THE QUEST FOK THE CORMOKANT^S NEST 163 



We had often thought and often tried to prove that 

 about the inland lakes a few miles from the coast, or in 

 some of the fresh-water swamps, these birds must rear 

 their young. That spring we had gone into the swamps 

 and searched about the lakes from the upper end of Albe- 

 marle Sound southward along the coast one hundred miles 

 or more, to Old Topsail Inlet. For eight weeks the search 

 was in vain; the secret breeding place of the cormorants 

 was still unknown. 



One morning late in May our expedition moved away 

 from the railway station of Havelock and headed south- 

 ward through the pine forests of Craven county. After 

 ten miles of travel through a barren country with scarce 

 a human inhabitant, we halted near an old plantation. 

 Our light canoe was launched in a large ditch dug by negro 

 hands to drain the land in the days of slavery. Sitting 

 flat in the bottom of the canoe we presently emerged from 

 the shadows of the cypress swamp and passed out upon 

 the shallow waters of Lake Ellis. 



Then for three miles we paddled, while blackbirds and 

 marsh hens called to us from the reeds along the shores and 

 the islands, and great white egrets floated like fragments 

 of snow^^ clouds across the sky above, or viewed us from 

 some far standing cypress top. On the west side of the 

 lake the canoe was taken from the waiter, and we pushed 



