24 BY-WAYS AND BIRD-NOTES. 
front of the cabin, with a faint, dreamy mur- 
mur and crept darkling into the swamp be- 
tween dense brakes of cane, and bay-bushes. 
“‘ Ve-as, seh, I ken mek er bee-line to that 
air ole pine snag. Hit taint more’n er half er 
mile out yender,” continued my hest and vol- 
unteer guide, as we climbed the little worm- 
fence that inclosed the house; “but I allus 
called ’em air birds woodcocks; didn’t know 
’at they hed any other name; allus thut ’ata 
Peckwood wer’ a leetle, tinty, stripedy feller ; 
never hyeard er them air big ole woodcocks 
a bein’ called Peckwoods.” 
He led and I followed into the damp, moss- 
scented shadows of the swamp, under cypress 
and live-oak and through slender fringes of 
cane. We floundered across the coffee-colored 
stream, the water cooling my _ india-rubber 
wading-boots above the knees, climbed over 
great walls of fallen tree-boles, crept under 
low-hanging festoons of wild vines, and at 
length found ourselves wading rather more 
than ankle-deep in one of those shallow 
cypress lakes of which the larger part of the 
Okefenokee region is formed. I thought it a 
very long half-mile before we reached a small 
tussock whereon grew, in the midst of a dense 
underbrush thicket, some enormous pine 
tees: 
““Ther’,” ‘said the guide, “thet air snae vain 
the one. Sorter on ter tother ‘sidé yeil see 
the hole, bout twenty foot up. Kem yer, I’ll 
show hit ter ye.” 
The “snag” was a stump some fifty feet 
tall, barkless, smooth, almost as white as chalk, 
the decaying remnant of what had ence been 
the grandest pine on the tussock. 
