24 BY-WAYS AND BIRD-NOTES. 



front of the cabin, with a faint, dreamy mur- 

 mur and crept darkling into the swamp be- 

 tween dense brakes of cane, and bay-bushes. 



" Ye-as, seh, I ken mek er bee-line to that 

 air ole pine snag. Hit taint more'n er half er 

 mile- out yender," continued my host and vol- 

 unteer guide, as we climbed the little worm- 

 fence that inclosed the house; "but I alius 

 called 'em air birds woodcocks ; didn't know 

 'at they hed any other name ; alius thut 'at a 

 Peckwood wer' a leetle, tinty, stripedy feller ; 

 never hyeard er them air big ole woodcocks 

 a bein' called Peckwoods." 



He led and I followed into the damp, moss- 

 scented shadows of the swamp, under cypress 

 and live-oak and through slender fringes of 

 cane. We floundered across the coffee-colored 

 stream, the- water cooling my india-rubber 

 wading-boots above the knees, climbed over 

 great walls of fallen tree-boles, crept under 

 low-hanging festoons of wild vines, and at 

 length found ourselves wading rather more 

 than ankle-deep in one of those shallow 

 cypress lakes of which the larger part of the 

 Okefenokee region is formed. I thought it a 

 very long half-mile before we reached a small 

 tussock whereon grew, in the midst of a dense 

 underbrush thicket, some enormous pine 

 trees. 



" Ther'," said the guide, " thet air snag air 

 the one. Sorter on ter tother side ye'll see 

 the hole, 'bout twenty foot up. Kem yer, I'll 

 show hit ter ye." 



The " snag " was a stump some fifty feet 

 tall, bavkless, smooth, almost as white as chalk,' 

 the decaying remnant of what had once been 

 the grandest pine on the tussock. 



