I do seldom see the great swans, but father says that they are not unusual in the wide stretches of the Delaware.
Happy day! when the wedge-shaped battalions of wild geese were almost as frequently seen as the spattering sparrows now!
Father allowed me [writes the good Quaker boy, in 1734] to accompany my Indian friend, Oconio, to Watson's creek, that we may gather wild fowl after the Indian manner. With great eagerness, I accompanied Oconio, and thus happened it. We did reach the widest part of that creek early in the morning, I think the sun was scarcely an half-hour high. Oconio straightway hid himself in the tall grass by the water, while I was bidden to lie in the tall grass at a little distance. With his bow and arrows, Oconio quickly shot a duck that came near, by swimming within a short distance of him. I marvelled much with what skill he shot, for his arrow pierced the head of the duck which gave no alarming cry.... Oconio now did fashion a circlet of green boughs, and so placed them about his head and shoulders that I saw not his face; he otherwise disrobed and walked into the stream. He held in one hand a shotten duck, so that it swam lustily, and, so equipped, was in the midst of a cluster of fowl, of which he deftly seized several so quickly that their fellows took no alarm. These he strangled beneath the water, and, when he had three of them, came back with caution to where the thick bushes concealed him. He desired that I should do the same, and with much hesitation I disrobed and assumed the disguise Oconio had fashioned; then I put forth boldly towards the gathered fowl, at which they did arise with a great clamour, and were gone. I marvel
much why this should have been, but Oconio did not make it clear, and I forbore, through foolish pride, to ask him. And let it not be borne in mind against me [pleads the good Quaker boy] that, when I reached my home, I wandered to the barn, and writing an ugly word upon the door, sat long and gazed at it. Chagrin doth make me feel very meek, I find, but I set no one an example by speech or act, in thus soothing my feelings in so worldly a manner.
This example may be commended to players of golf, who are inclined to be "worldly." The episode of Oconio at the best is too long to quote; it, too, has its lesson! One reads Mr. Abbott's defence of the skunk cabbage, for it harbours at its root
the earliest salamanders, the pretty Maryland yellow throat nests in the hollows of its broad leaves, and rare beetles find a congenial home in the shelter it affords.
"Upland and Meadow" gives one occasion for thought on the subject of raccoons. "Foolish creatures, like opossums, thrive while cunning coons are forced to quest or die."
For a stroll by the Thames—I mean the New England Thames—there is no book like Ik Marvel's "Dream Life," but for a day near the Delaware—imperial river!—give me "Upland and Meadow."
And then with what assurance of satisfaction
may one turn for refreshment to the continual charm of John Burroughs's books, "Riverby" and "Pepacton." Burroughs's opinions upon the problems of humanity are more tiresome than John Bunyan's opinions on theology; but to go with him among the birds and the plants, to hope with him that the soaring lark of England may find its way down through Canada to our hedges, to look with him into the nests in the shrubs that border our roads is to begin to feel that joy in being an American of the soil that no other author gives. He cured the young New England poets and the singers of the Berkshire Hills and of the Catskills of celebrating the English thrush and the nightingale, as if those birds sang on the Palisades.