216 DAYS OUT OF DOORS. 



What of the cooler meadows and the lotus ? It would 

 dampen my ardor certainly if it were cut down ; but it is 

 not. Hailing as it does from far warmer lands, we trem- 

 ble for the tardier blossoms, yet really need not. From 

 afar I can see those gigantic leaves and tall flower-stalks, 

 capped with the roseate bloom of this historic plant. It 

 is as much at home and as hardy as the sweet white lily 

 or the yellow nuphar. And here, in the flooded marshes, 

 we can go nutting again. From the great funnel-shaped 

 torus or seed-pod of the lotus, one can gather sweet 

 fruit, larger and as toothsome as upland chincapins. In 

 the dense shade of this lotus of Eastern lands, I recall 

 that rare native form, once cultivated here by the Indians. 

 Perhaps I am wrong here. My friend the State botanist 

 tells me it is far more probable that the widely separated 

 localities where the native lotus still flourishes are rem- 

 nants of a wide area over which, long, long ago — perhaps 

 before the gi'eat ice age — the plant flourished as now do 

 our native lilies, splatter-docks, and calamus. If, then, it 

 was not a cultivated but a wild plant, it was still highly 

 prized by the Indians. There are abundant historical 

 references to this effect. Eecalling these to-day, I can 

 picture a group of Indian women in canoes, or perhaps 

 their vagabond husbands wading in the water, gathering 

 the large seed — a true nut — or reaching into the shallow 

 depths for the newer growth of tubers. From the nut 

 was made a good flour ; the tubers, boiled, are equal to 

 potatoes. The Indians did this far back in prehistoric 

 times ; some of their descendants do so still ; and it would 

 not be strange, could it be shown, that where I to-day 

 gather lotus nuts in the same marsh, the long-forgotten 

 Indians, in centuries past, did the same. Be this as it 

 may be, nutting in the marshes is one of the luxuries 

 following a first frost — for the nonce, I am a happy lotus- 

 eater. 



