276 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH. 



"Oh fruit of loved boyhood! the old days recalling 



When wood grapes were purpling, and brown nuts were falling, 

 When wild ugly faces we carved in its skin 



Glaring out through the dark, with a candle within." 



Jackson became disgusted with the rhyming. 



An hour's rest and we were again on our course, Mike 

 all the while in the Indian's canoe, and leading the van. 

 The wild fowl were numerous along the river, though we 

 did not stop to shoot, partly because we were loaded with 

 game and partly because Mike had requested us not, 

 though he would give no reason, briefly saying, in reply 

 to our questions, " It's a leetle better to travel fast and 

 hunt slotf than it is to travel slow and hunt fast." Large 

 flocks of ducks were all the while being driven ahead of 

 the boats, flying short distances each time they got up. 

 Flamingoes and cormorants were winding from point to 

 point, and knee-deep in the tide great blue herons waded, 

 and snow-white cranes dressed their plumage. As vista 

 after vista opened around the bends of the river, or up 

 the lateral lagoons, new forms and colors opened to the 

 eye. There the stately cypress trees stood in the water, 

 like the pillars of a rustic Venice, and the mound-like 

 cones their roots threw up extended all across the basin ; 

 while above, the swinging vine had caught its tendrils in 

 the opposite tree, and thus back and forth festooned a 

 royal porte-cochere to nature's mansion. On the other 

 side, a fallen tree shut in an open passage and formed 

 foothold for brier and creeper, and vines that aspired to 

 the highest pinnacles of the forest and bowed the trees 



