THE IITLAND PASSAGE. 57 



time to shoot them. They were flying about by 

 twos, by threes, by dozens, by hundreds, but the 

 wind was too fair and too fresh for us to lose it. 

 We might be punished by being reduced to living 

 on canned food, which, with the exception of corned 

 beef, Tegetables, and preserves, was an abomination 

 to the entire party, and we did not stop voluntarily, 

 till we reached Jekyl's Creek. In reference to 

 Jekyl's Creek, there is an entry in my log, that is 

 interesting to show how history repeats itself; 

 " Oysters Excellent. " Half a century before. 

 Professor Bache, who made the very charts by 

 which we were sailing, had appreciated the excel- 

 lence of the Jekyl Creek oysters, and had them 

 barrelled and sent to him every year. I doubt, how- 

 ever, whether he knew how to cook them, at least 

 in the quantity necessary for a hungry yachting 

 party, and with the limited cooking appliances of a 

 yacht. 



They are called '' Eaccoon Oysters," for the reason 

 that the raccoons exhibited so much human nature 

 in first appreciating their excellence, and in getting 

 at their contents. They exist in immense mounds 

 and piles, and to the Northern eye seem inex- 

 haustible in numbers, covering hundreds, if not 

 thousands of square miles, and averaging three feet 

 thick. They line the shores of the creeks and 

 water courses like two walls, and cling to branches 

 of bushes, till it can be truly said of them that they 

 grow on trees. Their natural position is with their 

 edges upward, and these are nearly as sharp as 



