ON THE UPPER ST. JOHN’S. 145 
Who does not love to be flattered by an 
ingenuous boy ? 
All in all, the day had been one to be re- 
membered. In addition to the birds already 
named — three of them new to me — we had 
seen great blue herons, little blue herons, 
Louisiana herons, night herons, cormorants, 
pied-billed grebes, kingfishers, red-winged 
blackbirds, boat-tailed grackles, redpoll and 
myrtle warblers, savanna sparrows, tree 
swallows, purple martins, a few meadow 
larks, and the ubiquitous turkey buzzard. 
The boat-tails abounded along the river 
banks, and, with their tameness and their 
ridiculous outcries, kept us amused whenever 
there was nothing else to absorb our atten- 
tion. The prairie lands through which the 
river meanders proved to be surprisingly 
dry and passable (the water being unusually 
low, the boy said), with many cattle pas- 
tured upon them. Here we found the sa- 
vanna sparrows ; here, too, the meadow larks 
were singing. 
It was a hard pull across the rough lake 
against the wind (a dangerous sheet of 
water for flat-bottomed rowboats, I was told 
afterward), but the boy was equal to it, pro- 
