AUGUST. 195 



To determine what shall be the objective point of an 

 August ramble is seldom an easy task. Occasionally there 

 is a bewildering profusion of attractive features; fre- 

 quently, there is a dearth of -them. 



Kecently, when neither upland nor meadow appeared 

 specially attractive in the glare of August sunshine, I 

 plunged into a pathless marsh, led on solely by a hope of 

 novelty. 



Except you have had experience in such tramps, there 

 is little to attract one, however rank the vegetation, gor- 

 geous the bloom, brilliant the butterflies, or abundant the 

 manifold forms of life ; for the charm of a ramble is lost 

 when too prominent a feeling of uncertainty as to your 

 own safety surrounds you — when we lack the assurance of 

 a firm footing. How often I hesitated to leave the trem- 

 bling tussock upon which I stood, not knowing but a 

 treacherous quicksand spread out before me ! Still, I vent- 

 ured on, hidden from all the world at times by the tall 

 reeds or sword-like foliage of the stately typha. The testy 

 marsh wrens scolded as I passed ; the lisping swamp spar- 

 row stared and stammered from his perch, and great blue 

 herons cast ominous shadows as they fled. Without a ves- 

 tige of reason for so doing, beyond a forlorn hope of nov- 

 elty, I still struggled forward, to find at last a bush-clad 

 island of firm earth. Here was a happy combination, as 

 it proved, of novelty — an evidence of summer's close and 

 an opportunity to rest. 



It was plainly evident that what was now a marsh had 

 at some distant time been a broad and shallow stream. 

 There was yet to be traced a narrow, tortuous channel, 

 through which flowed the waters that gathered here from 

 a hundred hill-foot springs near by ; and now this un- 

 suspected remnant of a prehistoric creek was indeed 

 beautiful — ^gorgeous with its wealth of pink rose-mallow, 

 not pink alone, but mingled with flowers white as driven 



