FOREST AND STREAM 
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339 
Though I am poor, and cannot buy 
The rare time-mellowed things of art. 
God keeps an open gallery 
Of glories for the poor in heart. 
—Maurice Thompson. 
camp-fire that night I penciled and solemnly 
read to him these lines: 
“In the hot summer noon, 
Watching the green lagoon, 
I saw the hungry bowman of the swamp, 
Deep in the shadows, crouched upon the damp, 
Soft hummock where the lily hosts encamp. 
“In the hot summer noon, 
Watching the green lagoon, 
I saw an ibis coming down the brink, 
Not caring for the otter or the mink. 
Stop at the weedy water’s edge to drink. 
“In the hot summer noon, 
Watching the green lagoon, 
I saw along the muddy margin pass 
A solemn bird, sad and companionless, 
And pitied the blue heron’s loneliness. 
“In the hot summer noon, 
Watching the green lagoon. 
I saw an old crane droop his stately head, 
Too indolent to drink or care to feed 
On spawn of frog or root of water-weed. 
"After the summer noon, 
Leaving the green lagoon, 
I saw the hungry bowman once again, 
Rearing unto his camp across the plain 
An ibis, a blue heron and a crane.” 
After many years the dingy paper and crude 
half-obliterated lines came to light from the 
depths of brother’s old quiver. 
Before this camping trip I had never tasted 
crane flesh, and was surprised to find it so de¬ 
licious. Not even the wood duck surpassed it 
in sweetness and delicacy. The cranes were al¬ 
ways fat, and the breast meat was white, tender 
and very juicy. That of the wood-ibis was fairly 
good, but neither ibis nor curlew compared as a 
table bird with the sand-hill crane. They are 
beautiful and noble birds, high of head, proud 
of step, and often be-plumed in fair rivalry of 
the ostrich. Their trumpet note is perfection 
in clarity and resonance, and no sound of equal 
volume seems so far-reaching. When close- 
heard, it is not loud, but from afar the deep 
cello note of the going bird is the richest good¬ 
bye that ever broke the silence of marsh or 
river. 
How I should enjoy telling of all our meaty 
days in Okefinokee! How we made crude flies 
of soft feathers, tied with scarlet yarn about a 
big hook, and tore the struggling big-mouthed 
bass from the “bonnets” along the margin of 
the waterways; how the turtles’ nests in the 
sandy places were despoiled of their eggs, which 
were roasted in the embers of our camp-Tres 
and found to be good; how we cut the hollow 
liquid amber tree at the south end of the island 
and took to camp a score of stings and only 
honey enough for one feast, leaving until the 
next day at least one hundred pounds of well- 
filled comb to be gathered when the bees should 
become less bellicose. How, when we returned 
with two buckets, we found a few gaumy bees 
and no honey, but many foot-prints in the damp 
earth resembling those of a barefoot child; and 
how we laughed as we thought of the small 
Florida bear huddled in the comfortable hollow 
of some nearby cypress tree, fondling his round 
belly and grinning his thanks to the guardian 
angel of the Ursidae. 
I could tell a tale, charged with the very spirit 
of Okefinokee, of how Maurice long laid in wait 
for the otter and slew it, and how we stripped 
the plush-covered hide from its long body, and 
with sharp sand rubbed the inner skin awaj 
and smeared the dried surface with oil of pep¬ 
permint to preserve the skin against insects, in 
order that we might afterward fashion from it 
the two beautiful “Okefinokee quivers” that held 
our hunting shafts for many years after. 
If we could translate the whisper of trees it 
might be that this arboreal Lear would tell us 
of how the “Daughters of the Sun” and their 
Queen held their court beneath his guardian 
arms, or that the slight mound near the great 
trunk covered the slumbering dust of some 
heroic Osceola. 
I will not babble of our good-bye to Billy’s 
Island nor to his lake with its eternal smile. 
We passed to the junction of the outlet stream 
with the Suwannee Creek more quickly than we 
came, and from thence we journeyed slowly 
down the growing river. Thousands of wood 
ibis and snowy egrets rose ahead of us and 
many were the adventures we had with them, 
and twice we saw, standing on mud banks of 
the river, groups of scarlet ibis that looked like 
clumps of giant blossoms against the green back¬ 
ground of the shore. 
At some other time I may tell the story of 
our seven days’ outward journey until, in the 
cool dawn of the 30th day of July the tumultu¬ 
ous applause of the mocking-birds greeted us 
as we half-sadly untangled the clinging arms of 
Okefinokee, and floated down the unvexed bosom 
of the Suwannee River to old Fort Gilmer. 
