Lagoa, Santa Catharina
February 25 1920 ,

Dear a |
Here are two inten sabemetinne: lakes with a sharp

 

ange of granite hills to the east, falling off negligently
to the north to let in the fish into these lakes, and at the
‘south to let in the cold rains from the Argentine, Behind _
us the hille on the west-- we are in a flat sand lagoon ==
and if we had. a glimpse of surf I think the sunrises here wid
be about as fine as anything I have ever seen, It comes so
suddenly here, the dawn is so Clean too, and the colors are
verything you can think of, with distant ieland-mountains,

 

bamboo and banana greenness, and fish jumping out.of misty ;
fdame pink water, It.1s good to climb up on. the railing of
the crude bridge across the narrowest part of the lagoon,

and while everything is still bright pink can! breezes just
beginning eave. the. blanket, behind, see the fish below you
scatter ‘el that short but priceless flash before youre in

 

the water,. and crash in for a small swim before the, 'gente'
begin to arrive and you play the role of sanhor doutor once
more, I do like the in-theeair part of diving-- you never.
get enough of it,
OF spent @ liberal and very. agreeable evening, in
the U.S, last nicht for the simple reason that I decided
yesterday to give up any idea of going there till at least
a year from now.! Istt that. an odd thing, that when you give
something up you get it in all its, pleasant. flavor. of. an
evening, and if you refuse: to give it up you dont have it at
@ll, Quite a. trite lesson to learn at this advanced age, I
suppose=~ ‘but the age you: learn it at doesnt make any diff-
ence after all. Mhat a funny thing twould be to be brought

 

up With
- would be

out -_~ sense of what was ola-- and v9 nothing,

ip gam 8

mished by noral: bromide,

 

 

  

 
 

 

 

 

cant accept the: invitation to join much as I should like
to, But the Rocky Mountains have one advantage that I have
always been keen about-- they feel your own 48 you Look at
thei and you dont have to discount any of your pride be-
cause they may belong to some one else, And besides that
they are very clean and cool and make you feel as if the air.
wa8 all through you as well as all around, and they dont allow
a stuffy feeling, like waking up in a Ppullm@ana car, ‘There ia
a place I am going to see when. I wet home; it is on top of
Cameron "s Cone and I am going to ‘take a donkey and camp there
5 week and cvry morning I can watch the sun rise over Colo-
u nado springs and the plains and the evenings I can look at —
* eet Peak or dom in Crystal Park in the nice purple cloaming
that it used to have when I was a kid, The delightful part
of this idéa is that Lam going’todo it,
rather wish I was in the Tyrol or the Dolomites
or better in Vienna apending ay time on ‘people who have had
some’ fun out of civilised life and dont. want to lose it all,
here it isa little different for they have. never had any
civiifzation® and I am sceptical about the possibilities of
their being able to carry it, Like shaving , tov which bare _
barism was originally contrasted, civilization takes a cere
tain amount of daily energy, and I am doubtfull if itis
worth the time with the people who havent already gotten ‘the
idea, and’ somewhat into practise, I get very low at the news
fron abroad, I would rather. be over in At again, | |
“Dont adopt two neurotic Jew babies, Eleanor, that's
flying in the face of their instincts, They , Like to be in
| higher dilutions-~ one in twenty or fifty is about right--
then ‘the neurottener they are the better, but they'll be very
- domifugal if you have ‘ein too crowded, You ouhgt to get a wee ©
- geot with yaller fuzz 80 ‘st the Jew'll be misunderstood in his
childhood even if you cant ‘misunderstand him, that good dey
understanding for an artist-= it ruins en, Your plan reminds
me of | a saying at the Rodi oat School "Oh: well everybody has

 
hia pet yew", Which despite the Middle Ages and many trips to
New York on ty and all ake other examples of race hatred I think
of 1s still true, and the funny part of it is that we like
our one pet Jew quite a lot; and feel very warn and liberal
about it all, I Inow afer. i like a lot but like Anericans
end Mnglish and Freneh and G ermans 5 they are apt to pave friands
you cant care 80 much for, .

we eae heat down here in this little place nearly
a, week and have dene alnost nothing ate all ensues the people

are

 

isconfiado and are sure that there ie a string to this

| chari ty somewhere, So I have lost all my natives to be amused
at and life has been very very slow, The sun is amazingly. ine
tense at noon and we have to pile out across @ long field of —
mandioca to get to a dirty little store where we have bananas
and hot chicken soup and jerked beef and weal lemon pop and
coffee and very tough rolls, 8o that after the return journey
--end 1 hate to always walk in a slow aimless digesting sort
of way after every meal--we all fall on our cots and sleep,
while the sun rolls across the. north of the sky and finally

the afternoon breeze sto rts up. People in the U.S, only guess
at the stupidity and backwardness of these countries-- it is
hard to imagine that if your best friend was bitten by & rattle
snake you would not be able to get 7 dollars to buy a syringe
to cure hin-- but no; the people leave all that and shrug their
shoulders, saying that they are very poor,-- and the next day
he is much worse, They refuse evrything but what is put in
their hands and use even that sparingly,

The esdivac has just arrived to pay a call, He pays
one each day and says "Entao como vae?" and then sits around
for half an hour or so saying nothing at all, which gets to
me sooner or later and I start typewriting again and he watches
for about ten minutes and then g0es out and talks to my wen,
who are not bothered by a@ silence that is unhappy and a speech
thht says nothing at all, It is a country where you talk not

as some Bay to revert the sooner to silence, but for the fora

 
Be Voy gen va Ts is iy, he nse tel < — le Tony es — “ae oe ne se. a be « ie 4s ,
the choice of words and the oratorical beauty of it all,

»
rae ee ete a py snes ont de % Whe : ~ mn an ek oe & mawnmeent Ae ea ey conte 2 on cy &
he: Uuties and Wealtn OL ora Z41 a Or sSscrcanilns jc PGWLAUS Cape at &
ee %. me é“ whe pi yan, oy % de ey ; » ea on “a a — : “es ¢* ines “%, a *
the politicians who talk and do nothing! So I take to work
and all evening long the noise of tneir arguments xeepe

me from falling asleep over ite-- but to listen to it -

2

a nip ana #hanteo my a Vee te eae ee,
Good luck and thanks for the letter

 

 
hee * . oS ae ,
i

ot metal
ose aS =
Gite

   

Lagoa February 26 1920

“Mite,

Nerds: t am on the norhh side of this: house and it in the
quiet and rapidly getting hotter kind of a morning with everything
very ereen and pleasant looking but the air very very close, We are
waiting to clear out and-around the porch: of the old wireless sta-
tion which we have used for a laboratory are. still the victims of
this. mornings treatment frat tine round for their final dose, The auto-
mobile will come over ‘the hill agout three hours: from now an@ my trip
to Rio will soon be beginning, Hurray for that trip to Rio!

Bamboo here grows in big feathery clusters called ban-

- poozals which are a perfect: paradise for birds aif tase: noise they
make fron the cool green inside is anything to go. bys ‘There is one
that they call Alma de Gato or Soul of a Cat which 18 just like a
kitten sr round halt lost and. half enjoying it. Then gira

_ there are a lot of perfect;

 

wonderful humming birds of all colors
and in a field nearby gone wonderfully tame pheasants-- so that it
is rather pleasant to sit out in all this Pleasant weather and see
the birds in a bamboozal Like pate, I am completely bpamboozaled by

te
Well, wouldnt-it be a nice thing to find you in Rio when

I get there, 7. you would be bored to. tears there is 80 little to
@ao as to theatres and dances etc, but you would like it when the
new moon shines down there and all the smell of the tropical plants
and all the bright plaster houses and all the strange part of it
struck you, The beauty of it is hard to bear at tlmese- it really
te | =
I am getting so used to Brazil now that a lot of it doesnt
 geem strange to me anymore, But I am & long way. from thinking of
staying here for good, The people are not amusing and not being
“among my own people at all gets tiresome after a good long while,
But I havent seen any thing like the Brazil I waht to see before

 

going home and it may be. that 12 have a tes adventures yet before
I turn home, I hope so, _

The good old cigarette holder continues to hola out in splen-—

.

* ‘ : tt - i ‘ *
rd s Re tee Bae GS ge! 2 ‘ :
es Ces eee: an ae cs ee
dor and usefulness and gathers compliments unto its giver
evry little while, I am still looking for something to
fit neatly over your fet neck or put more aip if it were
possible into that cute little face of yours-- Gosh it
will be a long time before I forget it and that's the
truth, Why arent you there in Rios--waiting for me in
white silk at the International for dinner up there on.
the terrace above the bay! Damn it I wish Brazil wasnt
such a rotten place for girls to stay ine- and there'd be
more here, as you might say.

I BAY? just had a half hour's symptoms from & local
beauty-+ and I am glad the Americans dont come if that is

the result of Brazil on vinmmen.

; a I
F p

 

 
November 20th 192vu
Conceicgao de Arroie
Rio Grande do Sul
This has been a grand day nf travel, Tomorrow I shall see
crocodiles and pink flamingoes, but today I have seen white cranes
and little wild ostriches 61.208 here avestruzes, and I think in
our Grngraynsee. omg,
‘Yesterday I got up at 5 in the grande Hotel in Porto Allegre
said goodbye to a youth named MeGurk with whom - haa been rooming
and took a nigger-driven barouche to a funny Little wharf owned by
one Edmundo Dreher, There was a queer little side-wheeler the
Camaquam, which consisted of a Captains wheéi house and cabin | con-
bined, and a large stateroom filled by the clothes fo an old couple
about 75, and a lower deck which was ange and dining saloon com-
bined in back and engine and poiler rpom in tront and cargo space
in the middle, Thus coming down the stairs one e landed on sacks of
salt and cans of Standard oil or Brindilla kerosene, to your left
standing bored Looking mulatto engineers and to the right a saloon
Tull of gente arriving, A curious sne11 of lemons leather and
oil,

All aay we sidewheeled ‘varough mud eerored water, I FORGE ng
and thus greatly Ampressing some of une passengers who see a book
-very rrely, Brazil in a year importe vhe printed matter that. Argent-
ine takes in a nonth, and Argentine only 8 million to Brazil's 20
or 25, At por do sol or sun set we peacefully ran on a bar, and
witn no swearing trom the Captain nor impatience fron the passengers
quietely settled down to chicken soup and beans and. rice, “three
kinds of beef ,and coffee, then the leading citizen on board told
about a recent experience of his in being among, ‘hose poisoned by
arsenic, and a stern fat woman unravelled the motives of the cul-
prit to her om satisfaction and to a dumb audience, the first
citizen being too canny to interrupt her, I very soon went to sleep
on the lounge and woke be “occasionally to see all my frineds in all
the usually agonized positions sleeping and snoring. Possibly the ;
least artistic thing in the world,
By seven o'clock we were sliding up a still river over-hung
with Low:flat trees with long wavy grey moss on the lower
side of the branches and cactus, orchids and gravata on the

upper side-- loking like a big tangle oi everything green
all the way up to the top, there were lots of blue herron
and a bright green jagged-backed young crocodile who didn’ "t
_ move enough to make me sure I have seen a live one 9d
There was a bird on ine reeds, jet black with a tnick finch
_ beak and a crest and head as bright a scarlet as you could
imagine. After many curves we came up along a big crude
stores building along: the and I got out thinking it was
Palmares, There were @ dozen or 60 big two-wheel oxcarts,
wheels z vhink the broadest and largest I have ever seen
and thatched with rushes woven in a broad arch, with an
cow-hide untanned over one end, It is used for all the heavy
carriege } here and is aram by six pairs of oxen all sbung
out in a Line of pairs, a horseman or two to take care of
the affair with a long pole, They oil the axles here so”
you dont — the unending squeaking and ‘humming of the
carro de boi of the North, on asking for Dr George Roy

an engineer to whom I had a letter from the Sectreary of
State (rast company these days t) I was told by a very
pretty and fearfully bashful. little Dutch girl that le
was la adiante and 80 I went vo find him,

Sure enough Cae came a short little Frenchman

speaking such terrific Forsuguene that I asked him to
say it ‘in French which he was only too glad to do and
we had 8 grand time, He has been in one place or another
fp 26 years outside of France-- several years in Tonkin
with the French Chinese "empire builders" and then in wexico
the last en in the Argentine except for uhe war time when
he was in France, A very cheerful soul indeed who was awfully
nice to me and took very good care of my food and drinks,
He waved me nto his quarters with a erenn geswure put found

a hen nesting on the bed which he was too kindhearted to
shoo out, and who watched me shave in the noncommital
attentive way that hens have, but laid no eggs for
almogo in spite of my polite silence,

Dr George Roy 4s the Chefe of a railroad which
the French are building here-- | perhaps the the queerest
I have ever seen, The guage is 60 cm, which makes the
width of the cars just wide enough for two people and
&@ tiny passageway, The engine wouldnt work, so we had
dinner, and then afterwards the Spanish Chief Engineer,
(he had one muiatto helper to distinguish him thus)
sent in word as happy as a kid at Ghristmas that the
engine would work after all, Dr George was not to be #e2
fooled, and had three mules hithshed to a buckboard
as un antec corde de mon arc and amidst a perfectly gratu-
itous and luxurious whistle we set off over the green pak-
prairie in the rain, sitting up on tkwo benched right
behind the engine, Numerous birds started up very near
as the road has not been running very long, and @he excited
pleasure of the engineer and the’ Superintendent of Construct-
ion grew simply boundless as’ we passed the tenth kilometer
without a breukdowm, and perhaps ten yards ahead’ of the
mules, We suddenly realised we needed more water-- out jumped
the ‘engineer and raked out half the fire’ while the fireman
clattered down ‘he track to borrow a bucket at the last ranch
we'd passed, Then for twenty minutes they emtied muddy water
into the machina, and ‘soon we went away again, leter to meet
a deserted engine and a few'cars on the track, Out we got
again, and dumped’ the cars off the track, and decided to
push the engine in front, Suddenly we came to the end of the
line, The cambbn that had come wo newt ius :ter the 35 287
remaining kilometers was broken dow in mid prairie, They
little Frenchman told me “Restez tranquil “ and we both —
got into the buckboard behind the mules, ‘Six hours ‘more
said he would see us at the hotel in Conce&ccao de Arroio,

It had stopped raining a iitile and I didnt care,
The prairie was too interesting, It was. quite
flat, and in some dircetions snretched off ‘to. the horizon |
without a break in its green smotheness, But in many places
you could see bamboo hedges and trees surrounding some
far distant ranch-house, looking like Arnold Boecklin's
Toteninsel, in a vast sea of prairie, Sometimes one. was)
close enough to see the white paster house and the red
tile roof, or the. thatched outbuildings and the bamboo.
lattive work of he walle, But usually’ froma distance only.
the green trees and bamboos leaning together over an un-
seen house, The prairie was: bright green, our path was
the smoother stretches of°grass, almost like’a: law, and
shallow puddles and poitls were everywhere, A gray @ bird
about as high as a chicken but much thinner; witha slow
deliberate and rather choosy walk, gray on the body, with
pure white wings edged with a broad) black: atripe, was,
on all sides and very tame, The name for it, is6 quero-quero
from the cxf, and. it has a beautiful way of flying,in
~unison, We saw quxi p partridges quite close thinking they
were hiding(ten feet away) and white. cranes nabbing frogs . |
quite: undisturbed, Then came a Ford over the, hiil and...
as it was for ‘us we got in androcked away at twice the |
speed for the low line’ of blue mounteins to the west, The.
‘ostriches werent at all frightened, when. we caught up on some
‘I got out and tried to get a picture and they, ratlled away,
easily-- they are only half, the. size of African ostriches
but are really prettier and more graceful,.,I) got about within
50 yards up to them before they got, frightened, ot

» Then shddenly we got to & place where the houses
with bamboos around them began to be bunched together and »
tuning a corner we found a big green square with an old
church in the centre and pink and white and blue houses all

around it, --- whichowas Conceiccao do Aroio,
Sunday the 21 of Noven-
ber 1920 _ =.

IT am for the ineingih the king of the Bungaloos ! I am ina
special boat chartered for my benefit and going a three day
journey along a string of lakes, It is a humorous journey and
there are some 23 men crowding. into the cabin to see this process
-- reallya very funny sight, great big browm devils with hip
boots crowding round and saying " Barbaridade!" and "Tao 1li-
geira! "-<- the first time a good many of them have ever seen a
typewrite, Now that the ones who were here at first have stop=-
ed calling in their fr iends and the crush has abated the discuss
ion has turned on the advanteges of being educated and the am-
azing skill it requires to run a typwwriter ! The things are
synonomous,

It has happened this way, The question of where we would
establish a post down in the State of Rio Grande do Sul came
up and IT had to decide the pace and when, So the Secretary of

State Dr Protasio Alves gave me a letter that must have said a
good deal more than it seemed , for when I gave 1t to a very
good little French engineer named Dr George Roy, he simply put
everything at my dispostion and I have a large sidewheeler to
myself with the only drawback that I have to take the large part
of the voters of the town of Tramandahy home after the election
and the caboose of the boat is cheia de gente which is so much
more than merely full of people would be,

Eastward we have .a few dunes and then the sea, west-
@ range of irregular and heavily wooded hills, and we are
‘winding in and out over a long chain of shallow lakes which
tomorrow will be more a long swampy river and there I-shall hae
great fun, Fun because I have never seen a crocodile in nature
yet, nor any pink flamengoes, but these I am assured we shall
pass in great abundance, And tonight after the voters have got-
ten off the boat I shall be boss of it completely and shall have
to do nothing but command the ship to WAX wedigtr ‘ahohor:early in
the A.M. That will be my idea of a good time-- and I luckily
*

brought plenty of films and I certainly do hope I can gevu some-
thing worh while, | .

| fhe notes I made about the frogs eggs proved to be
abdut as accuraé as most or tne information you get from
Brazilians about their own flora and fauna, They are exception-
ally unrelaable it seems to me-- a duck and a robbin
@ passaros --- and beyond tnat not much distintion is made!
~-I opened some of the beautiful pink eggs.and there was curled
up the nicest little snail shell, the. open front part
‘yellowish and. the finer spiral part a very. bright cochin-
eal red color, This tiny shell were floating, ina gluey

~ - fliia, but were very plainly nothing to do with frogs

at all, | ted ices 8 aut of aotiupet dD aE!

Two customs wnieh I have noticed again, here
but which IT have not made any. note of before I bhink
are worth mentioning. When the steward came in, to light.
the lamp’ on the Camaquam he turned to everybody as soon
as the flame wees i-cinds and said) solemily "Boa Noite!"
and everybody answered"Boa Noite!” , This, I have seen
widespread here but the other trick I noticed may not be
be at all common for I have never seen Lt before, When
a girl about 19 came into she breakfast room at about 6
in ihe A.M, she first went to what. was either her brother
or a very indifferent husband and waiting patiently for.
him to outsretch his hand finally took it rather perfunct-
orily, as I hougt, and kissed it, I heard her say no "Bom
Diat" nor did he either, | |

framandahy proved to be a desolate sort of Provinee-

town-inshe-winter sob of a place,and as the wind was high
we rocked all nikt at anchor and in the morning went on to
he bamboo surrounded fazenda of one Diehl where. we fqtepbonee
for more gasoline, And finally towards dusk tied MP in ube
‘lee of a mud bank-- Barro de Joao Pedro-- and when Lt was
“mroning the sky had almost cleared and I knew it would be w
warm enough for he jacares (crocodiles) to be out when we got

4

to them,
Along bhe river and even on the reeds in the Lagoa
dos Barros there was ‘ great abundance of bright salnion
pink splotches about 3/4 of an inch wide and 2inches long,
I thought at first that these were eggs of some moth, but
the invariably wet and-exposed positions were contradictory,
so I asked what they were, Frogs eggs! The individual eggs
were 0 size a bright pink glue on the inside and pink but
with a powdery white color on the shell which was a little
stiff, on breaking one the glue dried very quickly and the
big Dutehmen tela me thes used a paste of the eggs for sores

in horses-- they cured immediately was his observation,

In these plains there is an enormous number of cattle
nearly all wild and when the engine came near they hurried
away over the smoothe prairie at a great rate, Occasional
horsemen passed by with palla or poncho sweeping down drom
their necks to cover almost completely. man and his horse,
They have @ curiously digniffging effect; the rider seems
to be sitting very erect and still and. moves with his horse
as one piece, We passed two men in tne late afternoon
who had encamped,in the lee of a, bamboo grove with their
huge waggons providingsskgiter, for they use vhe tongue of
the wagon as ridge-pole for a rawhide or canvas tent, they
were lassoing stkes..on the end of the weéeson tongue, The
lasso here is always fine braided rawhide, They were hauling
railroad ties in these big carts which take 50 to 65 ties
(short and small of course) and get 60§000 for the load which
takes some 5 to 7 days(sometimes 4 to 5), this is with a nor-
mal exchang e $15.00 but here has more value if they do not
buy foreign goods--- which there is scarcely an opportunity
to do, Just as on the Amazon where $3 kilometers from Manaos
youre in the jungle, here one has to go put a& very short
distance from Porto Allegre to slide back 200 years inwo
the middle ages of agricwiture,religion,;medicine, music,
and many customs, They plant by hand, they buy blessings for
eile . @

the mares, Iohey. wrap up a compound. fracture of the
tibia in a dirty bandage and leave it till the owner
dies, they sing Gregorian music mixed in with the
carninval music of two years ago--- perhaps 200
years is stretching it a little, But bastante atra-
zado it certainly is,

Toaay is election wae the hoteleiro begged
my | amma for the noise that he is sure will take place
here in the botel about lung time 1 iui to barroulho

sem qualquer duvida, Doutor,

There was parrulhs, "seus fe hundred and fifty
tall dari ‘men in high boots or in sandals and clinking
and jangling with spurs were drifting in and out all day long.
The election as usual here was absolutley uncontested--
there was no other candidate than the intendente: of
Borges de Medeiros’ party, The newly elected Intendente
when I’ met him in the eveneing remark that Cox's telegram
of congratulation to Harding was “correctissimo" and a
phenomenon you'd never see in Brazil between two parties,

The day after the election Monday-no Sunday
morning erly Dr George Roy the little Frenchman took me
down go where the dredge was getting its deadly work in
and showed me with pride a cut from which they had taken
400,000 cubic meters with an apparatus built on the
spot with every bit of iron hauled 60 kilometers in carro
de boi, The dredge was built there too and really seems to

be a very effective apparatus -=- though I'm a better judge
of aspiration apparatus than dredges,

, He had tom warn me séveral times of going into huts
saying "Dont go in there!It's all bicho de pe there!" And
dirs 'ehodett a few days after I was digging one out of
my foot, Three of his workers have had to stop work al-

- together and it is pathetic’ #o'see some of the dogs.

Pleas too are no. joke in this good ship "General, Ozorio",
Leaving Cornei1hos aowhieh was a venda with a rather graceful
ola tree sprawled out over the roof, a little pink chapel
with BOM JESUS written over 1%, and a few little hovels
with sick children sunning themselves or lying on the floor
saring at US-- we started up & winding stream through a huge
marsh that stretches for miles between the ocean sahd dunes
to the east and hke irreguler flat topped mountains to the
west and norh west, Not five minutes later I was seeing

one crocodile after acide flop off the low banks and dis-
appear in the muddy water, or if ata greater distance :
stealthily bide into the stream and wait with his. head and
evil eyes just showing above the water until we were perhaps
twenty feet from him when he would whi sk out of sight.

They are evil beasts to watch-~ outright ferocity would be
more agreeable. han than this non-committal akant silent
guileful retirement, ‘The size I did. not remember to
eshate and memories are unreliable, Their eyes are wonder=
fully placed, on he top of their heads and elevated just
enouk to be the last thing to ees periscope like
beneah the muddy water,

I never have seen such an amazing variety and number
of fesh water birds-- many I never have seen the like of before,
There was a huge goose with black and white Wings and a gray
body and a very short face covered with red wattles. There
were lots of bigua, an ungainly duck like thin elackish
brown bird witha a long sharp beak, that looked and dived much
like a loon, There was aa black hen like looking one with.

a@ red face, and two white patches on its wings, that almost

always ran and couched in the reeds rather han fly. One huge

black anni white stork and another soft bitue gray crane

and a beautiful little golden brown bird about the size of

a pheasant and a habit of holding up its almost transparent
geg@lden wings when it alit, And another---but so it went on ©

fifteen or so new birds that I watched with the binoculars ,
from the prow of the boat, t would like with a Snes
canoe my spend two weeke like a savage in these noad
swamps, ‘slaeping when he world about me sleeps and
feedng and wandering through the long days with the
peaceful content hat comes with practice at living
- so, The more one notices of living things the more
completely does the Scotchman’ s renark express the
situation ee sa grand life af ye aon' t weaken"
It does not seem to be as much of a universal slaugh-
ter house ag it re considered by some ,@Rathxthat,
Death that has been preceded by some few "crowded
-hburs of Siersous life" is no great tragedy, ote
death that ends a life of misery and insufficienciy
and sickness is a relief---- in nature these are the
two varictbes. “The death we abhor ig the one of our
own making--- we keep putting off the crowded hour
and suddenly cones the end before we have run our race
and had our fling--- then of course it 1s bitter, and
of our ow making the more > poignant, But here in the
swamps if there is an abundance of food there are more
Stong moprhens and more strong-winged ducks that sur-
vive all the oher struggles of living and the hawks
live on the excess weaklings-- which must bear some
fairly constant ratio to the total. To me wild life seems
a less brutal balance than I was taught to believe it,
and etre ss see goings-on ‘considerably more so !
I always feel in places like this the way
gu feel. when two very agreeable Looking people are
pre a, language you cannot understand and but half
catcn he ideas of, There is some sort of communion in
the wilderness that strangera cannot enter into with-
out a year or so of ners Lanes and perhaps much more

than mere time 1s involved as well,