52 
WILD WINGS 
and a quarter in length, whose bite is like a knife-thrust, 
with a corresponding flow of blood. No domestic animal but 
the mule can support life in such a country, and that hardy 
animal only by being kept in a screened stable and bundled 
up in burlap when taken out to work. 
One Sunday I attended a religious service in a building 
used as chapel and school-house. The women wheeled the 
children there in baby-carriages, under each of which was 
tied a smudge-pot. So the carriage rolled along, enveloped 
in smoke and an outlying cloud of “skeets” and flies. In 
the building smudges were going all the time, while the 
congregation slapped “ skeets ” and the children chased 
horse-flies. 
One of my best and hardest excursions was made one day 
to a lake six miles away, or rather to its vicinity, for of the 
lake I saw nothing. A tipcart drawn by a mule swathed 
from head to foot in burlap, save for its eyes and projecting 
ears, — the most spectacular turnout it was ever my fortune 
to see, — took us half the distance. Then the guide and 
I walked three miles over an open grassy marsh. In one spot, 
by a mud-hole, he showed me the skeleton of a crocodile 
which he had killed some weeks before. Already we could 
tell the direction of the rookery from the bands of ibises of 
both kinds which flew up from the marsh where they were 
feeding and “ lined ” the way to the home-spot, bearing food 
for their young, as also did herons and egrets. 
When we neared the edge of the lake, which was properly 
a sort of everglade morass, and tried to get to the swampv 
woods where the rookery was evidently located, our real trou¬ 
bles began, compared with which “skeets” were as nothing. 
Rivers of soft, treacle-like mud proved absolutely impassable. 
Finally we got across a wide ditch and encountered a tract 
of tall dry saw-grass, “ snaky ” and impenetrable. A match 
