THE COUNTRY. 183

 condition of things is almost inevitable. What
 would happen to any fine, clear intellect after
 a score of years in this appalling solitude of
 the forests and swamps, this climatic exhaus-
 tion, with bad water and bad food, and, more
 than all, with no ambition? Having grown
 chiefly toward the ideal, would it not, before
 the great realities of Nature, shrivel to a level
 far below the savage, whose progression has
 been away from the ideal, and entirely in the
 direction of daily and practical needs? But
 instead of a score of years, there have been
 many generations to bring about this condition
 which shocks the traveller from the North. So
 that, .although such degeneration in the once
 keen, glad Saxon is astounding, even the most
 casual passer-by must feel that it is circum-
 stantial.
 When the canoe, silently, with the wake of
 the steering paddle behind it, comes drifting
 down the creek in the late afternoon light, the
 man and woman in the dugout are still fishing
 under the shadows along the shore. Perhaps
their boat has floated a little farther down the