. They take the
place of hills, and give the eye what it craves,--distance; which
softens angles, conceals details, and heightens colors,--in short,
transfigures the world with its romancer's touch, and blesses us with
illusion. So, as I loitered along the south road, I never tired of
looking across the river to the long, wooded island, and over that to
the line of sand-hills that marked the eastern rim of the East
Peninsula, beyond which was the Atlantic. The white crests of the hills
made the sharper points of the horizon line. Elsewhere clumps of nearer
pine-trees intervened, while here and there a tall palmetto stood, or
seemed to stand, on the highest and farthest ridge looking seaward. But
particulars mattered little. The blue water, the pale, changeable
grayish-green of the low island woods, the deeper green of the pines,
the unnamable hues of the sky, the sunshine that flooded it all, these
were beauty enough;--beauty all the more keenly enjoyed because for much
of the way it was seen only by glimpses, through vistas of palmetto and
live-oak. Sometimes the road came quite out of the woods, as it rounded
a turn of the hammock. Then I stopped to gaze long at the scene.
Elsewhere I pushed through the hedge at favorable points, and sat, or
stood, looking up and down the river. A favorite seat was the prow of an
old row-boat, which lay, falling to pieces, high and dry upon the sand.
It had made its last cruise, but I found it still useful.

The river is shallow. At low tide sandbars and oyster-beds occupy much
of its breadth; and even when it looked full, a great blue heron would
very likely be wading in the middle of it. That was a sight to which I
had grown accustomed in Florida, where this bird, familiarly known as
"the major," is apparently ubiquitous. Too big to be easily hidden, it
is also, as a general thing, too wary to be approached within gunshot. I
am not sure that I ever came within sight of one, no matter how suddenly
or how far away, that it did not give evidence of having seen me first.
Long legs, long wings, a long bill--and long sight and long patience:
such is the tall bird's dowry. Good and useful qualities, all of them.
Long may they avail to put off the day of their owner's extermination.

The major is scarcely a bird of which you can make a pet in your mind,
as you may of the chickadee, for instance, or the bluebird, or the
hermit thrush. He does not lend himself naturally to such imaginary
end