t CRUISE OP THE BLUE WMoG.
 b
with wings on his head, who took flying leaps over cabbage-trees,
and who finally threw me into a thicket of Spanish bayonetaand
cactus plants.
 We laid at Turkey Creek a day or two longer, waiting for a


wind.


Henry consumed,


during that time, a hundred and fifty


oranges by actual count, while Ben added several walking-canes
to his stock, the last one being made from the green stalk of a


palmetto leaf.


Marion had constructed a rude model of a sugar-


cane mill for a settler up the creek, while Ed had fishing enough
to satisfy his piscatorial greed, and Frank found steady employ-
ment in poking his gun at the pelicans, cormorants, ospreys, and


eagles that frequented the little bay.


A half mile up the creek


I enjoyed some fine fly-fishing for black bass.
 Frank brought me one day a bird for identification,


called a


which he


" fly-up-the-creek.


said I;


"it is a small, green heron, called


by the


crackers a


' poorJoe,' though why poor and why Joe, I can't tell


you.--
 Frank mused a while, and then said:
 "A fat poor-Joe sat on a dead live-oak,


" and then suddenly


disappeared into the hamak.
 While fishing up the creek one day, I shot -a large yellow-


bellied terrapin,


weighing upward of twenty pounds.


He was


in shallow water, near the shore, and poked up his head,


I cut in two with a ball from my pistol.


stew.


which


He made a capital


Frank brought in a fine, fat 'possum one day, which he


baked with sweet potatoes a la Kentucky.


To dress and cook a


'possum in this mode, proceed as follows:
 Put a pot of water on the fire, and just before it boils stir in a
few handfuls of ashes; dip in your'possum a few seconds, when


6" No,"