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A BI-MONTHLY MAGAZINE 



DEVOTED TO THE STUDY AND PROTECTION OF BIRDS 



Official Organ op The Audubon Societies 



Vol. XX November — December, 1918 No. 6 



Notes from a Traveler in the Tropics 



By FRANK M. CHAPMAN 



I. DOWN THE COASTLINE TO CUBA* 



IN these days of submarines, the coastline route to Cuba, by way of Key 

 West, has certain obvious advantages over the voyage by sea. The 

 necessity of stopping at the Marines' Training Camp, on Paris Island, off 

 Beaufort, S. C, however, left me no choice in the matter, though I am free to 

 confess that a strong desire to avoid meeting a submarine, added to a keen wish 

 to see the southern states in October, — even if only from a car-window, — would 

 have prompted me to make the journey by land. To paraphrase Dr. Van Dyke's 

 remark to the effect that he did not care to climb a mountain unless there was 

 something very pleasant at the top and something very disagreeable at the 

 bottom, a sea-voyage offered only objectionable possibilities, while the trip 

 by rail promised to be exceptionally interesting and attractive. Most of my 

 many journeys to and from Florida have been made in the winter or early 

 spring, when some of the most characteristic trees are leafless and the crops 

 of the country have been gathered; in short, when the region through which 

 one passes is at its worst. It was a surprise to me, for example, to see sugar-cane 

 and well-developed banana plants near Beaufort — though I assume that the 

 latter do not bear fruit — while the cotton-fields, with their green leaves, pop- 

 corn-like cotton-bolls and occasional corn-colored blossoms, possessed small 

 resemblance to the dreary rows of brown stalks, with an occasional wisp of 

 cotton, which the winter traveler sees. 



Fallow fields and waysides were yellow with goldenrod, wild sunflowers, and 

 numerous flowering plants new to me; there was an abundance of green grass 

 instead of brown sedge, and this general air of greenness was the dominant 

 note which everywhere impressed me. Cypress, china-berries, and scupper- 

 nong grape-vines, all of which are leafless in winte?, were fully foliaged, and the 

 turkey oaks, which flutter their dead leaves depressingly in the winter, were 

 clad in rich yellow-green. 



*The first of a proposed series of letters by the Editor of Bird-Lore, written while on a mission 

 to South America for the American Red Cross. 



