163
On Board the Steamship "Kensington".
1897.
June 30.
 Clear and hot with fresh S.W. wind.
 Left Englewood this morning by 8.10 train for New York
with Mrs. Embury, Burroughs and Chapman. I sat with Burroughs
who talked about his son (a boy of some seventeen years of age
about to enter Harvard, interested in college athletics and a
keen sportsman) and the Hackensack Marshes. The latter, he
says, would surely be drained some day and, he added, "They
should be drained. It is a shame to have so much fertile and
lying idle". Chapman and I thought them worth preserving for
their beauty and the bird life which they support but Bur-
roughs appeared to regard them wholly with a farmer's eye.
 I spent most of the day at the American Museum whence,
late in the afternoon, I went to Pier 14, North River, where
the steamship "Kensington" of the Red Star Line lay with steam
up ready to sail for Antwerp. Chapman accompanied me and I
found George Kettell waiting for me on the wharf.
 The "Kensington" got off promptly at 4.30. I saw only
one sea bird, a Wilson's Petrel, before night closed in.