ome remark about a big shot-gun which occupied a
conspicuous place in his cart. "Oh," he said, "game is plenty out where
we are going, about eight miles, and I take the gun along." "What kind
of game?" "Well, sir, we may sometimes find a partridge." I smiled at
the anti-climax, but was glad to hear Bob White honored for once with
his Southern title.

A good many of my jaunts took me past the gallinule swamp before
mentioned, and almost always I stopped and went near. It was worth while
to hear the poultry cries of the gallinules if nothing more; and often
several of the birds would be seen swimming about among the big white
lilies and the green tussocks. Once I discovered one of them sitting
upright on a stake,--a precarious seat, off which he soon tumbled
awkwardly into the water. At another time, on the same stake, sat some
dark, strange-looking object. The opera-glass showed it at once to be a
large bird sitting with its back toward me, and holding its wings
uplifted in the familiar heraldic, _e-pluribus-unum_ attitude of our
American spread-eagle; but even then it was some seconds before I
recognized it as an anhinga,--water turkey,--though it was a male in
full nuptial garb. I drew nearer and nearer, and meanwhile it turned
squarely about,--a slow and ticklish operation,--so that its back was
presented to the sun; as if it had dried one side of its wings and
tail,--for the latter, too, was fully spread,--and now would dry the
other. There for some time it sat preening its feathers, with monstrous
twistings and untwistings of its snaky neck. If the chat is a clown, the
water turkey would make its fortune as a contortionist. Finally it rose,
circled about till it got well aloft, and then, setting its wings,
sailed away southward and vanished, leaving me in a state of wonder as
to where it had come from, and whether it was often to be seen in such a
place--perfectly open, close beside the highway, and not far from
houses. I did not expect ever to see another, but the next morning, on
my way up the railroad to pay a second visit to the ivory-bill's swamp,
I looked up by chance,--a brown thrush was singing on the telegraph
wire,--and saw two anhingas soaring overhead, their silvery wings
glistening in the sun as they wheeled. I kept my glass on them till the
distance swallowed them up.

Of one long forenoon's ramble I retain particular remembrance, not on
account of any birds, but for a half hour of pleasant human inte