VIII 



BIG BIRD ISLAND: LAGUNA DE LA MADBE 



Mr. T. Gilbert Pearson, President of the National 

 Audubon Societies, related, in a communication to me, 

 his experience while on a visit to Big Bird Island and 

 Laguna de la Madre. This decided me as to where I 

 should go next. I made arrangements by letter for a 

 guide and a boat to take me from Corpus Christi, Texas, 

 to Big Bird Island, a distance of about fifty miles. When 

 I arrived I found the boat on the skids undergoing re- 

 pairs and waiting for replacement of parts broken. The 

 latter never came. After waiting seven days I employed 

 another boatman. His boat drew nearly three feet of 

 water. 



The Laguna de la Madre is a very shallow stretch 

 of partly land-locked salt water about four miles across, 

 extending from Corpus Christi to the mouth of the Rio 

 Grande. The island is located in this lagoon. To 

 reach it requires a boat of a very shallow draft, not 

 over two feet. Our craft, drawing, as it did, three feet 

 of water, gave us much trouble. In fact, we made much 

 of the journey by land, using the bottom of the lagoon 

 as the road-bed. Sometimes, for a mile at a stretch, 

 two or three of our party were in the water, generating 

 manpower to assist the splendid forty horsepower, six 

 cylinder engine in its work of plowing a furrow as the 

 boat was shoved along on the bottom of the lagoon. This 

 was truly working one's passage. 



We passed numerous small shallow-bottomed fishing 

 sailboats, manned by Mexicans. The lagoon abounds in 

 splendid edible game fish, as the red fish, sea trout and 

 others. A few hours' run brought us in sight of the 

 island, which is a mere sand spit, a few inches above the 

 shallow tide limit, covered in part with coarse stem grass 

 and weeds. Not a tree is found on its soil. Boggy places 

 a few feet in extent and filled with salt water abound, 

 and the whole shore line is one of sand and broken shells. 



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