A BALMY SPRING-DAY. 243 



retain a memento of my sojourn on the Maryland swamp- 

 washed shores of the Chesapeake. The weather had 

 been very variable, jumping, with those sudden changes 

 peculiar to America, from intense cold to almost gulf- 

 stream temperature : the result was that for one or two 

 days all sheltered portions of the bay would be ice- 

 bound, and the succeeding days the surface of the 

 water covered with little bergs and sheet-ice like an 

 arctic flow. 



The 12th of February had been as balmy as an 

 English spring day, and the rays of the sun were 

 reflected in innumerable colours off the prismatic sur- 

 face of the blocks and cakes of ice floating seaward 

 with the retiring tide. The pongeys and canoes em- 

 ployed in oyster dredging floated listlessly on the 

 bosom of the calm water, for not a breath of wind 

 fanned their snow-white cotton sails ; even so still was 

 the atmosphere, that their crews' voices could be heard 

 distinctly at distances really surprising ; while the low 

 land of Turtle-egg Island, Holland and Hooper's island, 

 from the rarified state of the atmosphere, appeared to- 

 hang suspended in the air. I had passed the afternoon. 

 lounging on the beach in front of the principal store 

 on Devil's Island, a spot which was the favourite resort 

 of old and young, who had time to spare for gossip. 

 Rising from a leaning position against the stern of a 

 boat, which I had assumed the better to enjoy the 

 perfect peacefulness of the scene surrounding me, I 

 was about to retire to my lodgings, when I casually 

 remarked, addressing my language to no one in parti- 

 cular, that if this weather continued, as I believed it 

 would, there was an end to duck shooting in this locality 

 for the season. An old weather-beaten fellow, who, 



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