16 WASTE-LAND WANDERINGS. 



Then, as now, afloat, I very slowly urged my boat for- 

 ward, and was soon directly beneath the songster. This 

 he did not like, and flew down the creek, but not so far 

 away that I could not hear him above the cawing of 

 crows and chatter of blackbirds in the marsh, singing, 

 without an alteration of any note, " Chesapeake, O Ches- 

 apeake !" 



Rowing but a few rods farther, the limits of the leafy 

 Linden Bend were passed and I entered an open mead- 

 ow. The change was as abrupt as painful. But the 

 grassy banks were on a level with my eyes, and I looked 

 upward and onward, seeing only the cloud-flecked sky 

 and distant, shadowy woods. Stay ! there was one tree, 

 a tall, dead tulip. Saved for the shade it cast, for long 

 years it was the shelter of the cows when summer show- 

 ers passed, their noontide retreat from fierce midsum- 

 mer suns. For a decade it has stood, leafless, and more 

 shattered by each winter's storm, until now it is but the 

 merest ghost of its former self. Such trees do not mar 

 a landscape. They are not disgusting. They turn to 

 dust in a becoming manner, offending neither eye nor 

 nostril. The dignity that encompassed them as aged 

 trees clings to them still, though bared of every branch. 

 The many mysteries of years gone by — where fled the 

 squirrels that I saw but as swift shadows — where hid 

 the woodpeckers whose tapping I heard, yet failed to 

 see them at work — from what nook issued the complain- 

 ing owl — where fled the honey-laden bees — all these 

 sources of wonderment, that filled the hours of many 

 a ramble, are now revealed. The holes and hollows of 

 the dead, decaying tree are no longer hidden retreats of 



