CUCKOO NOTES. 135 



and many another of the shyest and rarest of 

 our birds. 



Nearly all the rivers and rivulets of North 

 Georgia are bordered with canebrakes and 

 overhanging trees, darkly cumbered and bowed 

 with the wildest masses of muscadine vines. 

 The canoe-voyager passing down the Oostanau- 

 la, the Connasauga, the Coosawattee or the 

 Salliquoy — streams as free and unconventional 

 as the savages who gave them their musical 

 names — will have exceptional opportunities 

 for studying nature at first hand. 



It was down these rivers that the rich plant- 

 ers, whose isolated plantations were scattered at 

 wide intervals along the " bottoms," used to 

 despatch their corn and wheat, their oats and 

 cotton, in keel-boats manned by the happiest 

 slaves who ever sighed for freedom. Many a 

 moon-lit night I have lain on my bed of cedar 

 boughs on a high, breezy bluff of the Coosa- 

 wattee and heard those merry-hearted boatmen 

 go by with the current, playing the banjo and 

 fluting on the genuine Pan-pipe of graded reed- 

 joints.* Recalling the music, at this distance, 

 it seems to me the most barbaric and withal 

 the most fascinating imaginable. Usually, no 

 matter how bright the night, they had a fire of 

 pine-knots flaring at the boat's prow, near 

 which, on the rude floor of the forecastle, they 



* This pipe is, in fact, identical with the Syrinx or 

 Pan-pipe of the ancients. I have seen and examined 

 many of them, formed of from five to seven reed-joints, 

 of graduated sizes, bound together in a row. The 

 music is made by blowing the breath into the open ends 

 of the reeds. There were some reed-blowers among 

 the slaves of North Georgia who executed certain char- 

 acteristic negro melodies with surprising effect. 



