numbers. We had to do as well as we could with Mr. Green’s substitute,

which, although better than nothing, was not at all equal to the proper

machine. Neither had we time to wait. Florida was a long way off, and

well we knew that, once there, we should have all the game we wanted; so

as we struck another favorable wind, we did not stop at Barker’s Island,

where the best shooting is to be had, but ran on to Beaufort. We had

actually dawdled not more than three or four unnecessary days in Core

Sound, before going into the narrow, shallow and difficult harbor of

what was once the watering place as well as business mart of that

section of the Southern country. The port dues are heavy, and I would

advise the yachtsman to avoid it altogether and go, if he needs must go

into any port, directly to Morehead City, which is rapidly appropriating

the trade and fashion of its older rival.

There is a large business in oysters at Beaufort, and the civilization

of moss-bunker factories has been introduced from the North. Fish were

scarce, but we purchased some very fair beef at very moderate prices,

eighteen pounds of porterhouse being sold to us for eight cents a pound.

The town is a pretty one, and the next day being Sunday, we went to the

colored Methodist Church, a thing that no visitor must fail to do, and

heard some very charming singing. This was our first experience of the

quaint, wild, and slightly barbaric harmony of the voices of the

negroes, of which we were to hear a great deal before our return to the

North.

Beaufort was the first thoroughly Southern town, with its fig trees in

the open air, the Yupawn, or native Tea tree, the red-berried evergreen

bushes, whose name we could not ascertain, and its genial air of

Southern indolent happiness, which we had visited. We were sorry to

leave it, and had Florida been only placed where it ought to have been,

five hundred miles nearer New York, we should have stayed days if not

weeks longer. But the time was flitting by, and still we were a thousand

miles from our destination. So without more ado we put to sea. From

Beaufort to Cape Fear there is such a bend in the coast that it is laid

down on the charts as a bay. Being shielded from the terrible

northeasters of the Atlantic, which reach no farther than Cape Hatteras,

it is as safe for a small vessel as any part of the boisterous ocean

ever can be. But I was glad when Heartsease got through the voyage. With

care there is no danger, and the trip is not half as perilous a one as

we are accustomed to take at the North, where we are at home, without a

thought of fear. There are numerous and very practicable inlets, and

the yachtsman should make sure of getting into one of them at night. The

same may be said of the stretch beyond Cape Fear. Treat the mighty ocean

with the respect it deserves, and it will never illtreat you. On the

charts the northern or old inlet of Cape Fear is laid down as closed by

a bulkhead. This it is no doubt intended to be, to the discomfort of

small sailing craft, but at the time I speak of it was open. Possibly it

was only opened temporarily by a storm, and may be shut again now.

There were some birds in Bull’s Bay, but not enough to induce us to

pause, as we were anxious to get the yacht to Charleston as quickly as

we could. So we made the most of the wind and the tide, and anchored

over against Fort Moultrie early in January. Does any of my readers care

to hear how we enjoyed Christmas Day! If so, I will in that connection,

and with the happy sacredness of that day in my mind, make a confession.

In one of the opening paragraphs of this history I mentioned the fact

that we had a stove, a cooking as well as heating stove, in the main

saloon. I did not, however, acknowledge what I am now about to make

public, that every one of the party, from the state-rooms to the

forecastle, was a cook, and in the opinion of him or herself a most

sweet and dainty _chef de cuisine_. Aware of this divine afflatus, they

were none of them entirely content unless they were exhibiting their

skill, so both stoves were run to their utmost capacity, and as the

appetites of the party were good and daily growing better, a vast

consumption of provisions was continually taking place. While each was

at heart assured that their own productions were a little the best, and

tempted the others to admission of the fact by the offering of special

delicacies where delicacies were not needed, there was no one mean

enough to repudiate the work of a brother or sister artist, even if it

were ruined in the preparation or burned to tastlessness in the cooking.

Christmas was by common consent set apart as the day on which each and

every member of our briny household should cook whatever they found best

in their own eyes. The store-room was thrown open and free liberty of

selection was given to all.

To the male kitchen genius the most difficult article to prepare, is the

most necessary one, bread. Within the realms of civilization the staff

of life seems, as it were, to grow of itself. It can be found on every

corner; stares in fat complacency at you from the shop windows on every

block; there is never any dearth of bread so long as there is a penny to

purchase it; delicate-minded tramps scorn it, and in every

well-regulated household enough of it is thrown into the waste pail to

feed another household of equal numbers. But at sea this is different,

and when man, though he pride himself on the brilliant hue of his blue

ribbon, is required to make good the deficiency, he is apt to come to

grief. So the queen of our marine family announced that she would make a

big batch of bread for that special festivity.

While no one could or would dare to dispute the ability of that lady to

do well whatever she undertook, yet in the matter of bread making her

methods were peculiar. In the first place she had to have the cabin to

herself, and as bread has to be set over night, we were all turned out

on Christmas eve and left to shiver on the deck. Then she has a way of

strewing flour about in the operation till she covers the tables, the

chairs, the floor, even the sides of the saloon and sometimes the cabin

roof with dough or its ingredients. It was not five minutes after we

were allowed to return, the “rising” having been made an accomplished

fact and set away in a corner, before our hands, our clothes, our faces,

and our very hair were covered with incipient bread. But worse even than

that was the injunction that was solemnly laid on us under no

circumstances to presume to touch the “rising” which had been deposited

directly over the stove, and without moving which it would be impossible

to get breakfast. As our lady was a late riser herself, and would never

stir till she was assured through the state-room door that her breakfast

was ready and on the table, the question of having that important meal

was as complicated as getting the fox, the goose, and the corn over the

stream.

One of the associate lady patronesses devoted herself to making

biscuits, as the bread would not be cooked till dinner time. I evolved

pancakes, the doctor compounded a hash, and altogether we began

Christmas with such a breakfast as is rarely met with on the desert

surface of the inland water communication between the North and the

South. Seth Green had reserved himself till, as he politely remarked,

“the rest of you should be through your mussing,” then he began. But his

efforts did not last long unmolested, he had split open a duck, a fat

one had been especially selected for so unusual an occasion. This he had

laid between the wires of an oyster broiler, then he opened the entire

top of the stove and proceeded to broil it upon the hot coals. It is

unnecessary to remark that such a proceeding evolved an amount of smoke

that filled the cabin full in a moment. The rest of the party were busy

at their breakfast enjoying the delicacies which had already been

prepared, when they were fairly suffocated by this torrent of smoke and

began to realize as never before the sad fate of the inhabitants of

Pompeii.

“Seth” I exclaimed, “can’t you keep part of the stove covered so as to

let some of the smoke go up the chimney?”

“Mr. Green, Mr. Green,” came from the ladies all at once, “please don’t

smother us.”

“Smoke and the gas of cooking” gasped the doctor, his philosophy almost

dissipated in it “are injurious at meal times, there is such a thing as

being asphyxiated.”

“For heaven’s sake,” I implored, for by this time the condition of the

atmosphere was unbearable, “do throw that duck out of the companion

way.”

“Oh Mr. Green do stop cooking that horrid duck,” exclaimed our

princess, “if you do not I shall have to leave the table.”

That last threat was too much, Seth could not bear to be ranked as an

obstructive when he was accomplishing a culinary triumph which was to

delight our gustatory nerves and establish forever his reputation as a

cookist. He turned a reproachful face towards the party without showing

the slightest sign of discontinuing his fell work, and with an air of

bitter rebuke retorted upon us.

“This is the first time that I have done any cooking. All the rest of

you have cooked as much as you liked. I have stood to one side and got

out of the way and never had a chance, and now the very instant I cook a

little duck you all make a fuss. I don’t think it’s fair. I did want a

piece of duck for my breakfast and I picked out the smallest one for

fear somebody would think I was greedy, and now you ask me to throw it

overboard; it is almost done, and if you will only have patience for a

few moments I will be through.”

His manner was more impressive than even his words, and no one had the

heart to reply. We tearfully held our napkins to our noses to keep out

the smoke and smell as well as we could, we coughed and choked, but we

allowed him to finish. Unfortunately Seth believes in cooking a duck to

a chip, and hence he was occupied longer than he had promised, but he

was through at last, and then not only was he happy in the vindication

of his culinary knowledge, but he had the satisfaction of bringing our

ingratitude home to us, by pressing on us choice morsels, which he

offered in a delicate and forgiving way upon his own fork, and which we

were fain to accept and swallow in the same fashion under pain of again

offending him.

Nevertheless the duck was good, the biscuits were good, the pancakes

were excellent, the hash was superb, every article of diet all day long,

from the gorgeous breakfast to the gorging at supper, when appetite had

been more than sated, were unsurpassable and we had a Christmas long to

be remembered.

We remained in Charleston for two weeks. If the reader asks what we were

doing all that time, let him go to the old time Queen City of the South,

now apparently being displaced by her enterprising rival, Savannah; let

him roam about her quaint streets and mingle with her hospitable people,

and he will find out. There is much of physical and human interest in

and around Charleston, from the live oaks on her Battery or White Point

Park, and the moss covered trees of her famous Magnolia cemetery, to the

oysters growing in thousands around her sea-wall, and which would

furnish unlimited sustenance to her citizens were they not oyster

surfeited. We stood and gawked at the tropical plants in full foliage,

and at the orange trees in full bearing, in the house door gardens till

the residents, unacquainted though they were personally with us, took

pity and gave us the names of the plants and told us that the oranges

were sour, none of the sweet varieties being able to grow so far north.

We loafed around the market which was an ever renewing delight to Mr.

Green, who, before we left, had established a personal bond of

admiration and friendship from every darkey fisherman who brought his

cargo there. We fed the turkey buzzards, we ascertained that the fish

about Charleston were, in their various seasons, mostly sheepshead,

bass, the drum of North Carolina and channel bass of Florida, _Corvina

Ocellata_; sea-bass, here called black fish, which are mostly caught by

the negroes outside the bar in their open boats; sea trout, our weak

fish; mullet, which they told us were becoming scarce; blue fish which

are never caught in winter, and which also were diminishing in numbers;

black drum; big porgees of four or five pounds; both the salt and fresh

water varieties of cat fish, which were very abundant; whiting, our king

fish, and their finest table delicacy; angel fish, crevalle; fresh water

trout, our black bass, and shad, which begin their run in January.

All around Charleston the negroes seem to be in possession of the

country. They are pleasant, polite, and lazy, are content to do the old

slave tasks even when working for themselves, and will never consent to

do more when working for others at any price of remuneration, as though

if they worked too hard the work would be exhausted and there would soon

be nothing more to do. They are paid fifty cents a cord, for instance,

to cut wood, and they stop when they have cut one cord, although they

are through at one o’clock. They look more healthy and happy than the

whites throughout the entire South, which is a probably a climacteric

result, but pregnant of many possibilities for the future. It is they

who supply Charleston market, it is they who do the fishing and the

work, and more important still, it is they who make all the Sea-island

cotton and bring it to the city in their boats from the shores where

inevitable death lurks for the superior race. That most valuable of

Southern products, the old time king of the world, arrives in driblets,

here a pound and there a pound. It is badly baled, but it comes and in

good order too. To day the negro controls the whilom king, which is

indeed putting the bottom rail on top.

The Charleston “Eagles,” as he called the buzzards, were a source of

infinite complacency to the philosophical soul of the doctor. He would

watch them by the hour, sympathizing with their metaphysically

thoughtful ways. He would study their awkward and ungainly motions on

the ground, and wonder that anything so ungraceful on foot could be so

exquisitely elegant and graceful in the air when on the wing. These

queer creatures stay around the market, and although the law forbids

their being fed, as it is found with them as with human buzzards that

necessity is the mother of scavengering, your butcher is always ready to

throw them a surreptitious piece of meat for your amusement. They are

the only street cleaners, and if they got their dinners gratuitously

they might cease their useful public labors.

On January tenth we tore ourselves away from Charleston, bidding good

bye to its pretty streets, its tall spires, its beautiful gardens, and

its pleasant inhabitants, among whom we must especially mention

Commander Merril Miller of the Light-house service, who was very kind in

furnishing us charts and assisting us in many ways. We bid a last

farewell to Forts Sumter and Moultrie, and all the historic memories

which are entwined with those names; to Sullivan’s Island, the Coney

Island of Charleston, to the Three Sisters, three palmettos which guard

the gate where once the confederate soldier stood sentry, and to the

tomb of Oceola close by, to the buzzards and the beauties of the city,

catching a last glimpse of White Point Park to which we waived a tender

adieu. We headed our course towards the creek which has received the

euphuistic appellation of “Wappoo Cut.” We carried away from Charleston

this one valuable piece of information: to make “Hop-in-John,” boil one

quart of cow peas (a sort of small bean), and one pound of bacon till

thoroughly cooked, then put in two quarts of rice, boil for about half

an hour longer and until well done, then add salt and pepper. This

recipe came from the colored _chef_ of the Charleston hotel and must be

correct. Hence hereafter no man or woman can claim to be so ignorant

that they cannot cook “Hop-in-John.”

Beyond Charleston we had our first disagreeable adventure; it occurred

when we were running through Wappoo Cut. We had been offered a volunteer

tow by a small steam tug that we met there, but had hardly hitched fast

to her, before a passenger steamer came in sight going the same way.

This vessel gradually gained on us, and when she was close at hand,

finding there was no room to pass, as the cut is extremely narrow near

its outlet where we were, ran deliberately between our yacht and the

tug, cutting our stern line away and nearly sinking us. This was an

occasion, in which we should have been justified in shooting the pilot

at his post, but we were in a foreign country, so to speak, and all we

did was to cast loose our lines and get clear the best we could. The

whole performance was the less excusable, because the wheelman saw there

were ladies on board our boat, and that we were strangers. As this was

the only piece of discourtesy shown us on our entire trip, I give the

name of the vessel which was guilty of it, and warn all passengers to

shun the “Pilot Boy.” It was by good luck alone that we escaped, for

hardly had we got clear, than the two steamers jammed together, filling

the cut from side to side, so that both were aground, and we heard the

crashing of timbers and saw them fast there for nearly an hour. Had the

“Heartsease” been between them, she would have been crushed. If any of

our readers go South by the inland passage from Charleston, and it is a

pleasant way of travel, we hope they will in a measure revenge our

wrongs, and give a brutal captain a lesson in decent behavior, by

refusing to patronize the “Pilot Boy.”

One of the most interesting features of the country we were now passing

was the rice fields. These were separated by dykes, and being nearly

rectangular, gave a novel appearance to the low, marshy land. Had we

known where to go, we could probably have had good English snipe

shooting. But we did not stop to give Mr. Green a chance to interview

any one to find out. We, however, saw numberless flocks of bay snipe on

the lower part of the South Edisto, where the wind left us one night,

and where Mr. Green killed a couple of dozen. On the following day, that

gentleman was so pleased with the performance of the yacht in crossing

St. Helena Sound in a squall, that he insisted on our putting to sea,

upon the ground that he was tired of such tame sailing. The rest of the

party were nothing loth, and the good little ship was soon across the

bar and on the broad bosom of old Mother Ocean, a very step-mother as

she can at times prove herself to be. Unfortunately, the wind died out,

and we were becalmed or nearly so, and crawled slowly past Fripp’s

Inlet. When we were just outside Port Royal breakers, which we reached

at sundown, there was a dead calm, and we drifted backwards till we came

to anchor in some four fathoms of water.

Our luck did not desert us, and before dark a nice breeze sprang up,

which carried us into the harbor and up to the mouth of Skull Creek,

where we passed the night in perfect comfort. Next morning the wind came

out strong from the northeast, blowing what sailors would call half a

gale of wind. We got under way as soon as we could, and were soon

slashing along at a good nine miles an hour. To be sure of our speed, I

proposed to make a log line. Now there is one point about Seth Green,

which is if possible more decidedly developed than another; while he is

perfectly satisfied that anything he does is better done than it ever

was, ever will, or ever can be, by any one else, he is equally well

convinced that no one else can do anything that he cannot, so when I

made this proposition he simply smiled an incredulous smile. Under the

force of that implication, a log line had to be made, and made to work,

if all hands had to swear that she was making ten miles an hour when she

was only making two.

It was an original species of a log. I knew the proper divisions for a

fourteen second glass, which was the one we had on board, but the “chip”

had to be manufactured out of the side of an old cigar box. I never

shall forget Seth’s air of triumph, when having driven in the pin too

hard, it did not slip out at the scientific jerk I gave when “time” was

called on the first trial, the result being that the line parted when I

was drawing it in. This merely encouraged me, as there was no difficulty

in curing that defect, the only danger having been that my improvised

“chip” would not hold well enough. So the log was soon in working order,

and informed us that we were running nine miles an hour, and repeated

the figure so often, that the skeptic was convinced, and asked me to

join him while he apologized.

More bay snipe of all sorts, little and big, but no time to shoot them.

They were flying about by twos, by threes, by dozens, by hundreds, but

the wind was too fair and too fresh for us to lose it. We might be

punished by being reduced to living on canned food, which, with the

exception of corned beef, vegetables, and preserves, was an abomination

to the entire party, and we did not stop voluntarily, till we reached

Jekyl’s Creek. In reference to Jekyl’s Creek, there is an entry in my

log, that is interesting to show how history repeats itself; “Oysters

Excellent.” Half a century before, Professor Bache, who made the very

charts by which we were sailing, had appreciated the excellence of the

Jekyl Creek oysters, and had them barrelled and sent to him every year.

I doubt, however, whether he knew how to cook them, at least in the

quantity necessary for a hungry yachting party, and with the limited

cooking appliances of a yacht.

They are called “Raccoon Oysters,” for the reason that the raccoons

exhibited so much human nature in first appreciating their excellence,

and in getting at their contents. They exist in immense mounds and

piles, and to the Northern eye seem inexhaustible in numbers, covering

hundreds, if not thousands of square miles, and averaging three feet

thick. They line the shores of the creeks and water courses like two

walls, and cling to branches of bushes, till it can be truly said of

them that they grow on trees. Their natural position is with their edges

upward, and these are nearly as sharp as razors, and will cut one’s

fingers or a raccoon’s paw terribly, unless care is taken in handling

them. The ’coon’s plan is to slyly watch at low tide, when the beds are

bare, till the unsuspicious bivalve, longing for a breath of the pure

air of heaven as a change from the insipid diet of salt water, opens his

mouth, when he quietly creeps forward and drops a piece of shell into

the opening. Master oyster endeavors to resume his natural closeness of

mouth, but in vain; the early closing movement has no reference to him.

My plan of treatment was different, although the final consequence to

the oyster was about the same. To open such sharp-edged creatures in the

ordinary way would soon have put our crew, experienced in oyster opening

though they were, _hors du combat_, or to state it in English, useless

for rope-hauling. Even to separate them from one another was a perilous

job, so I hit upon the simple plan of putting them in bunches just as

they grew into the ovens of the two stoves. There I let them roast till

they opened their mouths of their own accord, precisely as they had done

for the raccoon, but under a little more compulsion. Cooked in this way

they were so delicious as to be worth a trip to Jekyl’s Creek merely to

get. We almost lived on Jekyl Creek oysters, and if any one of the party

got out of spirits, if Mr. Green or the Doctor wanted to propitiate one

of the queens of the yacht, and the Doctor especially was continually

engaged in that way, he never failed with a roasted raccoon oyster.

CHAPTER II.

IN FLORIDA.

And now we are at Fernandina, in Florida at last. It has been a long but

a delightful trip. Of all the yachting we ever did, and all of us have

been more or less followers of the sea, that is, the inland sea, since

childhood, we agreed unanimously this sail from New York to the South by

the inland navigation, was the most delightful. It was an unbroken charm

from the beginning to the end, with no more of real danger about it than

would have been encountered on Broadway under falling bricks and over

caving vaults. The variety of scenery was charming, the oddity of the

trees and plants most interesting, and had we had the time to devote to

it, the fishing and shooting would have been superb.

We had passed old Fernandina, and came to anchor opposite the new town

of the same name, which had been selected on account of its having a

better harbor in a norther, that terror of southern latitudes in winter,

and which must have raked the old town pretty thoroughly. We had to go

ashore at once. The tides have a great rise and fall, and we were glad

to avail ourselves of the boat club landing which was kindly placed at

our disposal. We found Fernandina a quaint old town, with a mixture of

newness and age about it. Northern men coming for their health had

brought Northern ways and extravagances; there were modern villas and

trim gardens, but the old mansions were still to be seen, and a few of

the ancient houses built of coquina, a combination of lime and shell. No

innovations could do away with the Southern foliage, which here was in

rank growth and profusion. We saw orange trees in full bearing; palmetto

trees in abundance, from the scrub saw-palmetto to the lordly cabbage

palm, and cactuses six feet high, together with all the other trees and

plants of the warm latitudes.

There is a fine shell road to the sea beach that is so hard that the

wheels of a wagon scarcely make a mark upon it. This beach is the

favorite promenade drive of natives and visitors in the season which had

not come quite yet, although near at hand. Boys in the streets were

selling sugar-canes at five cents a stick, and banana bushes, which are

herbacious plants, were growing in many of the gardens. Mr. Green

proceeded first to indulge in the entire luxuries of a barber’s

establishment that he found, and then to interview the whole population.

He came to the yacht in time for supper, laden with information and two

fine Southern weakfish, which are much better to eat than our Northern

variety, and which are locally known as trout.

The fishing around Fernandina is exceedingly good, and we found the

colored population, which takes to fishing as naturally as the bee is

nautically supposed to take to a tar bucket, everywhere, pursuing the

finny tribes through the numerous creeks and arms of the sea. Here we

saw for the first time the circular cast net. It was used for catching

the enormous shrimp or prawn, which, while shaped like the common

shrimp, has a body six inches long, and feelers still longer. This

curious creature is mostly used for bait, though it is excellent eating

when boiled. There is good sheepsheading in the creek opposite the last

house before reaching the cut, and as it was impossible to keep Mr.

Green quiet longer without a day’s fishing, we had to let him go while

the rest of us enjoyed the mere pleasure of existence in the delicious

climate. We ate oranges and sucked sugar-cane in true childhood style,

and wandered through the village while he was pursuing science. We were

not a little ashamed of ourselves when he returned with a magnificent

string of sheepshead, both the large and small kinds, sea trout, and a

dozen other varieties, victualling the ship for several days. Then our

sails were once more set and we were off for the further South, for

there always is a higher height and a deeper depth; so there is a

further south, a further west, and a more inaccessible north. We did not

go far, however, before we had to stop. Not that there was any dire

necessity, not that any member of our party was sick, nor that the wind

or the bread had given out; not that we had lost our course or were

actually impeded in any wise, but still we had to stop--in order to

catch crabs. I take it for granted that there is none of my readers so

unfortunate as never to have eaten that most delicious of table

luxuries, the hard-shell--for I have never given my allegiance to the

soft-crab. If that is so, then I will have no occasion to make further

explanation, when I say that the finest crabs which we got in the

Southern waters, we caught at Fernandina, or rather between that place

and Jacksonville, for the crabbing was good all the way. Mr. Seth Green

is especially fond of these strange animals, who insist on wearing their

bones outside of their skins, and no inducement except satiety will

persuade him away from good crabbing ground. The Doctor is also fond of

crabs, and so were all the rest of those on board, and hence there was

not the slightest objection when Mr. Green made the following sensible

remark:

“Well now that we have got to Florida, don’t you think it ’most time to

begin to enjoy ourselves? You have kept us all hard at work as if our

lives depended on it, driving away through good weather and bad, through

rain and shine in order to get here, and now that we are here don’t you

think that you might let up for a few days at least till we could have a

little of the pleasure we came after?”

The wild ducks which we had killed in Currituck were gone long ago, the

snipe we had found on the way down, had lasted only a short time, but

Mr. Green had supplied us with all the fish we could eat, oysters lay

around us begging to be picked up and roasted, and now we had an

unlimited supply of crabs, which merely requested us to offer them a

piece of refuse meat in exchange for their luscious bodies. If a man

wants to live well and cheaply let him go to Florida, there certainly

never was such a place for a yachting expedition. When we had boiled a

reserve of nearly a hundred crabs, and we had all eaten as many as we

could, we ceased crabbing and went to sailing once more.

Instead of going through the Sisters Creek, which is the shorter course,

we stood out to sea from Fort George Inlet and ran into the St. John’s,

a thing which I would advise no man to do unless he was well acquainted

with the bars, or had like myself a very light draft vessel, for both

the channels are narrow and shoal. When we were once inside the St.

John’s we got out our nets in order to ascertain just what the waters

contained. Although net fishing is not so stimulating as that with the

hook and line, it is more certain even if both are in skilful hands.

We were rewarded by some small yearling mossbunkers and bluefish, which,

while the Doctor looked on them as a disappointment, were valuable as

settling the question that both of these fish spawn in the Southern

waters. A further result of our efforts was, that we hurried on to

Jacksonville as fast as we could. On the way we ran over a shad net. It

was early in the morning, and there was a sort of haze on the water, so

that we did not see the log that the fishermen tie to the end of their

nets, to point out where it is. The owners of it were taking it in from

the other side of their boat, and even so old a fisherman as Mr. Green

was deceived as to the direction in which it was stretched. We carried

a piece of it away with us, and had to cut it off from our rudder. For

this we were sorry, but were miles off before we had even got an idea of

the extent of apology we would have to make, or of the damage for which

we would gladly have paid.

At Jacksonville we felt almost as much at home as if we were in New

York. We found friends there, we made others, and enjoyed ourselves so

thoroughly that it was only the imperative demands of sport that

compelled us to move on. Just in the neighborhood of so large a city

there is naturally not much to shoot or to catch. There are innumerable

cat-fish which Mr. Green was never tired of taking, and which weighed as

much as ten pounds each. He insisted they were excellent eating, a

matter in which we allowed him to have his opinion without contesting

the question. The water on the surface is fresh, and some black-bass can

always be caught in the vicinity. The condition of the water in the St.

John’s is different from that of any other stream with which I am

familiar. Even as high up as Pilatka, eighty miles above, the surface

water is absolutely fresh, while near the bottom there is a current so

salt that crabs are caught in the shad nets. The salter fluid seems to

be denser and heavier than the other, and will not mingle with it, so

that we have the anomaly of both fresh and salt-water fish being caught

at the same time and place.

Into the St. John’s there empty at every few miles tributary streams

that are rarely ascended by the visiting sportsman, and where the birds

and fish exist in their primeval abundance and fearlessness. It is

unnecessary to specify these by name, or to particularize any as better

than others, for they are essentially alike. We could not explore them

all, but those which we did, we found filled with fish and with a fair

amount of game. It was too early in the year for alligators, if they can

be called game, to show themselves, but birds were to be had

plentifully, and fish were simply innumerable. Of these we killed so

many that we had to salt them down. There is an additional interest, the

interest of new explorations, in ascending the secluded rivers, and I

advise every tourist who visits this portion of Florida in his own

conveyance, not to omit going up one or more of them.

This was a late season, shad were running, and we had them continually

on our table, but roses were not in full bloom in the open air, and as

for strawberries, which are usually abundant by New Year’s, they had not

come in at all yet. We had bought up all the curiosities that we could

distribute among our Northern friends; we had played with the baby

alligators in the jewelry stores; we had listened to the first

installment of the wonderful Florida stories; we had dined at all the

excellent Jacksonville hotels, and were ready to withdraw once more from

civilization. So the Heartsease spread her sails again, and started up

the river. I say “up,” because by the current our course was up stream;

but it was down by the map. We were going south, the St. John’s being

one of the few of the North American rivers which seem to run the wrong

way, that is, from the south to the north. In our short stay in

Jacksonville we had learned that alligator-tooth jewelry is occasionally

made of celluloid; that one of the best drinks in the world of

bar-keeping is a punch compounded from the native sour orange; that

Florida stories are always reliable, even when they assert that

mosquitoes are so abundant that hogs make meals of them, or inform us

that the favorite game fish of Florida, the tarpon, jumps six feet out

of water when he is hooked, or that sharks will seize a man if they have

to leap as high as the deck of the yacht to do so. In leaving

Jacksonville, we supposed we were leaving all this behind us, not

knowing that Florida is full of quaint jewelry made, as the jewelry of

no other part of the world, out of fish scales, saurian teeth, sea

beans, shells, orange tree woods, and sharks’ molars; that everywhere

there are wonderful stories which only differ from one another in size;

that palmetto hats were to be bought in every village store, and that

sour oranges hang from innumerable trees, valueless for traffic, and

only begging to be made into nectar fit for gods.

By the time the Doctor had made these philosophical reflections,

Heartsease was tearing along before a favoring breeze past Mandarin,

past the Magnolia Hotel and Green Cove Spring; past Tocoi, the terminus

of the St. Augustine Railroad, till she made anchorage by nightfall off

Pilatka. On the way we had put up many ducks, had seen the cows up to

their backs in water feeding off the cabbage at the bottom, and

thrusting their heads clear under to get it, and we began to realize

that in the end we might come to believe anything of the wonders of this

wonderful land. On the last day of our stay in Jacksonville, we had

given a little lunch on board, and to show what dinners can be got up

there, and how easily, I will reproduce the bill of fare. Everything had

been prepared on board, and although our cabin could only seat twelve,

we placed before the guests cold turkey, beef and tongue, chicken salad,

prepared by the Doctor in most artistic style, stewed oysters, roast

potatoes, radishes, and for dessert banana salad--an invention of the

better part of the party,--Dummit Grove oranges, sapidillas, and grape

fruit, with _pieces montées_ of palmetto leaves and sour oranges _en

branches_. There was a little _paté de foies gras_ also, but that need

not be counted, because it came from the North.

We found that when we had reached Pilatka the stories, instead of

diminishing, developed yet more astonishing proportions. The mosquitoes,

that the hogs fed on at Jacksonville, put out the head light of the

locomotive at Pilatka, extinguished a bonfire, and made nothing of the

negroes “light wood torches;” the tarpon of Jacksonville could only jump

six feet high when hooked, while the tarpon of Pilatka, without being

hooked, bounded clear over the rail of the steamboat Seth Low, which was

ten feet from the water, struck the captain in the stomach, and knocked

him down. We had not been at Pilatka two days, before we were ready to

swallow any mental hallucination, so rapidly does faith grow in the

glorious, and balmy air of Florida.

If Jacksonville had been attractive, Pilatka was equally so. Opposite to

if is the famous orange grove of Mr. Hart, which we had to visit, and

where we ate our first oranges, plucked by ourselves from the trees,

beside tasting mandarins and tangerines, lemons, limes, guava and

bananas, and that best of all oranges, the grape fruit. There were great

plantations of bananas, which grow by suckers from the roots, and

increase like weeds. They have to be three years old before they bear,

and the development of the flower and fruit, which was going on while we

were there, was a pretty sight. The top of the stalk turns over and

produces a huge purple flower of a single leaf, as large as the hand of

a giant. From under this large leaf starts a circle of small sprouts

like fingers. The big leaf falls off, but from the ends of the fingers

burst other, much smaller purple flowers. Then below the row of fingers

grows another large flower like the first, and it also uncovers another

row of fingers, so on till the entire bunch of bananas, as we know it in

the market, is formed. Even then the flower point does not cease

growing, but exhibits flower after flower, which are merely ornamental

and do not result in fruit. Sprouts start so freely from the roots, that

the young bushes have to be cut away every year with scythes, or they

would become crowded, and the fruit degenerate. Every day, that was

spent studying the wonderful productions of Florida, every new tree or

bush, which attracted our attention by its beauty, or its oddity, every

new species of fruit, which charmed our palate with its originality of

flavor, made us more in love with this interesting country, and wish

that it and its accompaniments could only exist in a colder climate.

There was but one feeling in the minds of the party on leaving Mr.

Hart’s plantation, which was that each of us could own an orange grove,

and have it close at home.

One evening as we were returning after a sailing excursion to visit the

neighborhood, we heard cries which sounded like cries of distress. The

negroes were so in the habit of laughing at, and jibing one another,

that we at first took no notice of these. It was nearly night, so dark,

that objects could not be distinguished at any considerable distance;

but the cries continuing, we determined to see whether they meant merely

fun or something more serious, and kept away in the direction from which

they came. That moment’s delay cost at least one man his life, and

brought sorrow to one household. After sailing a few minutes, we were

able to distinguish an object in the water, which looked like a boat

capsized. Such it turned out to be, and as we approached, we could make

out a number of men clinging to its sides. It was a launch belonging to

the crew of a steam ferry boat, and was used by the men after their

day’s work was over to take them across the river, as they left the

steamer on the other side. It was abundantly able to carry the number

that started in it, and more, but some of them had been pouring out

libations to Bacchus, or had been carried away by foolish animal

spirits, we could not exactly determine which, and the result was, that

the party of merry-makers was suddenly turned into one of mourners.

We luffed up alongside, and lay to, while our men lowered the boats, and

picked up all the poor fellows who were left. Two were unaccounted for,

one of whom had been seen to let go his hold and sink. Several of the

others would have soon followed his example, except for our timely

arrival, for the water happened to be cool that evening, and quickly

benumbed their warm southern blood, although they were whites, and not

blacks, as we at first supposed. After they were all on board, and it

was apparent that there was no use in looking for their lost comrades,

we hitched a line to their boat, and towed it behind us towards the

shore. As the men crowded on our deck, they seemed so miserable, and did

so tremble with the cold, that the hearts of the ladies were touched,

and nothing would do but they must be brought into the cabin, and warmed

at the stove, there being not room enough for so many in the forecastle.

Their clothes dripped and drained over our pretty carpet, and left

stains, which never were to come out, but we felt only too glad that we

had been able to be of some use to any of our fellow “toilers of the

sea.” We finally warmed their blood, and put fresh life into them with

liberal rations of rum, which was fifty years old. Amid their sufferings

what caused them the most pain, was, that they would have to tell the

wife of the engineer, who was lost, of his death. This they dreaded as

much as they would have dreaded another struggle in the water.

There is often danger from the heavy fogs, which roll up dense, and dark

on the St. John’s in the night time, and we saw several accidents from

that cause. We took the precaution of always anchoring, when not in

port, on some flat, and making sure of a well filled anchor light. The

steamers invariably follow the channel, for their own protection, and

the pilots run at full speed, as in that way alone can they be sure of

their position, a knowledge which comes to them by habit. There was,

however, one annoyance, which no lights would prevent, no mosquito nets

keep out, and no preparation mitigate, the plague of gnats; they come,

when they make up their minds to come, in myriads, pour down the

companion way, preferring the inside of the cabin to the outside, make

themselves at home, push into the state-rooms, and do not care in the

least how many millions of their number you immolate. I had been advised

that insect powder, if burned in the cabin, would drive them out. On

their first visitation I tried the remedy. It is to be feared that the

heartless person who gave me that recipe was a practical joker. There is

nothing in the nature of gnats to specially provoke merriment so far as

I could ever see, or feel, but there are persons who extract pleasure

from a funeral. I placed a small quantity of the powder on a piece of

paper, which I lighted. The paper was soon consumed, but the powder

remained intact, in fact it preserved that part of the paper, which was

directly under it. Then I added some chips, and laying the whole on an

old plate, tried it again; failure number two, the powder was still

unconsumed, and the gnats, who had not neglected these opportunities,

while I was busy, to pay their respects to me, were as happy and lively

as ever. Determined not be foiled, I then built a fire in the stove, and

leaving the stove holes open, poured the powder on the flame. In vain,

it only put out the fire. After that I lost faith in the virtues of

insect powder, and had to endure as well as I could, lamentations coming

faintly through the doors of the state-rooms “Oh what are these strange

things that are biting us so.” Patience seems to be the only cure for

gnat bites, and we did not carry that article with us.

“Doctor,” said Mr. Green one morning, after we had spent a couple of

weeks in the delightful laziness of sight seeing and curiosity buying,

“how much longer do you think the skipper intends to keep us idling

here?” He had devoted his attention lately to dragging the Doctor with

him on his interviewing expeditions, and they had just returned from

their tenth call upon the northern shad fishermen, who, having brought

their nets from their homes to try and catch the earliest run of shad,

were camping in the woods beyond the town.

“I am afraid,” replied our medical associate with base dishonesty, for

he was fully as fond of the _dolce far niente_ as myself, “that he

intends to remain here for the rest of his natural life.”

“What, going to stay here for ever!” came from the pretty mouth, which

belonged to a pretty head, that just then appeared above the companion

way, “I do like to go fishing, and get away from people.”

“Yes,” came faintly from another in the bowels of the cabin, “I am

always fond of a change.”

“We havn’t caught a fish since day before yesterday,” continued Seth in

a most injured tone of voice. “I should like to catch something beside

cat-fish once more.”

This is the sort of thing that the yachtsman has to bear from his

mutinous crew, and there is but one way of dealing with it. I went

forward without a word, called my men, and we were underway so soon,

that the breath was nearly taken from the party, and I heard low

grumblings about provisions, which ought to have been laid in, and

curiosities, which were to have been bought, and which never could be

got again, for an hour afterwards, as we were rapidly running up the

river.

The weather had become hot, the thermometer marking eighty-nine in the

shade, and mosquitoes made their appearance in the evenings; for those

we were prepared, as the yacht was especially fitted with mosquito

screens. But the heat was too much for us, and it was unanimously

determined that we must take a bath. We had brought our bathing dresses

more by good luck than good management, for we had no expectation of

quite so summery a time in the midst of winter. We had been assured

that snakes never enter the waters of a sulphur spring, and that there

was a sulphur spring at Welaka on our way. So we stopped where we

thought it must be according to the chart, and in that instance, as in

all others, the chart was right. In fact from the beginning of our trip

to the end we found ourselves, by the aid of the charts, masters of the

situation, and generally much better informed than the natives.

We anchored the yacht at the bend of the river just below Welaka, and

taking the small boats rowed into the spring, which was only a hundred

yards away. What a glorious sight it was, no puling little affair, such

as is called a spring at the North, but a basin two hundred feet across,

the water boiling up in the centre in a jet as large round as a

hogshead, and rising a foot above the surface, clear as crystal, and

gleaming like gems, the irridescent waves spreading away from the

central source in lines of glistening transparency, the sunlight

reflected from every ripple, as from a thousand prisms. Such a perfect

bathing spot we had never seen before, it was a bath-room fit for Diana

and her nymphs. We had put on our bathing clothes before leaving the

yacht, and it took us but a few moments to fasten our boats and plunge

overboard.

Snakes are one of the drawbacks of this warm tropical State. On some of

the keys on the Gulf side, they are so numerous that no man is safe in

landing. The most deadly is the rattlesnake, but the most disagreeable

is the mocassin, which, although not so fatal, sometimes attacks a man

in the water without provocation. The latter’s bite produces paralysis

more frequently than death, but as his attacks cannot be guarded

against, he is really a more unpleasant enemy. The traveller’s safety in

bathing consists in seeking one of these wonderful sulphur springs, into

which snakes do not enter, although fish abound in them, looking like

moving motes in liquid amber. The temperature of these springs is not

cold, being the same as that of the rivers, but there is something

exceedingly exhilarating in bathing in them. The feeling of the water is

different from that of any other bath. There is a peculiar sense of

cleanliness, and a lightness of spirits, which may account for the fancy

of Ponce de Leon, that he had at last found the source of eternal youth.

Many of these springs are brought within the destructive dominion of

man, and are open to every passing tourist, but the one where we were

was sacred to him, who has his own conveyance, and was not to be defiled

or polluted by the common wayfarer.

We had a delightful bath. There is a common delusion that the water of

the sulphur springs is so thin and light, that it will not support the

best swimmer. We soon ascertained that this was a totally unfounded

fancy, so far as the Welaka spring was concerned. We not only swam to

and fro without difficulty, but enjoyed an additional pleasure in

getting directly over the boiling spout itself, and being buoyed up by

it, where the water was ten feet deep. All of us were sorry, when

evening and hunger compelled us to return to the yacht.

The stories concerning the dangerous nature of the snakes of Florida are

probably exaggerated, as we saw no more of them, than we would have seen

in the same amount of country life at the North. The negro children

bathe off the docks of Pilatka and Jacksonville as a common thing, and

later in the year, when the peril from snakes is greater. There are

spots, where, as I have said, they are to be dreaded, and we heard well

authenticated stories of men being snake bitten, but on the other hand

old hunters, who were in the woods most of their time, told us they were

never troubled by their attacks, and the camping out parties, which we

encountered all over, seemed not disturbed by them. Still, while on the

subject, I will give the prescription which was kindly furnished us by

Dr. Kenworthy of Jacksonville, and which will doubtless prove a better

cure than the common one of getting drunk on whiskey; mix two

tablespoonfuls of the carbonate of ammonia with enough spirits of

camphor to make a paste. Apply this on a rag to the bite, changing the

rag as often as it gets discolored. Our medical associate gave his

approval to the remedy, and if those two authorities could not cure a

snake bite, no one can.

As our little yacht shot out from the St. John’s River, nearly two

hundred miles above the place where we had entered it, and came into

full view of that beautiful sheet of water, Lake George, thousands of

wild ducks rose three gunshots off, and flew away. The sight rejoiced

our eyes, for we had passed several days on the river without seeing any

large birds except the strange water-turkeys, or snake-birds.

Unfortunately we had no battery with us, and had to trust to finding a

point of land that the ducks would approach. This was no easy thing to

do, and we sailed half the length of the north shore, before reaching a

promising spot, a narrow point running out between two bays, and at the

outer end of which the birds were crowded together in flocks of

thousands. There was nothing to be done till the next morning, and

seeing a farm house on the neck of land, Mr. Seth Green went ashore to

get what information he could from the owner. This gentleman was at the

moment working in his garden, and although the thermometer stood at

eighty in the shade, he wore the encumbrance of a pair of long India

rubber boots. As these seemed rather out of accord with the torrid

temperature, he was delicately asked his reasons for wearing them;

“well,” he replied philosophically, “they cannot strike over those.”

This sounded ominously, for although, as I have said, we had heard a

good deal about snakes, we had seen nothing of them yet. Our doubts were

removed when the gentleman pointed out an immense dead rattlesnake

hanging on the limb of a bush, and added, “I killed him yesterday.” We

returned promptly to the yacht, contented to make our explorations by

water thereafter, till we should get over the effect of so sudden an

introduction to a new acquaintance.

Next day we devoted to the ducks, but we were not properly rigged for

them, and soon learned that without a battery we could not expect to

kill many in the wide waters of Lake George, they were mostly

broad-bills, but did not seem to be as healthy as our Northern ducks.

One of my men, who was an old gunner, said that their feathers appeared

to be burnt, as though they had been scorched by the sun. They are

continually chased by all the visitors to Florida, silly shooters, who

fire at them from every passing steamboat, or who pursue them in the

small steam yachts, which are becoming a feature of Southern travel. The

day following, we sailed across the lake to the south-west corner,

intending to ascend the Juniper Creek, which empties into it there. Mr.

Green and myself were all of the party who cared to make the

exploration; we took one of the small boats, and struck into the outlet,

which we had found without difficulty and commenced the ascent. It was a

strange, desolate river, quite unlike our Northern streams, slow and

sluggish most of the way, half grown up with grasses, weeds, and cabbage

plants, lined on either side by a rank, tall mass of reeds, that were

yellow with age, and approaching decay, overhung here and there by some

Southern plants or bushes, and once in a while winding between groves of

palmettos. There was a sombre, savage, and deadly appearance in the

water itself. We proceeded quietly for a time, but Mr. Green, who is

more alive to the contents of a stream than to its air of gloom or

brightness, broke the silence.

“Now,” he said, as he began setting up his rod, “I will show you my

favorite rig for catching big-mouthed bass. Look at that trolling spoon,

it is something of my own invention, although the tackle shops are

getting them lately.”

He had a special arrangement of feathers and tin, not be described on

paper, but long experience has made me skeptical about new all-killing

inventions, and possibly my countenance betrayed my thoughts, for he

went on, as he saw me getting out a cast of bass flies.

“I know” he observed, throwing his lure overboard, “that other rigs will

take some, but you see now, I shall have one within a minute.”

I had no choice, as I was seated in the bow of the boat, and could not

have used a trolling spoon if I had wished, as our lines would have

fouled. I had to put on flies and fish by casting.

“That is all very well,” I replied, “at certain times, and in a stream

like this, but if we had a large, deep river, I would rather use a

number of flies on a long leader.”

“There,” said Mr. Green at that moment as he struck a fish, “what did I

tell you. If you want to take black-bass, particularly this kind--”

He never finished his observation, for at that moment a four-pound fish

seized my fly, and it took our joint skill and attention to keep from

fouling. He managed, however, to get his fish in quickly, as it was a

small one, and give me an opportunity to play mine with the light tackle

that I was using. We saved them both, but they were only the forerunners

of an unlimited number. The spoon did undoubtedly kill the most, but

there were all that we both wanted, ten times over, and we had to stop

fishing, to avoid destroying more than we could use. I had the

satisfaction of catching the largest, however, with the fly.

We had brought a gun, as well as our fishing tackle. Suddenly from out

the bushes there rose with much noise and flurry a large bird. I had

hardly time to grab my gun, before he was out of range, and although I

fired, it was ineffectually.

“Oh, I am sorry you missed him,” said Mr. Green sadly, for he always

takes a dejected view of other people’s failures, “that was a Limpkin,

and I should like to have got him.”

“I thought it was a water turkey,” I replied, referring to the queer

creature that we had seen on ever stick and stump in the St. John’s.

“But whatever it was, it was out of range when I fired.”

“I think he was a Limpkin,” persisted my companion, “don’t you,

Charley?”

The stream was becoming rapidly narrower, and as that made the fishing

more difficult, and we had all the fish we wanted, we took in our lines.

Soon Charley had to cease rowing and resort to poling. We finally came

to where it was so narrow that there was scarcely room for the boat, and

the overhanging branches and bushes swept against our faces. We were

just about to give up any idea of further advance, when suddenly we shot

out from the small brook into a broad river. Instead of having ascended

to the head waters of the Juniper, we had hardly been in it at all,

having mistaken one of its mouths for the stream proper. The hour was

growing late, but this new river seemed so attractive, we were so sure

that it was the one we had been looking for, and that it must lead into

the lake not far from where we had left our yacht, that we determined to

descend it instead of retracing our course by the way we had come. Here

it was that I fired at and wounded a real Limpkin, as I have already

related. We went down with the current, having in the broad stream a

good chance to use the oars. The sun dropped behind the trees, which

were more numerous on the banks of this stream than they had been on

those of the other. On and on, and still we did not come to the outlet.

It began to look as though we had made a mistake, and this river was a

different one from what we had supposed. The prospect of spending the

night in the woods now forced itself upon us. My coat was thin, and

already the evening air felt chill; we could make a fire, for we were

too old stagers to be caught without matches, but the thought of snakes

was not pleasant, in spite of the assurances of their rarity, and the

excellence of our antidote.

Charley had been rowing a long time and was getting tired, so I offered

to “spell” him. This I did till the sun had gone entirely and darkness

was closing in upon us fast. Still no signs of the lake, or of an end

to this apparently endless river. Strange noises rang through the

forest, cries like those of wild beasts, but such as we had never heard

before, often as we had passed the night in the woods. I recalled what I

had read of the puma, the dreaded Southern tiger, and realized the fact

that against him number four duck shot would be a feeble defence. The

noises grew louder and louder, the forests fairly reverberated with the

unearthly screams till, when one more than usually horrible burst upon

our ears, Mr. Green inquired with a composure, which seemed slightly

assumed:

“What sort of an animal do you think it is that makes a noise like

that?”

I had never heard anything so appalling in my life before, but was not

to be outdone by my associate in coolness, and replied in a hollow

mockery of jest:

“That? Oh, that is a Limpkin. There can be no doubt of that.”

To this reply Mr. Green made no direct response, though his face

intimated that jokes on some occasions were out of place. The unnatural

stillness of the country made these noises perhaps more ominous and

unearthly. There was not a breath of air to stir the trees, no ripple or

current to the stream which might have diverted our thoughts by its

musical babble, and deathlike silence hung over the land, except when

broken by the ringing screams. The night was getting darker and darker,

and at last we came reluctantly to the conclusion that we had better

stop, in order to prepare our camp and make sure that there were no

rattlesnakes while there was light enough to do so.

“Let us go to the next turn,” said Seth, who had even a greater dislike

than the rest of us to spending the night in the woods. “If we do not

see any signs of an outlet there we may as well give it up.”

“Agreed,” I replied, as I bent once more to the oars, “let us keep up

hope.”

We proceeded, but with little expectation of any good results. What was

our surprise and joy then, on reaching the point, to behold the broad

waters of the lake spread out before us, and the Heartsease lying in

full view with her light up. The sight gave me such vigor that I rowed

the rest of the way, although Charley announced that he was rested and

wanted to take the oars.

In spite of the beauty of the country, there is a sense of desolation

about the wilder parts of Florida. The great trees, covered with moss,

and many of them going to decay; the dull, sluggish rivers with slow

discolored current, the low lands never rising above a shell-mound of

twenty feet height, combine to produce a feeling of dreary solitude.

This was particularly noticeable on the journey to and from Florida,

through the endless swamps, marshes, and reedy islands, which border the

narrow inland passages, and was only occasionally broken by passing a

town, or one of the few country seats that are to be found on the

unhealthy shores. Nor do there seem to be many water fowl on the

Southern Atlantic Coast, until you pass to the south of St. Augustine

and reach the neighborhood of Indian River. In making the trip to and

from the St. John’s, we only saw, beside the ducks and English snipe the

bay-birds, of which I have spoken, and a number of the handsome and

imposing white herons. These stood in solemn grandeur on the shore of

some creek, and seemed too glorious to shoot. Occasionally, however, we

could not resist, and had to murder them for their loveliness. Then one

of us would hide himself among the reeds on the shore, while the other

would go to the extreme end of the line of stately creatures, and put

them up. They fly slowly along the edge of the water, and if the

sportsman is well hid, there is no difficulty in getting a shot at them.

They should never be killed, unless it is to set them up and preserve

them, as was done for us by the Doctor.

In Lake George there were millions of mullets jumping continually out of

water, like dancing silver arrows, they would not take the fly, or

trolling spoon, and as we had all the fish we could use, we did not try

the net. We visited a splendid spring, called by a name which seems to

be given by common consent to most of the sulphur springs of Florida,

that of “silver.” It empties into the lake on the western side, about

half way down. A bank of snail shells, which must have been cast up by

the waves, marks the outlet. Many of them are in good

[Illustration: WILD TURKEY TRAP]

preservation, and quite pretty. Several sorts of fish were swimming

hither and thither in the spring, and the stream from it was filled with

a thin green moss, which the ladies converted into a becoming head

covering, and dubbed the “mermaid’s wig.” We saw some big turtles and

alligators and enjoyed a bath.

It was not safe to take the yacht through the narrow and crooked river

above Lake George, if we were to limit ourselves in the remotest degree

to time, for none but free winds would move us either one way or the

other, so we had to leave our pleasant aquatic mansion and descend to

the humdrum of the little stern wheel steamers, which were continually

passing us, and throwing up fountains of water from their latter ends.

By the same means we explored the Ocklawaha, which falls into the St.

John’s further north. The vessels are adapted to winding round through

the circuitous bends of the streams, where the trees nearly meet

overhead. In order to see their way, the pilots have to build fires of

pine knots at night on the top of the pilot house, which gives a

peculiarly romantic and interesting appearance to the scene. On the way

we saw no end of alligators and forest birds, especially the famous

Limpkin, which laughed, yelled and jeered at us in the security of a

regulation which forbids the discharge of fire arms on board the boats.

But we had to be getting back, if we were to complete our explorations

of the rest of Florida, so as soon as we could finish our steamboat

travel, we hurried down stream once more to Jacksonville. The run

outside to St. Augustine is not a long one, but this coast is more

dangerous than that further north. An easterly wind strikes it more

heavily, and the inlets are shoal. Especially is this the case in the

long run below Matanzas and Mosquito Inlets. In fact I cannot do better

than quote the words of a report on the inland navigation of that

section, kindly furnished me by Mr. J. E. Hilgard, the efficient

Superintendent of the United States Coast Survey, to whom I am under

many obligations for information and advice:

“There is no inland passage from the St. John’s to St. Augustine. You

must cross St. John’s bar (with eight feet mean low water), but must

take a pilot, as the channel is constantly shifting and changing in

depth. On the whole, I would advise taking a smooth time at St. Mary’s

and going outside all the way to St. Augustine. There is excellent

anchorage off Old Fernandina (but a short distance from the bar); and

the whole run is but about fifty miles, and can be made in a few hours.

“When off St. Augustine, a pilot will take you up to the town. There is

nine feet on the bar, but it constantly shifts. The famous ‘fresh water

springs’ in the ocean are situated eight miles S. by E half E. from the

‘entering buoy’ of this inlet.

“Bound to the southward, Matanzas River carries you from St. Augustine

through a distance of nearly thirteen miles to Matanzas Inlet. The

channel is winding, but has deep water for a little over seven miles,

where there is a seven-feet bar. Below this, for nearly two miles, five

feet is the least water, in a crooked channel close under the eastern

bank. Thence are depths varying from nine to twenty feet until Matanzas

Inlet is reached. The route to the southward leads across this inlet

with seven feet at mean low water; and on entering the river again, on

the south side of the inlet, you will have but six feet. Matanzas River

heads in the midst of extensive marshes between five and six miles to

the southward of the inlet; and but two feet can be carried through.

“Beyond this there is no navigation. Wishing to proceed still farther

southward, you must retrace your course to Matanzas Inlet, cross the bar

and skirt the Florida coast for about fifty miles to Mosquito Inlet.

Your pilot (for you must have obtained one at St. Augustine or you

cannot enter at all) will take you over the bar with about six feet at

mean low water--the mean rise and fall being two feet. Once in the inlet

you may go to the northward, through Halifax River to its head, twenty

miles above. While in the narrow passage, which extends from Mosquito

Inlet for over five miles to the northward, you will carry not less than

ten feet; but when the river expands you will find shoal water--the

depths varying from three to nine feet, except in occasional deep holes.

The channel is very narrow, and can only be followed by the stakes. The

small settlements of Port Orange and Daytona are situated on the western

bank of this river. Three feet at mean low water can be taken to its

head, but there is no lunar tide after you get above the influence of

the inlet--the rise and fall being governed solely by the winds.

“Going southward from Mosquito Inlet you enter Hillsborough River;

which, through a winding course between fifteen and sixteen miles long,

brings you into Mosquito Lagoon, twelve miles to the southward of the

inlet. Two miles and a half up Hillsborough River is New Smyrna, a

pretty little settlement on the western bank among orange, fig and

banana trees. Nine feet may be taken to abreast of the village; not less

than five feet is found for five miles beyond New Smyrna; but above that

point no more than three feet can be carried through to Mosquito

Lagoon;--although there are deep holes with as much as three and a half

fathoms. The channel is narrow and very crooked.

“Mosquito Lagoon is wide and shallow--its width ranging from one to two

and a half miles. It has a general course about S. E. by S., and is

between fifteen and sixteen miles long. A bar of three and a half feet

obstructs the entrance from Hillsborough River; but, that once crossed,

a good channel, with from five to ten feet takes you to within two miles

of its head. This terminates the inland navigation, unless the vessel be

able to pass through ‘Haul-over Canal.’ There is but a foot and a half

water in this canal.

“Indian River may be entered from seaward by Indian River Inlet, which

cuts through the sandy strip of coast-line about one hundred miles to

the southward of Mosquito Inlet and sixty miles below Cape Canaveral. I

would not advise a small vessel to attempt to navigate this coast; as it

is very dangerous should the wind come to the eastward (which it often

does in this vicinity), and there is no shelter except the precarious

anchorage under Canaveral. The bar at Indian River inlet has seven feet

over it at low water, but shifts constantly in both depth and position,

and can only be crossed in the smoothest weather. Besides the bar there

is an ‘Inner Bulkhead’--so called, over which there is but four feet. It

is said by the natives, however, that by taking what is called the Blue

Hole Passage, five feet to five and a half may be taken safely into the

river.”

The fishing at St. Augustine, which is a quaint old town, said to be the

oldest in America, and well worth a visit in itself, is better during

the winter months than any to be had north of it. Plenty of boatmen can

be hired who will pilot the stranger to the best spots. Around here the

foliage becomes still more tropical. The frost will occasionally

penetrate, and the most famous oranges are to be grown only still

further South, on the shell hammacks of the Indian and Banana Rivers,

where single trees bear as many as six thousand of these golden fruit

each. But we were actually tired of fishing, and looked on complacently

with the pitying superiority of accomplished success at the patient

anglers, trying their best to kill a few inoffensive finny creatures off

the bridge, across the St. Sebastian River, or bringing triumphantly

home in the native’s “dug out” the proceeds of a day’s hard work on the

bay. The Doctor was especially indifferent, and excited universal envy

when he told of the wondrous sport we had had during our two months of

recreation. While I do not for a moment intend to impugn his absolute

veracity, some of the adventures which he related had passed from my

memory or had grown since I heard them last. He would make no more

violent sporting effort than repeating these tales, and preferred to sit

on a chair upon the plaza, retailing them, with the encouragement of a

sour orange punch, or wander through the coquina built Fort Marion,

visit the old Cathedral, or roam the narrow streets. We laid in a supply

of native preserves, sketched the graceful date palm, and never ceased

wondering at the odd and extravagant beauty of the semi-equatorial

foliage and plants. There is interesting, although not very extensive

sailing in the harbor, and many varieties of bay snipe to be killed. A

yachting club, which will show every courtesy to brethren from the

North, has a boat house on the shore.

The further one goes South the better the shooting and fishing become,

and I would advise any one, who feels as if it were impossible ever to

get enough of either, not to stop in the St. John’s, or short of St.

Augustine. There he can spend several weeks profitably, and should

thence go on South to Halifax River and New Smyrna, where he will think

nothing of catching a hundred sheepshead in a day, no tiny fellows

either, but weighing from six to ten pounds a piece, or half as many

channel bass of fifteen to twenty pounds each, together with as many

sharks thrown in as he has stomach or tackle for. By the way, I forgot

to mention that among our outfit was a couple of shark hooks and a line

of a hundred fathoms, as thick as the little finger, all of which did

good but rather brutal service. Back of New Smyrna, the woods are full

of venison and bear meat, turkeys, and other feathered game. The best

duck shooting is in the southern part of the lagoon or river, but the

bars and beaches everywhere are alive with bay snipe, herons, cranes,

pelicans, and a thousand smaller birds.

But a truce to this everlasting repetition of sport, which was growing

monotonous even to Mr. Green’s insatiable sporting appetite, and turn to

something pleasanter. The royal lady of the house had resolved to give

us such a feast as we had not had before. The supplies laid in at St.

Augustine enabled her to carry out her idea, but the selection of the

day and date for the event was a mystery. I supposed it must have been

to celebrate my birthday, which, it is true, had come and gone six

months before; but as it had not yet been kept, needed commemoration as

badly as though it had never taken place at all. No matter what was the

moving inducement, the banquet was worthy of it. We men had been

smuggled out of the way while the preparations were being made, so that,

while we had a general idea of the drift of things, we had no

conception of the gorgeousness of the result. It was not a feast fit

for a king merely, but a sufficient banquet had all the gods been

invited. There were raw oysters, two kinds of fish, sheepshead boiled,

and channel bass baked, chicken soup, and turtle soup, from turtle

caught on the spot, roast wild turkey, and boiled mutton, scalloped

oysters, venison, and wild ducks, bay snipe, potato salad, peas,

tomatoes, beans, and baked sweet potatoes, while for dessert there was

such an array of goodies, that the room in my log book was in danger of

running short, and I could only record a few, such as fresh cake,

strawberries, spiced figs, and all the preserves and spiced fruits that

the table would hold, closing with cheese and coffee. The only wonder

was, that after such a dinner to which our appetites and our loyalty

both pressed us to do more than ample justice, any of the party

survived. If you have doubts of our state of minds and bodies, go on a

three months’ cruise and wind up with such a dinner and “you will know

how it is yourself.”

Of all places on the eastern shore of Florida, the Indian and Banana

Rivers are the most delightful and interesting. Here, when you are once

inside the bar, which, as I have said, is a little perilous, there is

room and occupation for a winter. The salt water fishing is mainly near

the inlet, but in the tributary streams is an unlimited supply of the

fresh water varieties. The sailing is splendid, and the climate, except

for its warmth, delicious. By the time the reader peruses these pages,

it is probable that inland communication will have been opened with the

Indian River, either by the “Haul-over,” which in the year 1882 was only

twelve feet wide and one foot and a half deep, or from the St. John’s,

by the way of Lake Washington; and that there will be finished another

canal from Indian River to Lake Worth and Biscayne Bay, making a safe

and easy passage round the keys to the Gulf side. This was to have been

done when we were there, and if not yet finished, soon will be.

Then if the sportsman is not yet satiated, or if he is suffering from

consumption, and wishes to regain his health, he can make the grandest

trip in the world, by either sending his yacht to Jacksonville, or to

Cedar Keys, or buying one there, and spending the entire winter in the

exploration of the southern part of Florida. As it is, the voyage from

the Indian River is not difficult or dangerous. Numerous keys or islands

make a shelter from the seas, and once on the Gulf side, the climate,

the country, the water, everything is delightful. Storms are rare, the

Gulf is generally smooth, harbors are numerous, and the shooting is

unsurpassed by any in the world. If the sportsman does not take his own

vessel, he can go by railroad directly to Cedar Keys, and thence take

what conveyance he prefers farther south. At Cedar Keys small sail

boats, suitable to those shallow waters, can be hired, as well as

guides, if they are needed. To enjoy a visit to Florida in its full

scope and meaning, and to make it an expedition never to be forgotten,

make up a pleasant party, hire a sailing vessel, and her master as

pilot, and coast along from Cedar Keys in water mostly not more than two

feet deep, between forests of primeval wildness, in company with

countless water-fowl and over unnumbered fish, taking toll from turkey,

bear, and alligator, as you go. Sail around the Gulf shore and Cape

Sable, and finally up the eastern shore of Florida, into the Indian

River. Remain there till your heart is glutted with sport, and your

palate with fruit, and thence return to the North by rail or boat. Such

a trip makes a date of delight in one’s life.

On the Gulf side the most interesting spots are the rivers which flow

into the sea, the Caloosahatchee, Crystal and Hamosassa, all of them

full of fish and game. Alligators, the sport of killing which is indeed

more to be honored in the breach than in the observance, are so abundant

as to be almost troublesome. The only difficulty with Florida is that

the sport is excessive, and that any one except sporting gourmands will

get tired of it. Even Mr. Green, who, as I have said, is almost

insatiable, became surfeited, the Doctor and myself being long before

content. The voyager, whether by sea or land, must bring certain books

with him, such as will not so much help him pass the time, as assist him

in his researches. He will find a thousand things to amuse and occupy

his hours, but will need information which he can not obtain on the

ground. The vast and quaint variety of shells which he will pick up, the

new and curious birds and fish he will kill, but above all, the strange

mass of tropical flowers, plants, and trees, which he will meet at every

foot of the route, require to appreciate them not only all the books

which have been written specially on this portion of our country, but a

well selected assortment of popular botanical and conchological works,

and ichthyological also, if he is not up in that subject.

There is no shooting and little fishing directly around Cedar Keys,

where the wayfarer doth very much abound, but some twenty miles south

Colonel Wingate keeps a sportsman’s hotel, and he can ensure the land

traveller a good time, without separation from his family for an

extended period. His place is at Gulf Hammock, and to reach it, the

sportsman leaves the cars at the station just short of Cedar Keys. From

his house parties are made up to explore the waters further south with

the aid of boats and guides. I mention his place because he is well

known to many of my Northern readers.

I have spoken mostly of the coast shooting, because it was what we

mainly had in view in our trip, but it must not be imagined that it is

the only kind of sport to be had. We took no dogs, but meeting a party

of Northern sportsmen at Gainesville, we tried the quail. The sport was

magnificent, with a single drawback. There was no trouble in killing

seventy-five birds to three guns, and several times the bag exceeded a

hundred, once reaching a hundred and six; but the weather was so hot

that it did not seem like quail shooting, and the true exhilaration of

the sport, as we Northerners know it, was lost. Deer are plenty

everywhere, but to hunt them to any advantage, you must put yourself

under the guidance of the native hunters. We only tried it once, and

then could use but a small part of our venison on account of the heat of

the weather. Bears are occasionally shot; we did not see any, probably

because we were not looking for them, and if any one has the patience,

he can kill wild turkeys. Good water-fowl shooting is also to be had on

the uplands in any of the innumerable lakes which dot Florida from one

end to the other, if they are not too near civilization. A very capital

house was kept by a former employee of Delmonico, at a town called

Waldo, where inland sport of all kinds could be had in reasonable

amounts. It seems almost invidious to specify particular places, as so

far as I could judge, there was shooting and fishing everywhere off the

regular beaten track of tourists.

“Doctor,” remarked Mr. Green with a quiet subdued intonation which long

practice enabled me to recognize as malice aforethought, “Do you know

what bird I prefer to eat?”

“I should presume from your past actions,” replied the learned gentleman

thus addressed, “that of all the birds, which swim, fly, or have

feathers, you give a decided preference to broiled duck.”

“Especially,” I interposed, in order to head off the coming attack if

possible, “provided that the duck is cooked over an open fire in the

cabin when the rest of the party are at breakfast.”

“Broiled duck is good,” Mr. Green responded, uncrushed, “if

unreasonable people do not deprive it of its natural flavor by

complaining of the manner in which it is cooked. But there is a better

bird than even a wild duck.”

“Yes,” said the doctor, “there’s the woodcock, but what is the use of

exciting our minds, and aggravating our palates by referring to

abstractions, which cannot be realized as there are no woodcock in

Florida?”

“There is a good bird in Florida, the very one I refer to, and which

could be killed, if a person was allowed to stop on hour or two and not

be kept forever on the move like the wandering Jew,” persisted Mr.

Green, cocking back his chair on its hind legs, a favorite position of

his, although he had already reduced two of them to kindling wood by the

operation.

“You don’t mean bay snipe!” exclaimed the doctor in a disgusted tone,

“we have had enough of them.”

“He probably alludes to water-turkey,” I observed quietly, “he has

tasted every thing else.”

“I don’t mean water-turkey either, although for all you can tell it may

be a good bird to eat. I mean turkey without the water.” With that he

brought the front legs of his chair to their natural position with a

thud that shook the deck.

“Turkey,” shouted the doctor with enthusiasm, “just talk turkey to me,

tell me where and when and how. I would swim ashore, if there was a

chicken much more a turkey in sight, or the hut of a darkey, who might

have either to sell.”

“Well then suppose we go ashore and kill one,” remarked Seth with quiet

complacency, as though such a feat were the simplest everyday occurrence

of life.

That settled it. “Oh dear, I should so like a piece of turkey” came from

the cabin. “Yes, I am so tired of fish,” was the chorussed approval, and

although I felt assured that, strangers as we were to the country, and

without a guide accustomed to the work, there would be no chance of

success, I had to give in and come to anchor.

Mr. Green got out his rifle, and the doctor his breech-loader, taking a

dozen cartridges loaded with buck-shot. Our head man Charley was to

accompany them, while I remained in charge of the yacht. None of us knew

by experience much of the habits of turkeys, and as it was still early

in the day it was determined to start at once, and return again on the

following morning if it should be deemed advisible.

“Now,” said the doctor, “if we only had a turkey call, we would be sure

to succeed.”

“Can you use the call?” I inquired.

“Oh no,” he answered promptly, “but I dare say Mr. Green can.”

Seth said nothing when I looked at him for a response, leaving me to

imply what I pleased as to his accomplishments. I had suddenly

remembered that I had one aboard among some old shooting traps which had

been thrown in together as a sort of refuse addition. Being perfectly

confident that neither of the turkey hunters could use the “strange

device,” it was with a malicious pleasure that I went below, and after a

short search found it. An odd-looking affair it was, which I had once

been able to use, but time had utterly obliterated the recollection of

the way to manage it. At one end was a piece of bone about four inches

long with a hole through it, and a larger mouthpiece of wood at the

other. Blowing through it had no effect whatever, as I had previously

found out, and the memory of the proper labial pucker had passed from my

mind and my lips. I handed it calmly to the doctor without a word. He

held it in his hand regarding it with puzzled uncertainty, evidently to

make up his mind, which end was to go in his mouth, till noticing the

knob on the smaller, he correctly concluded that that was the part to

blow through, and applied it to his lips. Then he blew, at first mildly,

producing no result other than a gentle hissing of air; he increased the

force, the hissing was louder, but that was all, no sound which by the

most vigorous imagination could be construed into the cluck of a gobbler

issued. He next tried to pucker up his lips like the trumpeter breathing

into his trumpet, but with worse effect if possible than before.

Dismayed at his futile efforts, he gazed critically into the end as

though some of the machinery must have been lost, but finding nothing to

encourage such a supposition, gave up the attempt and held it out to Mr.

Green, who had been watching the operation with interest. The latter

gentleman was not to be caught, and waving it indifferently aside said

with admirable assurance:

“We won’t need that, turkeys are too plenty, all we shall have to do

will be to keep our eyes open to kill as many as we want.”

In that happy state of confidence they departed. We were anchored some

little distance from the shore on account of the shallowness of the

water, but I thought I heard several shots and wondered what they had

found to fire at, as the probability of their killing a turkey was too

slight to be worth considering. Early in the afternoon they returned

with an air of curious self gratulation in their behavior, the manner of

persons who had done an act on which they plumed themselves, but which

would bear a good deal of concealment. This was noticeable even before

they had reached the yacht, and prepared me in a measure for what

followed--the production of a fine fat gobbler from the stem of the

boat. Charley handed it up to me with an air of deprecation quite in

contrast to the truculence with which Seth climbed on deck and

exclaimed:

“There, what did I tell you, are you satisfied now? Where would the

supplies come from to keep us alive, except for me. You would have had

us down to hard tack and salt junk long ago, if it hadn’t been for the

fish and birds I have had to kill. Have you anything to say against

that?”

I was examining the turkey critically. I had heard of turkey pens, and

suspected that this came from one of them, but did not see how to prove

the fact. Its head had been shot nearly off.

“That is where the ball hit him, and I call it a pretty good shot at

twenty rods,” continued Mr. Green, referring to the wounded spot.

“Was he as far off as that?” I inquired, as I handed him over to be

picked. I was not familiar enough with a trapped turkey to detect the

deceit if there was any, and Seth, seeing my inability, made the most of

it.

“What is to be our reward for the hard work we have been doing? I tell

you it is no easy thing to stalk a turkey, and if any other of the party

had done as much, I wouldn’t grudge them the nicest sour orange punch

that could be made.”

Turkeys are caught in parts of the country by a curious trap or pen, and

I had heard that such a pen was used in Florida. It is built of logs on

the four sides and over the top, a hole being left at one side just

large enough to allow the bird to enter in a stooping posture. Corn is

strewed on the ground leading to this hole, and scattered about so as to

attract attention, and the way the trap works is this: the turkey finds

the food and follows it, picking up grain after grain, keeping his head

bent down, and in that posture enters the pen without trouble. There he

remains without a suspicion of wrong till he has consumed all the corn.

After the food so kindly supplied is gone, he begins to think of moving

on, when to his surprise he discovers that man rarely does any factor

without expecting a return, no less in this case than the toothsome body

of the recipient. The turkey never stoops, even to save his life, he

looks upward and not downward, he will not bow his royal head to escape

by the road through which he entered. Becoming alarmed he springs up,

dashing himself against the logs, he thrusts his head between the

crevices and tries to fly through the roof by main force, but in vain,

the pen is too strong, and the only method of escape which is open he

will not condescend to take.

The owner of such a pen does not visit it regularly, and the turkeys are

often shut up in it for days, frequently falling a prey to wild cats

that find them before their lawful proprietor comes to claim them. My

unholy suspicions were that the doctor, the Superintendent of the New

York Fishery Commission, and the captain of the yacht Heartsease had

accidentally found such a pen, and acted the part of the wild cat. For

although I could see nothing suspicious about the bird, it was strange

that persons who had stalked a wild turkey through a dense Southern

forest hardly seemed to be tired, and wished to sit up half the night to

smoke and talk. Still the bird proved to be delicious, and the entire

party were grateful for him whether honestly obtained or not, so little

does hunger weigh questions of morality.

Two days after the turkey adventure, when we were sailing along before a

mild breeze, Mr. Green steering, the doctor smoking, and the rest of us

reading, Charley suddenly called out from forward where he was standing:

“Look at that large bird flying over the woods to the west.”

We all looked in the direction indicated, and saw an immense bird

moving grandly and steadily, with slowly beating wings and extended neck

and legs.

“What an enormous creature,” exclaimed one of the ladies.

“It must be a rock,” chimed in the other.

“Here take the stick, while I get the glass,” saying which, Mr. Green

let go of the tiller, and plunged into the cabin to reappear with the

binocular, which he fixed on the wondrous bird.

“What do you make out of him?” inquired the doctor, who had forgotten

his pipe in the excitement till it had gone out.

“It is a crane,” replied Seth, “but the largest one ever I saw.

Charley,” he asked our captain, “did you ever see such a crane as that

before?”

“No, I never did,” was the answer. “It must be something of the sort

however, from the way it flies and holds its legs.”

“I wonder whether it can be the whooping crane?” I inquired, “I have

heard that they are occasionally seen on the coast, although supposed to

be more numerous in the interior.”

“Oh can’t you shoot it, what feathers it must have for hats.” The origin

of this remark was obvious.

“If you want feathers a yard long! Why it is nearly as large as an

ostrich.”

“Well, don’t we use ostrich feathers? Oh do shoot it, I want some long

white feathers.”

“It is a little too far off,” I replied.

“How far?” was the persistent inquiry.

“I should say about a mile.”

“That is the way always,” was the disgusted response, “you pretend to be

great sportsmen, but you say every bird we meet is too far off. If I

knew how to shoot, I wouldn’t be making excuses all the time. If we ever

come to Florida again, I hope we will have somebody with us who can hit

his mark, and not pretend that every bird is too far off.”

At this the fair speaker retired below just as the crane disappeared

over the distant trees.

It was several days after this occurrence that we saw what we took to be

another whooping crane standing at the edge of the water, not far from

some bushes. He was quite white, and towered up against a back ground of

grass and sand-bar till his head seemed to come in line with the trees

beyond, and his body to be as tall as that of a man. The yacht was

slowly approaching him by the aid of a light breeze, and Mr. Green was

growing more excited the nearer we came. The crane stood motionless, not

alarmed at the bigger bird, which was gradually swooping down upon him,

and apparently quite tame.

Mr. Green had redeemed his reputation with the rifle of late, my sarcasm

about the Limpkin, and some ironical allusions from the doctor had

improved his aim, so that we no longer smiled incredulously when he

brought out his rifle. In fact he was a splendid shot, as his

innumerable prizes taken at tournaments abundantly proved, but the

motion of the yacht had at first unsettled his aim. There was not more

than half a mile between us and the bird,

[Illustration: GREEN TURTLE.]

which seemed to loom up higher and higher as we approached.

“Hadn’t we better make sure of him,” asked Seth anxiously, “we may never

have such another chance. You tell me these cranes are very scarce!”

“Perhaps we had,” I answered, “what do you think we had better do?”

“By all means,” interrupted the doctor, who was roused out of his usual

equanimity, “let us make every effort to kill him as a specimen. They

are exceedingly rare.”

“If you lay to,” replied Seth, “and let Charley row me ashore, I will

get behind those bushes, and think I can crawl within range of him.”

“If you are willing to take the trouble on the chances,” I answered.

“Do, Mr. Green,” begged the ladies both together, their hopes of such

feathers as had never yet graced bonnet quite carrying them into

enthusiasm.

Seth did not consider the labor of crawling through the matted dense

undergrowth in the hot sun, nor the danger of snakes in the long grass,

all that he saw was the immense bird and all that he wanted was to kill

it. In a moment he and Charley were off in the boat, and pulling for the

shore. Heartsease was luffed up into the wind, and lay motionless on the

scarcely ruffled water, contrasting by its apparent indifference with

the eager excitement of the party on board. We watched the small boat

till it reached the bank, and was hastily concealed by Charley, while

Mr. Green disappeared immediately in the bushes. Then we could see

nothing further except the big bird, which had not been alarmed by the

preliminaries, and which there was now every probability would become

our prize. The ladies were in their hearts already priding themselves on

the loves of bonnets to which his gorgeous attire was to contribute, the

doctor had already dissected and stuffed him in imagination, and I was

wondering whether he was good to eat. We waited till our patience was

more than exhausted. Crawling through the tangled mass of a Southern

swamp is no easy matter, and we could do nothing but watch the imposing

bird standing there, unterrified, and as still as though he were a

graven image, instead of being a thing of beauty and vitality.

Suddenly he gave a great leap into the air, and then fell upon the sand

in death throes which had almost ceased before the report of the

discharged rifle came booming over the water. In a moment the deceitful

calm of the previous moment passed away, we hauled aft our sheets, and

swinging round her head, got Heartsease under way. Charley shoved out

the dinkey which he had concealed in the bushes, and in another minute

Mr. Green pushed his way through the underbrush to the side of his

magnificent victim. When our boatman joined him, the two stood for some

time gazing at and handling the crane, while we waited impatiently for

their return.

At last they threw the game, it seemed to us irreverently, into the

bottom of the dinkey, and pushed off. We awaited their approach with

eagerness, arising from the fact that none of us had ever seen the

American whooping crane, and were proud of being the participants in the

capture of one. The two fortunate sportsmen did not hurry themselves to

gratify our desires, but appeared exceedingly at their ease, and it was

not till they had nearly arrived that we discovered the cause of their

indifference by perceiving in the boat not a whooping crane at all, but

an ordinary white heron. The clearness of the atmosphere, the bright

rays of the sun, or the nature of the background had tended to mislead

us and had added immensely to the stature of the bird. The ladies

retired to the cabin hatless, so to speak, the doctor was for throwing

the deceiver overboard instead of skinning him, and to this day I am

uncertain as to the taste of the great American whooping crane.

The Indian River is so shallow in places, that the direction on the

chart of Currituck Sound could be applied to it: “Only three feet of

water can be carried, and that with difficulty.” In other parts it is

deeper; it varies in width from one mile to three, and as a general rule

where it is narrow, it is deep, and where it is wide, it is shallow.

Although it approaches nearly to Mosquito Lagoon, it does not join the

latter unfortunately, and a canal has been cut called the Haul-over, of

which I have already spoken. In the Haul-over, which is only fourteen

feet wide, there is but one foot and a half of water, and for some

distance below not much more than two. There are many rivers emptying

into the Indian River on the west or shore side; these are generally

deep and full of fish, and well repay the explorer. The only inlets are

in the southern end, Jupiter Inlet at the lowest extremity, and Indian

River Inlet a short distance above.

Banana River, which is rather a branch of Indian River than a distinct

stream, is in places broader and deeper; it connects with the main river

at its southern extremity, and by Banana Creek at the northerly end. The

creek of the name is both narrow and shallow, and can only be used by

small craft. There is most interesting yachting in the Halifax and

Hillsborough, north and south of New Smyrna, which is situated on the

Hillsborough, about three miles from Mosquito Inlet, as well as in

Mosquito Lagoon, which is reached through a narrow and tortuous channel

among innumerable islands from the Hillsborough. So also do the Indian

and Banana rivers furnish safe and delightful cruising grounds, with

plenty of harbors or shelter for even small open vessels, the only

danger being that of running on oyster shoals.

A narrow strip of sand separates Indian River from the ocean, and the

yachtsman can occasionally, by climbing into the rigging, see the blue

waves of the Atlantic. On this bar the bay-birds often collect in large

flocks, and may be killed in numbers more than needed. They are of the

same kinds which have already been described, and are found in the

summer at the North. Bear are occasionally met with, and now and then a

wild-cat; deer are more plenty, but the sportsman will be fortunate if

he finds any of these unless he goes especially after them.

A yacht-club has been established at New Smyrna, with headquarters in

Indian River, where the members expect to do a large part of their

yachting. An excellent choice was made at the first election of

officers, and its prospects for introducing the sport into the waters of

Florida are promising. The president is Mr. Herman Oelrichs, and the

vice president Mr. Girard Stuyvesant, both of New York.

In extended yachting trips there is often trouble in getting fresh

water, a difficulty which is increased at the South, where the land is

low, and there are none of what at the North would be called springs;

the ice-cold jets of water bubbling from the ground. It is not generally

known that sand is so effectual a filter, that drinkable water can be

obtained by digging down into it almost anywhere. To take advantage of

this, and for many other purposes, it is advisable to carry a spade on

board. Water so obtained may be a little brackish, but by boiling it

will be made, if not quite palatable, at least healthy. Rain falling on

the deck is apt to take up portions of the paint, infinitesimally small,

perhaps, but sufficient to give an unpleasant and unhealthy taste. On

the western keys a bush with a peculiar rich leaf, easily

distinguishable by those who have once seen it, often grows where water

is to be found.

It would be easy to go on recounting the attractions of Florida

indefinitely; there is always something more to say, a fresh point of

interest to speak of, additional beauties to describe, other and still

other reasons for visiting this strange and delightful country. There is

but one way in which even a slight appreciation of the charms of Florida

can be obtained; and that is, to go there as often and stay there as

long as possible. For health, for recreation, for sport, no place in the

world can be compared with it. A vast portion, that of the Everglades,

the “Grassy Water” of the native Seminoles, has never been explored, and

there are thousands of rivers, lakes, and ponds which have rarely been

disturbed by the presence of a white man, and which would amply reward

the adventurous spirit who would explore them.

When we first arrived in Florida, the flowers, which its name promised

us, were not to be seen. Deceived by the temperature and a thermometer

that recorded rarely less than eighty degrees, we failed to recognize

the season of the year, or recall the truism that, as all nature must

have its spring, it must also have its winter. The climate and the

foliage were as summer-like as we had ever seen them. The grand orange

trees, with their brilliant shining green, flecked with spots of golden

yellow, were the most gorgeous sight that our eyes had ever beheld in

field or forest. The moss-covered forest evergreens, although turned

slightly brown, were still magnificent in their richness of foliage.

There were bare limbs here and there of deciduous trees, but their

nakedness was nearly covered by the unfading leaves of their neighbors.

The shrubs and undergrowth were as bright in hue, seemingly, to our

uneducated eyes as possible. But by the time we were leaving, even we

could notice a decided change. The green had put on a deeper verdancy,

the brown had disappeared, and suddenly there sprang into life a myriad

of flowers. The yellow jessamine covered the swamps and filled them with

a mass of perfume as well as an array of loveliness. Scarlet lobelias

thrust their bright heads boldly from the water-side, along with white

lilies and arrow-heads, and on the higher grounds hundreds of wild

flowers, many of which we could not name, charmed us with their beauty.

The magnificent magnolia was bursting into bud. As the orange trees were

being denuded of their ripe fruit, the tiny sweet smelling blossoms made

their appearance, till the branches bore at one and the same time, buds,

flowers, and green and ripe fruit. The inland lakes and ponds were

covered with pond lilies, which are called “bonnets” by the natives, and

made a delicious picture with the broad green leaves and the bright

yellow flowers. Language fails in describing the exquisite beauty of the

verdure of the country. We found Florida laden with fruit; we left it

covered with flowers.

CHAPTER III.

CURRITUCK MARSHES.

Duck shooting has held its own better than any other kind of sport in

the States east of the Mississippi. Ruffed grouse have almost

disappeared, woodcock have grown scarcer and scarcer, English-snipe

visit us less abundantly, while the bay-birds have nearly ceased to be

in sections where they were once overwhelmingly abundant, but it is

possible still, on Lake Erie, along the coast, and at many inland places

to make a fair, if not, as often happens, an excellent bag, of ducks.

But the best place, one where the birds seem to exist in their original

abundance, and where magnificent shooting is still to be had, is on the

eastern shore of North-Carolina. Of this favored locality Currituck is

the most famous. So celebrated is this county that the entire marshes,

the duck-haunted lowlands, have been purchased, and to-day there is

absolutely no free shooting to be had. A stranger is as thoroughly

debarred as if he were in the most barren portion of our land. No one is

allowed to shoot from a battery unless he is a native, and to get a

chance to go out at all after the innumerable flocks of wild-fowl that

temptingly cover the water, the visitor must belong to one of the

numerous sporting clubs which have so wisely and assiduously secured all

the shooting grounds, and most of which are so particular that they

exclude invited guests.

But if you are one of the favored shareholders you can have a glorious

time. Fifty ducks a day to each gun is no unusual average, and while a

hundred is a large bag, a hundred and fifty is nothing uncommon, and as

many as two hundred and fifty have been killed by a sportsman and his

gunner in a single day. Moreover the birds are of the best possible

kind; there are canvas-backs in the open water, red-heads in still

greater abundance, and broad-bills or blue-bills so plenty that they are

rarely shot at, while in the pond holes black-ducks, mallards, and

widgeons abound. These are all well-fed and fat, and such a thing as a

poor duck is unknown. The law wisely forbids shooting before sunrise or

after sunset, and the club members are wise enough to keep the law,

knowing as they do that one gun fired after sunset is more injurious

than a dozen during the day, so that the ducks do not seem to diminish

but rather to increase and multiply, and as fine a day’s sport has been

had by the members of the club during the past few years as at any time

in the history of the country. A result partly due to breech-loaders

perhaps, while from a battery it is nothing unusual to kill a hundred

brace of red-heads or canvas-backs, and some times twice as many.

This favored spot is, as it ought to be, of no easy access. The

sportsmen must first go to Norfolk and thence take either the little

steamboat Cygnet, endeared to so many of us by the memory of pleasant

excursions in the past, or travel by a new railroad just finished which

passes twenty miles from the traveller’s destination, a place known from

the name of the enterprising widow lady who formerly owned it, as Van

Slyck’s Landing. By boat the entire day is spent in the journey, and by

rail it is not much shorter, but the boat arrives so late that it is not

always possible to make the trip across from the landing to the club

house the same night. Opposite Van Slyck’s are the two most famous and

successful sporting clubs in that section of the United States, the

Currituck and the Palmer’s Island clubs. They own or control immense

tracts of land, and below them to the southward the bay widens out so

that there is no chance to kill ducks to advantage. There are a few good

stands at Kitty Hawk Bay, thirty miles further south, and at the lower

end of Roanoke Island Raft ducks can be shot from batteries. Then again

along the eastern shore of Pamlico Sound, at Hatteras and Ocracoke

inlets and in the western part of Core Sound, to the south of Harker’s

Island, there is good duck, and in its season brant shooting, but these

places can only be reached by the fortunate sportsman who has his own

private conveyance. Therefore it may practically be said that the Palmer

Island marshes are the _ultima thule_ of duck shooting.

As a general thing, there is attached to every sporting club some old

experienced gunner full of wild-fowl lore and quaint and curious

phrases, who is a mine of interesting information to him who will

explore the vein. Such a one belonged to the Palmer Island club, in the

person of William S. Foster, a resident of Long Island, who had followed

Shinnecock Bay for many years, knew the ways and habits of the birds as

well as if he were one of them, and was as fond of shooting as the most

inveterate sportsman. Honest to a farthing, faithful, anxious to give

the person he was with the best sport he could, he was ready to take any

amount of trouble, endure any labor for a good day among the ducks, the

members of the club looked on him, rather as a friend than a paid

employee. Many is the hour I have spent with him on the Currituck

marshes, many a day of splendid shooting have I had, many the big bag

have I made with his aid. One of his peculiarities was that he never was

in a hurry. No matter how thick the birds were, how easy it seemed to

choose a point, he would stand quietly in the bow of the boat with the

sea-glass in his hand scanning the movements of the flocks and

deliberately selecting the best place. I would often grow impatient and

fear he was losing valuable time, but the result rarely failed to

justify his judgment and vindicate his deliberation.

The first and most important object, as he explained it under such

circumstances, was to so arrange the stools that the ducks would “come

right,” that is would approach without fear and would offer the

sportsman a fair shot. This is a matter of the greatest moment and is

not understood by men who consider themselves expert wild-fowlers.

First, there is the question of the wind to take note of, then the

position of the sun, next the cover, and last, but by no means least,

the nature of the species of ducks that are flying. It will not do to

string out the decoys dead to lee-ward of a point as is so often seen,

except perhaps when canvas-backs and red-heads are alone expected,

mallards, sprigtails, and especially the wary black-duck will never or

rarely approach a point. If a point, with the wind blowing directly off

from it has to be chosen, it is better to stretch the decoys around to

one side of it so that the wind “will catch the birds under the wing” as

he expressed it and swing them in farther than they expected. Points

projecting far out into the open water are the favorites of tyro

gunners, but they are especially unsuited for any of the marsh ducks,

the black-ducks, mallards, sprigtails, and even the widgeons, all of

which give a wide berth to such spots, especially after they have been

shot at a few times, and most of which prefer to alight close under the

lee of a bank, in the “slick” as it is called.

There are two great divisions of ducks, the deep water, diving or raft

ducks, and the shoal water or marsh ducks, which reach down for their

food and can never feed in water more than two feet deep. The habits of

these two varieties are remarkably dissimilar. The open-water birds,

fearless of ambush, are less timid than their pond-loving brethren, who

dread an enemy in every tuft of grass or bunch of reeds, when

canvas-backs once make up their minds to come to the stools, they come

straight on regardless of deficiences in the gunner’s blind, and very

frequently pass completely over the stools. On the other hand, a

black-duck in approaching the stand is a model of caution, he is all

eyes and ears, the slightest movement by the sportsman, the least

evidence of danger will arouse his suspicions, and he will veer suddenly

off. Black-ducks and mallards rarely cross the stools to alight at the

head of them, but if they reach them at all, drop in at the lower end,

or more often stop short and alight at a distance just tantalizingly out

of shot, where they remain to lure off every fresh arrival unless they

are driven away. Their noses are especially keen, and care must be taken

to so arrange the stand that the wind will not carry the scent of the

gunner across the water to the lee-ward of the decoys, and the birds get

it before they reach them. If they come in contact with such a warning

they jump into the air as if they had been shot at, and flee with all

the speed that terror can lend to their usually vigorous wings. It is

desirable to set the stools under the lee of a bank of reeds or rushes,

for none of this class of ducks likes the open water, and the most

convenient plan is to place the stools to one side of the stand,

quartering as it were across the wind, so that even if the birds alight

before actually reaching them, they may be within gun-shot.

The location of the stand is most important. I remember once when I was

shooting from what is known in the club as “Kidder’s Point,” that I was

particularly impressed with this fact. The day had been dull and rather

quiet, with but a few birds stirring all through the morning; a haze lay

upon the marshes, not dense enough to prevent the ducks flying if they

had been so minded, which they did not seem to be, the wind scarcely

stirred the reeds or rippled the surface of the bay, which was spread

out before me. I was making a poor bag and hardly expected to do better,

when about midday there came a change over the spirit of the earth and

air, the clouds began to condense, the wind commenced to blow, the air

became rapidly colder, a thin steak of gray faintly marked the sky in

the northwest, while in the south the clouds grew blacker and denser.

Then the rain fell in spits and flurries viciously. The atmosphere

intimated a decided change in the weather, which the ducks were the

first to recognize and regulate their proceedings by. Evidently a vast

mass of widgeons were bedded to the lee-ward of us. They commenced to

fly not in their individual capacity, but as the part of a great

movement, as if suddenly they had made up their minds all to go. In

whisps of threes, fours, tens, twenties, in large flocks, or solitary

and alone, they came heading towards me directly across the marsh and

visible for miles. Then it was that I learned that I was not in exactly

the right place, that the birds for some reason best known to themselves

did not care to cross that spot in their migration. Most of them,

especially the largest flocks, passed outside of me and just beyond the

range of my gun. I was in the wrong place, I knew it, but I had no time

to move, the ducks

[Illustration: FLORIDA “CRACKER.”]

were flying too fast and too many of them came within range as it was

for me to lose the time necessary for a change. The rain that was

falling, although not heavy, interfered, and would have wet our guns and

clothes which were pretty well protected so long as we remained still.

So we stayed where we were, and as it was the sport was splendid. The

entire mass of widgeons had determined to change their feeding grounds,

and that at once, there was no moment when some of them were not visible

in the air, they came from one quarter and flew in one direction. I had

learned to whistle for widgeon as well as a professional, and did my

best with the aid of William Foster to inveigle them within range. Very

often we were successful, and it was an afternoon of excitement. Not a

minute passed that we did not have the prospect of a shot, and although

the larger flocks mostly kept on their course outside of us, the smaller

whisps and the single ones came in freely.

“Why is it that the birds seem to be all moving at once?” I asked of

William during the first moment of partial leisure that we had, “and why

are they all going in the same direction?”

“It is a question of food with them,” he replied, “as is the case with

most other animals. Widgeon can only get their food by reaching down for

it, so they must keep where the water is not over their heads; that is

so that they can touch bottom with their bills by tipping up, as you

have often seen tame ducks do. Now in these shallow marshes a change of

wind means a change of depth of water, it is shallower to windward, the

water being piled up to lee-ward and the ducks, knowing this, fly

against the wind, all the shoal feeding birds do so. The canvas-backs,

red-heads, and broad-bills make little account of the wind.”

“But,” I answered, “this wind cannot as yet have affected the depth of

water.”

“No, but the birds know that it soon will, and they are getting ready

for to-morrow. There will probably be a greater change than we expect,

wild animals know much more about the weather than man can ever learn,

they have a sort of instinct that is given to them for their protection.

I have always observed that the ducks sought the windward side of the

marshes. If the wind is blowing from the south, I make it a rule to go

to the southward to choose a stand, if from the west I look through the

western marshes and so on. Of course I am not always right.”

“No,” I interrupted him to remark, “but we have observed that the member

who goes out with you generally brings in the most birds, so the results

tend to demonstrate the theory.”

“Well, I have studied these marshes as thoroughly as I could; there is

not a tree that I have not climbed, nor an island that I have not

explored.”

“Can you see much from the trees when you do climb them?” I asked.

“Yes. A little elevation will enable you to see over the entire marsh,

and many a pond hole have I found in that way that is not known to most

of the gunners, and not always to the natives.”

“Keep still,” I remarked at this point of our conversation, “there comes

a magnificent flock of ducks, if they would only turn this way what a

shot they would give us.”

We were silent except for whistling, which we did with the finest

touches and the utmost skill. The flock, spread out against the distant

sky in an angle-pointed line, was headed directly for our hiding place.

We had crouched down on their first appearance, and grasping our guns

and watched them, waiting with increasing impatience and anxiety. Nearer

and nearer they came, over the distant marsh undisturbed by any other

gunner, and unattracted by other decoys until they were directly in

front of us and not more than three hundred yards distant. It was a

moment of intense excitement, for if we could once get our four barrels

into those serried ranks, there was no telling how many we might not

kill.

On they came still nearer, we whistled more softly and they answered

with undiminished confidence. Now they were over the meadow just beyond

our stools, a few minutes more of the same course and they would be in

our power. But alas, just as they struck the open water they deflected

their course a little, not much, but enough to carry them beyond fair

reach of our guns, so that when we fired we were only rewarded with

three birds that plunged from the flock headlong into the water. As they

were being retrieved by our four legged companion, William sagely

remarked:

“I have observed that generally there is some misfortune connected with

what would make the finest shots, and that at such times something is

sure to go wrong; either the birds do not come in right, or a twig or

reed gets in front of you, the gun misses fire, or something else

happens, so that the best chances usually prove the worst.”

“There is an awful deal in luck,” I replied, “after all is said,

Napoleon’s star was not an imaginary planet by any means. I never was a

lucky sportsman, and have had to earn my game by the sweat of my brow.”

“Did you ever know a sportsman who would admit that he was lucky?”

inquired William, calmly.

“I can’t say that I ever did; but if you will keep still and not fluster

me with unnecessary generalizations, I will kill that pair of widgeons

that are coming over the marsh, luck or no luck.”

After uttering that boast, I had to make my words good, and though I

detected a twinkle in my companion’s eye, as if he would not mind should

I happen to miss just that once, I took care to aim straight, not the

sort of excessive care that invariably results in a miss, but the rapid

and confident deliberation that first holds the gun right and then pulls

it off when it is right, without waiting until it gets wrong.

“Good,” said William, _sotto voce_, in his quiet way, as the two ducks,

doubled up by the full charge of shot came down splash into the mud,

close to our stand, “I have seen a good many misses when a man was most

sure of hitting; I hardly expected that you would kill them both so

neatly.”

The sport kept up. It is useless to describe each individual shot that

we made. There is endless variety in every one that is fired, for no two

birds come to the decoys precisely alike. There are never the same

conditions of wind, sun, position, readiness, and what not, so that each

is more or less of a surprise. These the sportsman enjoys at the time,

they constitute the great charm of shooting; but they would tire in the

repetition in the cold blood of white paper and black ink. It is enough

that we had a magnificent day’s sport; “magnificent” is not

hyperbolical; we had sport that will be a memory through life, and until

the age-weakened arms can no longer wield the faithful fowling piece,

nor the time-dimmed eyes note the birds approach. Our store of game lay

in a pile uncounted; we knew there was a goodly number, and when at last

the tired sun had performed his allotted task and gone to bed, we were

not surprised to add up nearly a hundred of what is one of the finest of

all the ducks, the handsome little widgeon. Few of our gunners, even the

oldest of them, know that there was a time when the widgeon was valued

more highly than the canvas-back, when in fact in firing a sitting shot

the market gunner would “shew” the latter out of the way, in order that

he might have a better chance at the former. Had we been in exactly the

right spot, there is no doubt that I would then have reached the bag of

two hundred, which it has been the ambition of my life to attain.

On another occasion I had the same misfortune, although from a different

cause. I was with Jesse that time, Jesse who, or Jesse what, I cannot

tell. So faithful and trustworthy a fellow must have another name, a

full name; but often as I have availed myself of his care in the marshes

of Currituck, I am ashamed to confess that I have forgotten it. Every

one calls him simply “Jesse,” out of kindly feeling no doubt, for a

better fellow never set out a stand of decoys; so as simply Jesse he

must go down to the immortality that this book will give him. He is

devoted to the pleasure of his employer, and never more delighted than

when the latter brings home a fine bag of birds; but he is not quite so

skillful as his older associate, William Foster. He had observed, when

out the day previous, that the birds had a favorite feeding place in a

little bay near what in club nomenclature is designated as “the

horse-shoe.” To this place we wended our way as soon as we could cross

the intervening three miles of distance. The bay was not large, and at

its mouth was contracted into two narrow points which were hardly a

hundred yards apart. I had never shot at this particular point, and

Jesse did not think of the effect of the sun when he made his selection.

One point was probably as favorable as the other, with that exception,

but the one he selected brought the birds directly between me and that

luminary when he shot his burning and blinding rays from mid-heaven.

The result was, that before the day was over, reeds and ducks and spots

swam before my eyes in prismatic hues. The heavens become alive with

them, mixed up with grasses and flowers, the gorgeous colors of

condensed sunlight. Scarlet ducks, golden ducks, fiery ducks floated

before my bewildered vision, interwoven with such flaming reeds and

rushes as were never seen by mortal eye before. To say that under the

circumstances I could not shoot with my accustomed skill, is

unnecessary; I could not help occasionally mistaking the flaming bird

for the natural one, and no doubt would have killed him, had he only

been real enough to kill. This was the second occasion when I might have

reached my stint of two hundred, if I had only been so fortunate as to

locate properly in the first place, or even had had the courage to

change when I found out that I was wrong.

There are myriads of wild geese and swans in Currituck Sound and its

adjoining waters. The swans are hard to kill, and it rarely falls to the

fortune of any sportsman to bag more than two or three of these

beautiful birds in a season, but the geese are shot in immense numbers

on favorable days--“goosing days,” as they are called. Such days are

made by a southwesterly wind blowing hard enough to constitute a gale,

and the harder the better, which causes the water to rise and enables

the geese to reach the beaches where they go to sand. For this shooting

a “stand,” as it is called, of tamed wild geese are required. The

sportsman hides himself in a large, water-tight box, which has been sunk

in the sand at the spot which the birds frequent, and the “stand” of

living decoys are tethered in front by stout strings fastened to their

legs and pinned to the ground. The geese come to the stools in flocks,

and the slaughter at times is enormous, as many as two hundred being no

unusual bag, and that is often rounded out with forty or fifty ducks. It

is customary on such occasions to put a live swan or two with the geese

decoys, if the sportsman happens to be so fortunate as to possess them,

and I never shall forget seeing four swans come to a stand which was

located some distance from my own, but in full view from it. I have

always believed that birds could converse and had a language of their

own, and on this occasion my theory received confirmation strong as holy

writ. When I have sat listening hour after hour to the unceasing

conversational cacklings of geese, who appear to be the most talkative

of birds, I fancied that I could almost make out the words they uttered,

and which were certainly understood by the fowls themselves, as the

dullest observer would be convinced by their actions. Their expressions

of comfort, their mild observations about the weather may not have been

quite comprehensible, but their cries of alarm, their notes of warning,

no one could mistake. Ignorant hearers not versed in goose language, and

a very pretty tongue I have no doubt it is, may call it contemptuously

“gabble,” but so is the language of any foreigner “gabble” to those who

do not understand it.

In the instance that I am about to mention with the swans, there could

be no difficulty in understanding every word. There were four of them,

the wise father, the inquisitive mother, and two pretty, innocent,

dove-colored cygnets. They were sailing along far up in the heavens,

away out of danger, when the attention of the young ones was attracted

to a nice, gentle old swan seated happily among a body of geese that

were evidently having a good time and abundant food. In all the

innocence of their uncorrupted hearts they uttered a shout of joy and

started to join him, the mother who was curious to understand the

meaning of so happy a combination, following eagerly behind them. In

vain the cautious father warned them to “go slow.” They would not stop

to listen or to heed. On they flew or swam after alighting on the water,

giving free expression to their feelings of pleasure. Louder and louder

grew the warning notes of the head of the house, who hung back and tried

to keep the others back, but his efforts were useless, the young were

guileless, and the foolish wife inquisitive. He was too devoted to leave

his family, although the danger into which they were running was

apparent to him. Soon his worst fears were realized. He was out of

gunshot, but his wife and children were within the fatal reach of the

deadly gun. Several loud reports followed one another, and all was over.

In an instant he was childless and wifeless. The two cygnets were killed

dead, but the mother was able to fly a hundred yards, and it was pitiful

to see him go to her, braving all danger, and to hear his cries of

lamentation. He could not save her, however, and when the boat

approached with a gunner to complete the deadly work, the poor old swan

had to leave her. Still he kept circling round for some time and filling

the air with his bitter lamentations.

In wild fowl shooting it is essential to learn the various calls of the

different species of ducks and of the geese and swans. These it is

impossible to reproduce on paper, and about all that can be said is that

the raft ducks make various modifications of the word “pritt,” if it can

be called a word; that the widgeons whistle, the geese honk, and the

mallards and black-ducks quack. Jesse had a curious way of calling the

shoal-water ducks by uttering in rapid succession the word “Kek-kekkek,

kek-kek-kek-kek;” and he seemed to attract them as well as the patent

duck-call which I had purchased in the gun store for a dollar. For

black-ducks, however, I prefer the manufactured duck-call, and in going

out for them, I cannot too strongly impress upon the reader the

necessity for the utmost caution and the most careful hiding. When

shooting at some small pond hole in the middle of the marshes, it is

better to only use one or two decoys and to be covered entirely, except

for a single opening in front, just large enough to fire through,

overlooking the stools. A single tamed wild duck for this kind of sport

is worth all the wooden decoys in the world, and his quack is better

than Jesse’s “kek” or my “squawk.” Some gunners can set up the birds

they have killed so as to be almost as natural as the living bird, and

to deceive even the elect, but it is not an easy knack to acquire.

Usually such imitation stools look so fearfully and abnormally dead,

that they would drive any duck, with the fear of ghosts before his mind,

out of the country. It is only the most experienced gunner that can take

such liberties with the dead.

At the North, where the winters are colder than they are at Currituck,

it is customary to shoot in the ice. No waters that ducks frequent are

ever entirely frozen over; there are always what are called “breathing

holes,” where the gunner can place his stools, and which the ducks

frequent for food. He dresses himself in white linen over his other

clothes, so as to be as near the color of the ice as possible, and he

uses a light skiff provided with iron runners underneath. This he shoves

rapidly over the ice without much labor, carrying his dozen or so of

stools aboard, and using an iron-pointed pole to propel himself with. He

has his oars stowed under the narrow deck, so that he can row across

open water, and is safe in case his skiff should break through the ice.

When he has reached the open hole that he has selected, he throws out

his stools and cuts a place in the ice at the edge of the hole, to hide

himself and his boat, piling the cakes that he takes out alongside of

him, to further assist in hiding him. The decoys he uses are black-ducks

and whistlers, which will stool to one another indiscriminately. He must

then lie down on his back in the skiff, and no matter how cold he may

be, he must not move or stir. Though his blood chills and the marrow of

his bones freezes, he must bear it, for there is no telling at what

instant the birds may dart down upon him from the heavens, as they have

a way of doing without giving the sportsman the least warning. Shooting

in the ice has sent many a healthy man to a consumptive’s grave.

In closing this article, let me give a final bit of wisdom in the words

of William Foster. It is well known to every wild-fowler, but his way of

putting it covers in a few words the whole ground: “Remember, that as a

general rule, the shoal-water ducks go with the shoal-water ducks, and

the diving ducks go with the diving ducks, so they will pretty well

stool in the same way. Each prefers his own kind a little the best, I

think, but not enough to make a decided difference, provided the stools

are of the same class. Widgeon like widgeon, and canvas-backs will only

stool to canvas-backs or red-heads, but broad-bills will come to

canvas-back stools almost as well as they will come to broad-bill

stools. Black-ducks prefer black-duck stools, but sprigtails and

mallards will come to black-duck stools nearly as readily as they will

to their own. Don’t, however, use canvas-back stools for black-ducks,

nor, above all, black-duck stools for canvas-backs.”

PART II.

GAME WATER BIRDS.

CHAPTER I.

GAME AND ITS PROTECTION.

By the ancient law of 1 and 2 William IV., chap. 32, under the

designation of game, were included “hares, pheasants, partridges,

grouse, heath or moor game, black game, and bustards.”

Hunting and hawking date back to the earliest days of knight-errantry,

when parties of cavaliers and ladies fair, mounted on their mettlesome

steeds caparisoned with all the skill of the cunning artificers of those

days, pursued certain birds of the air with the falcon, and followed the

royal stag through the well preserved and extensive forests with packs

of hounds. The term game, therefore, had an early significance and

positive application, but was confined to the creatures pursued in one

or the other of these two modes.

The gun was first used for the shooting of feathered game in the early

part of the eighteenth century; it soon became the favorite implement of

the sportsman, and was brought into use, not only against the birds,

but the beasts, of game. The huntsman no longer depends upon his brave

dog and cloth-yard shaft, but upon his own powers of endurance and of

marksmanship. Instead of watching the savage falcon strike his prey far

up in the heavens, he follows his high-bred setters, till their

wonderful natural instinct betrays to him the presence of the game.

Where he once rode after the yelping pack, sounding the merry notes of

his bugle horn, he now climbs and crawls laboriously, until he brings

the wary stag within range of the deadly rifle. No more brilliant

parties of lovely dames and gallant men, chatting merrily on the

incidents of the day, ride gaily decked steeds; no more the luxury of

the beautiful faces and pleasant companionship of the gentler sex is to

be enjoyed; the ladies of modern times--except in England, where they

occasionally follow foxes, which are rather vermin than game--preferring

the excitement of ball-room flirtations to outdoor sports and pleasures,

take no part in the pursuits of the chase.

Together with the change in the mode of capturing game, comes a

necessity for a change in its former restricted meaning. Who would think

of not including among game birds, the gamest of them all--the

magnificent woodcock; nor the stylish English snipe, nor even possibly

the brave little quail--unless he can be scientifically proved to be a

partridge--which is at least doubtful! Migratory birds were not included

in the sacred list, and the quail in England, as the woodcock and snipe

of both England and America, are migratory, although the mere temporary

character of their residence does not, in our view, at all alter the

nature of their claims. The larger European woodcock is by no means so

delicious or highly flavored a bird as our yellow-breasted, round-eyed

beauty, and is much scarcer; while the foreign quail, on the other hand,

is smaller than ours, and in southern Europe is found in vast flocks;

but both are entitled to high rank among modern sportsmen.

The term Game Birds, therefore, should be, and has been by general

consent, greatly extended in its application, and applied to all the

numerous species which, whether migratory or not, are killed not alone

for the market, but for sport; and which are followed on the stubble

fields, in brown November, with the strong-limbed and keen-nosed setter,

or shot from blind in scorching August; slain from battery in freezing

December, or chased in a boat, or misled by decoys. All wild birds that

furnish sport as well as profit are therefore game; and the gentle

dowitchers along our sea-coast, lured to the deceitful stools, are as

much entitled to the name as the stately ruffed grouse of our wild

woods, or the royal turkey of the far west.

To constitute a legitimate object of true sport, the bird must be

habitually shot on the wing, and the greater the skill required in its

capture, the higher its rank. The turkey, therefore, although frequently

killed on the wing, is more a game bird by sufferance than by right, and

partly from his gastronomic as well as from his other qualities. Under

this classification, then, we must include, not merely the ruffed and

pinnated grouse, which, although the only species in our country coming

within the ancient definition, furnish far less sport than many other

varieties, but woodcock, snipe, quail, geese, ducks, bay birds, plover,

and rail; without regard to the fact that all, except the quail, are

migratory, and most were unknown to our British ancestry. It has been

even supposed that the quail, in parts of our country free from deep

rivers and impassable barriers, are also in a measure migratory; but

this has no other foundation than their habit of wandering from place to

place in search of food, and collecting late in the season, as they will

do where they are numerous and undisturbed in large packs.

To the protection of this vast variety of game it is the sportsman’s

duty to address himself, in spite of the opposition of the market-man

and restaurateur, the mean-spirited poaching of the pot-hunter, and the

lukewarmness of the farmer. The latter can be enlisted in the cause; he

has indirectly the objects of the sportsman at heart; and with proper

enlightenment will assist, not merely to preserve his fields from

ruthless injury, but to save from destruction his friends the

song-birds.

As the true sportsman turns his attention only to legitimate sport,

destroying those birds that are but little if at all useful to the

farmer; and as at the same time, out of gratitude for the kindness with

which the latter generally receives him, he is careful never to invade

the high grass or the ripening grain--so also, from his innate love of

nature, and of everything that makes nature more beautiful, he spares

and defends the warblers of the woods and the innocent worm-devourers

that stand guardian over the trees and crops. The smaller birds destroy

immense numbers of worms; cedar-birds have been known to eat hundreds of

caterpillars, and in this city have cleared the public squares in a

morning’s visit of the disgusting measuring-worms, that were hanging by

thousands pendent from the branches. And who has not heard the

“woodpecker tapping” all day long in pursuit of his prey?

With the barbarous and senseless destruction of our small birds, the

ravages of the worms have augmented, until we hear from all the

densely-settled portions of the country loud complaints of their

attacks. Peach-trees perish; cherries are no longer the beautiful fruit

they once were; apples are disfigured, and plums have almost ceased to

exist. Worms appear upon every vegetable thing; the borers dig their way

beneath the bark of the trunk and cut long alleys through the wood;

weevils pierce the grain and eat out its pith; the leaf-eaters of

various sorts punch out the delicate membrane by individual effort; or

collecting in bodies, throw their nets, like a spider-web, over the

branches, and by combined attacks deliberately devour every leaf. While

these species are at work openly and in full sight, others are at the

roots digging and destroying and multiplying; until the tree that at

first gave evidence of hardiness and promise of long utility to man,

pauses in its growth, becomes delicate, fades, and finally dies.

The destruction of these vermicular pests is a question of life or death

to the farmer. He may attempt it either with his own labor, by tarring

his trees, fastening obstructions on the trunks, or by killing

individuals; or he may have it done for him, free of expense, by

innumerable flocks of the denizens of the air. The increase of worms

must be stopped; the means of doing so is a question of serious public

concern, and none have yet been invented so effectual as the natural

course--the restoration of the equipoise of nature. It is true that the

robin, as we call him, now and then steals a cherry, and has been blamed

as though he were nothing more than a cherry-thief; but surely we can

spare him a little fruit for his dessert, when we remember that his meal

has been composed mainly of the deadly enemies of that very fruit!

Swallows are accused of breeding lice, which, if true, would not be a

serious charge, considering that their nests are generally in the

loftiest and least accessible corner they can find; but when we consider

how many millions of noxious flies and poisonous mosquitoes they

destroy, how they hover over the swamps and meadows for this especial

purpose, and how much annoyance their labors save to human kind, we owe

them gratitude instead of abuse.

Every tribe of birds has its allotted part to play; and if destroyed,

not only will its pleasant songs and bright feathers, gleaming amid the

green leaves, be missed, but some species of bug or insect, some

disgusting caterpillar or injurious fly, will escape well merited

destruction, and increasingly visit upon man the punishment of his

cruelty and folly.

The beautiful blue-birds, the numerous woodpeckers, the tiny wrens, the

graceful swallows and noisy martins, are sacred to the sportsman, and

constitute one great division of the creatures that he desires to

protect. It is true that enthusiastic foreigners, with cast-iron guns,

are seen peering into trees and lurking through the woods, proud of a

dirty bag half filled with robins, thrushes, and woodpeckers; but let no

ignorant reader confound such persons with sportsmen. Their satisfaction

in slaying one beautiful little warbler, as full of melody as it is bare

of meat, with a deadly charge of No. 4 shot; or in chasing from tree to

tree the agile red squirrel, who, with bushy tail erect, leaps from one

limb to another, emulating the very birds themselves with his agility,

is as unsportsmanlike as to kill a cheeping quail, that, struggling from

the thick weeds in September before the pointer’s nose, with feeble

wings, skirts the low brush; or to murder the brooding woodcock, that

flutters up before the dog in June, and, with holy maternal instinct,

endeavours to lead the pursuer from her infant brood.

From such acts the veritable sportsman turns with horror; they are

cruelty--the slaughter of what is useless for food, or what, by its

death, will produce misery to others; and no persons in the community

have done more to repress this wantonness of destruction than the

Sportsmen’s Clubs. It was at their request that the killing of

song-birds was prohibited altogether; and they are the most earnest to

restrict the times of lawful sport to such periods as will not, by any

possibility, permit its being followed during the season of incubation.

Not alone by obtaining the passage of appropriate laws and their

vigorous enforcement, have these clubs effected a great reform; but by

their personal example and social influence, often, too, at considerable

loss to themselves. For while the poacher, taking the chance of a legal

conviction as an accident of business, and but a slight reduction of his

unlawful profits, anticipates the appointed time, true sportsmen,

restrained by a feeling of honor and self-respect, although they know

that the birds are being killed daily in defiance of the statute, wait

till the lawful day arrives, and thus often, especially in woodcock

shooting, sacrifice their entire season’s sport for a principle.

This honorable spirit, if encouraged and extended, is the best

protection for song-birds and game that can be had. The laws are only

necessary to deter those who are dead to honor and decency, and to fix

the proper times--which ought to be uniform throughout our entire

country. But to enforce them requires the assistance of public opinion.

Every encouragement should be given to sportsmen’s associations. The

absurd prejudice that has originated from confounding them with a very

different class of the community should be overcome, and their efforts

to have good laws passed, and to make them effectual, should be

sustained. The vulgar idea, that confounds laws for the protection of

the wild creatures of wood, meadow, lake, and stream, with the monstrous

game-laws of olden time--that made killing a hare more criminal than

killing a man--should be corrected.

In this country, where every man is expected to be a sort of

volunteer-policeman, all should unite in enforcing the laws; and then,

in spite of the irrepressible obstinacy of the German enthusiast, and

the mean cunning of the sneaking poacher, our cities would soon be rid

of the disgusting worms that make their trees hideous, our farms

protected from the devastations of the curculio, the weevil, the borer,

and the army-worm; the country would once more be populated with its

native feathered game, and our fields would resound with the glad songs

of the little birds that there build their homes.

So long as the ignorant of our _nouveaux riches_, imagining themselves

to be epicures, will pay for unseasonable game an extravagant price, so

long will unscrupulous market-men purchase, and loafing, disreputable,

tavern-haunting poachers shoot or otherwise kill their prey. It must be

made a disgrace, and if necessary punished as a crime, for any modern

Lucullus to insult his guests by presenting to them game out of season;

and eating-house keepers should not only be taught--by persistent

espionage, if necessary--that illegal profits will not equal legal

punishments; but their customers should also discourage, by withdrawing

their patronage, conduct that is so injurious to the public interests.

Woodcock would not be shot in spring, nor quail in summer, unless the

demand for them were sufficiently great to pay both the expense of

capture and the danger of exposure; and, with a diminution of

purchasers, will be an increased diminution of the number of birds

improperly killed.

Birds and fish, except in their proper seasons, are always tasteless,

and often unhealthy food. A setting quail or a spawning trout is

absolutely unfit to eat, and to do without them is no sacrifice; but for

the sportsman to restrain his ardor as the close-time draws towards an

end, and when others less scrupulous are filling their bags daily, or

when in the wilder sections of country there is no one to complain or

object, requires the heroism of self-denial. Nevertheless, the effect of

example should not be forgotten, and the duty of the true sportsman is

clear and unmistakable: he must abide by the law; or, where there is no

law, must govern himself by analogous rules.

In the wilderness, it is true, where birds are abundant to excess, he

may without blame supply his pot with cheeping grouse or wood-duck

flappers, if he can offer hunger as an excuse; but not even there,

unless driven by extremity, can he slay the parent of a brood that will

starve without parental care. In the settled regions, no matter how

great the provocation, the true sportsman will never forget the

chivalric motto, _noblesse oblige_.

The close-times of the present statutes are not altogether correct; and

in so extensive a locality as the United States, where diverse interests

are to be considered, it is nearly impracticable to make the laws

perfect. For instance, where quail are abundant, as in the South, there

is no objection to killing them during the entire month of January; but,

as at that period they are often lean and tough, and have to contend, in

the Northern States, against dangers of the elements and rapacious

vermin, with not too favorable a chance for life--it is undesirable,

where they are in the least scarce, to continue the pursuit after

December.

If it were possible to make a uniform law for the entire Union, and to

enforce it everywhere, English snipe and ducks should not be killed at

all during the spring. The latter at the time of their flight northward

are poor and fishy; but if they can be slain in New Jersey, it is hardly

worth while to protect them in New York. For every duck or snipe that

passes towards the hatching-grounds of British America in the early part

of the year, four or five return in the fall and winter. Could proper

protection, therefore, be enforced, the sport in the latter season would

be four times as great as in the former.

As matters stand, however, the seasons for killing game birds should be:

For woodcock, from July fourth to December thirty-first; for ruffed and

pinnated grouse, from September first--and quail from November

first--to the same period, both days inclusive; for wood-duck from

August first till they migrate southward. It is desirable to fix upon

anniversaries or days that are easily remembered. Woodcock are often

young and weak in early summer, and the three days gained between the

first and the fourth of July are quite an advantage. Although the first

brood of quail may be fully grown in October, a vast number of the birds

are too small, and the brush is too dense and thick before the first of

the ensuing month; whereas it is simply monstrous to slay pinnated

grouse, put up by the panting, overheated pointer from the high grass of

the western prairie, in the month of August, ere they can half fly. But

the migratory birds of the coast--the waterfowl and snipe, the waders

and plovers--may continue to be shot when they can be found, till their

rapidly diminishing numbers shall compel a more sensible and considerate

treatment.

The bay-snipe lead the advancing army of the game birds that have sought

the cool and secluded marshes of Hudson’s Bay and the Northern Ocean to

raise their young, and are hastening south from approaching cold and

darkness to more congenial climes. Next come the beautiful wood-duck,

and, almost simultaneously, the English snipe; then the swift but

diminutive teal; after him the broad-bill or the blue-bill of the west;

and then a host of other ducks, till the hardy canvas-backs and geese

bring up the rear. From July, when the yellow-legs and dowitchers

abound; throughout August, in which month the larger bay-birds are

continuously streaming by; during September, when the English snipe are

on the meadows and the wood-ducks in the lily-pad marshes of the

fresh-water lakes; in October, when the teal and blue-bills are abundant

in the great west; all through the fall and into winter, when the geese

and canvas-backs arrive, the bayman finds his sport in perfection.

Many of the upland birds are disappearing; the quail is being killed

with merciless energy, and his loved haunts of dense brush are cleared

away from year to year; the woodcock can hardly rest in peace long

enough to rear her young, and finds many of her favorite secluded spots

drained by the enterprising farmer; the ruffed grouse disappears with

the receding forest, and the prairie chicken with the cultivation of the

open land. But although innumerable ducks, snipe, and plovers are killed

every season, and by unjustifiable measures are driven from certain

localities, their vast flights throughout the whole country--amounting

to myriads in the west--are apparently as innumerable as ever.

From the first of August to the last of December they stretch athwart

the sky from the Atlantic to the Pacific; and although in localities

they may appear scarce, still constitute countless hosts. Were it

possible to stand on some peak of the Rocky Mountains, and take in at a

glance the vast stretch of heavens from ocean to ocean, with the moving

myriads of migratory flocks, the mind would be astonished; and it would

seem impossible ever to reduce their numbers. This is to a certain

degree true; for so long as the lagoons of the South shall remain

undisturbed, and the shores of the bays and rivers unoccupied to any

great extent, this abundance of the migratory birds will continue.

But who can tell how long this will last? The methods of destruction are

being perfected, the number of destroyers is increasing, until now the

reverberation of the fowling piece accompanies the water-fowl from the

rocky shores of Maine to the sandy coasts of North Carolina with the

unceasing roar of threatened death. Twenty years ago, and “batteries,”

as they are called, the sunken floats which are the most fatal ambushes

of the gunner, were almost unknown south of Havre de Grace; now they are

so abundant throughout the waters of North Carolina that the migratory

bird is never out of ear-shot of them during his entire journey.

It would be better for the permanence of wild-fowl shooting never to use

batteries where fair sport can be obtained from points or blinds. Ducks,

geese, and, above all, swans have great faith in the sharpness of their

eyes and the acuteness of their noses. Dangers that they can see they

are rather tempted to scorn. They learn to shun points where man may

conceal his murderous propensities, and are not to be inveigled by the

apparent security of the deceitful likenesses of themselves which are

innocently nestling near by. They seek the safety of the open water,

and feed in the narrow bays and marsh-encompassed ponds during moonlight

nights, if they belong to the tribes that are compelled to gain their

living by grubbing at the bottom, with heads down and tails up. And no

matter how they are harried in certain places, they feel safe in others

close at hand. But the battery, sunken to a level with the water and

hidden by the stand of decoys around it, placed on their favorite

feeding grounds and in the broad bosom of the open bays, is too much for

their courage or sagacity. To see a man, a merciless and murderous

mortal, arise in all his horrid aspect from the depths of the sea, from

the middle of a body of their fellows, is a terror that custom never

stales. After a few such experiences, they lose faith in themselves,

and, if possible, take flight to safer and more propitious realms.

To those who are accustomed to it, there is no more delightful method of

shooting than from a battery, but a novice will find much trouble in

becoming accustomed to the confined position and the awkwardness of

motion. I remember, years ago, hearing Mr. Dominy, who then kept the

famous sporting hostelry at Fire Island, say that if he was to shoot on

a wager for his life, he would prefer to shoot from a battery rather

than in any other way. To one not used to the narrow box and constrained

position, lying on one’s back does not seem to be the most cheerful

manner of killing any species of game. There is everything in habit, and

certainly the exhilaration of watching the approach of the birds as

they come nearer and nearer, and grow larger and larger, from mere

specks on the horizon to the size of broad-bills, canvas-backs, or

perhaps brant or geese, is hardly to be surpassed by any kind of sport.

In most of the Southern waters the destructive nature of these machines

is so well recognized, that non-residents are not permitted to use them,

and the natives keep this method of wild-fowling to themselves.

The shooter lies on his back in this modified coffin, and whenever a

flock approaches he rises to a sitting posture and fires. He cannot

leave his floating home, and is unable to retrieve his ducks without the

aid of an assistant. There have been many accidents arising from

carelessness or inexperience, not merely in the use of the machine

itself, but from the fault of the tender; and so many guns have blown

holes in the bottom of the box, that it is the habit of the gunners on

the south side of Long Island always to warn green hands, and instruct

them how to rest and hold their guns. In two instances within my own

knowledge, the sailing boat that accompanies the shooter, and serves as

his tender and protector, was unable to return to him. In one case it

was driven to leeward, and could not work back to windward, and in the

other it went aground on a falling tide just before dark, when the

thermometer ranged but little above zero. In both cases the sportsmen

were saved, but in both the hand of death grazed them closely.

Night shooting is a still more deleterious practice. Wild fowl must be

allowed to rest at night; indeed, the same might be said of most other

animals, including the human family. If they are not, they will

inevitably wend their way elsewhere. The discharge of one shot at night,

with its accompaniment of flame, and its noise reverberating more

horribly in the still and silent hours, will do more to frighten away

the marsh ducks than any amount of daylight shooting. As the night

begins to fall, the fowl begin to seek the marshes. They rise from the

open water where they have been resting, perhaps without being able to

feed at all, and move towards the shore, coming on in a steady unbroken

flight, until they have all found nesting and feeding grounds in the

shoal water. Drive them from such places in the night, and there will be

no shooting during the day.

The use of pivot-guns is another reprehensible practice that has been so

earnestly condemned, even among market-gunners, that it has been in a

great measure abandoned. Still, however, in some quiet bay of one of the

great lakes of the West, where there is no one to observe the iniquity,

or of a moonlight night on the Chesapeake, the poaching murderer,

sculling his boat down upon an unsuspicious flock crowded together and

feeding or asleep, will discharge a pound or two of coarse shot from his

diminutive cannon; and wounding hundreds, will kill scores of ducks at

the one fatal discharge. The noise, however, reverberating over land and

water, scatters the tidings of the guilty act far and wide; and often

brings upon the criminal detection and punishment. To avoid this the

pivot-shooter will sometimes, as soon as he has fired, throw his gun

overboard with a buoy attached to it, and if pursued, pretend he has

used nothing but his small fowling-piece. The practice of

pivot-shooting, however, has almost ceased, never having been

extensively adopted; and has nothing whatever sportsmanlike about it,

being a mixture of cruelty and theft.

Another mode of pursuing ducks, which is at the same time attractive,

exciting, and injurious, is by the use of a sail-boat. Not only is there

the excitement of the pursuit, the rushing down wind with bellying sail

and hissing water--the crested waves parting at the prow and lengthening

out behind in two long lines of foam--but there is the free motion and

the pleasant breeze to stimulate the sportsman. This is really a

delightful sport, combining the excitement of shooting with the

exhilaration of sailing; but as it disturbs the flocks upon their

feeding-grounds, as it gives them no rest during the noontide hours,

when it appears that ducks--like all other sensible people--love to

indulge in a quiet nap, it eventually drives them away; and not only

makes them shy of the locality, but injures the sport of the

point-shooter, who depends upon their regular flights for his success.

It is not often very remunerative, but is uncommonly attractive, and is

only condemned with great reluctance on proof of its injurious results.

But while sailing for ducks is wisely forbidden by the laws of New York

and of most of the older States, that prohibition should not be

stretched beyond the true meaning and intent of the statute. Coots, the

big black sea coot of the coast and his congeners, not the little mud

coot or blue peter of the fresh waters, may be ducks from a scientific

point of view, but they were never intended to be included in the

prohibition. These dusky gentlemen are wonderful divers, they swim under

water almost as readily and rapidly as they fly above it, and seek their

food at the bottom. They do not so much live on fish, in fact I have

never noticed fish in their stomachs, although some authorities say that

they feed on them, but they devour incredible numbers of small clams and

oysters. They are not content to take the full grown bivalve, two or

three of which would make a solid meal even for a voracious coot, but

they invariably select the tiny fellows just starting in life, and of

whom it takes a great many to furnish forth a breakfast or dinner. There

is little sport in shooting these tough fellows, and no sport except in

killing them from a sailboat when underway.

In this chapter on the obligations that man owes to his feathered

friends, his naturalized assistants must not be forgotten. The imported

sparrow, though small in himself, has done a great work for our country,

and still more for our cities. We all know that gratitude is a fleeting

sentiment, and looks rather to things hoped for than to those which

have already been conferred, and it is somewhat the fashion to decry the

bustling busy immigrant from abroad; but those who remember the

condition of our streets and parks, hung full with disgusting measuring

worms pendent from every tree and branch, till to pass through them was

an annoyance, will not wholly forget our debt to the English sparrow. He

has been, wrongfully I think, accused of driving away our native birds,

but before we condemn him it will have to be shown, not only that he has

done so, but in addition that he has driven away birds more useful than

himself.

It is but a few years since he was first brought among us, and already

have the caterpillars so thoroughly disappeared, that one is rarely seen

in our streets, and the trees are allowed to bear their foliage in

peace, instead of being reduced to bare boughs, as was their invariable

fate in old times. The sparrow has been accused, and has been compelled

to plead guilty of the crime of not eating the hairy as well as the

smooth-skinned caterpillar, but it ought to be urged in mitigation,

before he is condemned to condign punishment, that his adversaries do

not do so either, while they are guilty of the further crime of not even

eating the smooth-skinned kinds.