CHAP. XVII.] EAGLE CAUGHT BY AN OYSTER. 233 



check this, they maintain, would injure the negroes as much as 

 their masters. When they are forced to part with slaves, they 

 usually sell one to another, and are unwilling to dispose of them 

 to a stranger. It is reckoned, indeed, quite a disgrace to a negro 

 to be so discarded. When the former master bids for one of his 

 &quot; own people,&quot; at a sale of property forced on by debt, the public 

 are unwilling to bid against him. It is clear, therefore, that a 

 dealer must traffic in the lowest and most good-for-nothing class 

 of laborers, many of whom, in Europe, would be in the hands of 

 policemen, or in convict ships on their way to a penal settlement. 

 I heard of one of these dealers, who, having made a large fortune, 

 lived sumptuously in one of the towns on the Mississippi after 

 retiring from business, but in spite of some influential connections, 

 he was not able to make his way into the best society of the place. 

 At the mouth of the Savannah River we passed Cockspur 

 Island, where there is a fort. The sea is said to have encroach 

 ed many hundred yards on this island since 1740, as has hap 

 pened at other points on this low coast ; but there has been also 

 a gain of land in many places. An officer stationed at the fort 

 told me, that when a moat was dug and the sea-water admitted, 

 oysters grew there so fast, that, at the end of two years, they 

 afforded a regular supply of that luxury to the garrison. The 

 species of oyster which is so abundant here (Ostrea virginica) 

 resembles our European Ostrea edulis in shape, when it lives 

 isolated and grows freely under water ; but those individuals 

 which live gregariously, or on banks between high and low 

 water, lose their round form and are greatly lengthened. They 

 are called racoon oysters, because they are the only ones which 

 the racoons can get at when they come down to feed at low tide. 

 Capt. Alexander, of the U.S. artillery, told me that, in the sum 

 mer of 1844, he saw a large bald-headed eagle, Aquila leucoce- 

 phala, which might measure six feet from tip to tip of its ex 

 tended wings, caught near the bar of the Savannah river by one 

 of these racoon oysters. The eagle had perched upon the shell 

 fish to prey upon it, when the mollusk suddenly closed its valves 

 and shut in the bird s claw, and would have detained its enemy 

 till the rising tide had come up and drowned it, had not the cap- 



