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.

NEW YORK:
ORANGE JUDD COMPANY,
751 BROADWAY.
1884.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1884, by the
ORANGE JUDD COMPANY,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

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.
F L O R I D A.

CONTENTS.

F L O R I D A.

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.

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

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,

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

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.