e bayou that continually vomited foul water into the sea. The
point had been much discussed by geologists; it proved a godsend to
United States surveyors weary of attempting to take observations among
quagmires, moccasins, and arborescent weeds from fifteen to twenty feet
high. Savage fishermen, at some unrecorded time, had heaped upon the
eminence a hill of clam-shells,--refuse of a million feasts; earth
again had been formed over these, perhaps by the blind agency of worms
working through centuries unnumbered; and the new soil had given birth
to a luxuriant vegetation. Millennial oaks interknotted their roots
below its surface, and vouchsafed protection to many a frailer growth
of shrub or tree,--wild orange, water-willow, palmetto, locust,
pomegranate, and many trailing tendrilled things, both green and gray.
Then,--perhaps about half a century ago,--a few white fishermen cleared
a place for themselves in this grove, and built a few palmetto
cottages, with boat-houses and a wharf, facing the bayou. Later on
this temporary fishing station became a permanent settlement: homes
constructed of heavy timber and plaster mixed with the trailing moss of
the oaks and cypresses took the places of the frail and fragrant huts
of palmetto. Still the population itself retained a floating character:
it ebbed and came, according to season and circumstances, according to
luck or loss in the tilling of the sea. Viosca, the founder of the
settlement, always remained; he always managed to do well.

He owned several luggers and sloops, which were hired out upon
excellent terms; he could make large and profitable contracts with New
Orleans fish-dealers; and he was vaguely suspected of possessing more
occult resources. There were some confused stories current about his
having once been a daring smuggler, and having only been reformed by
the pleadings of his wife Carmen,--a little brown woman who had
followed him from Barcelona to share his fortunes in the western world.

On hot days, when the shade was full of thin sweet scents, the place
had a tropical charm, a drowsy peace. Nothing except the peculiar
appearance of the line of oaks facing the Gulf could have conveyed to
the visitor any suggestion of days in which the trilling of crickets
and the fluting of birds had ceased, of nights when the voices of the
marsh had been hushed for fear. In one enormous rank the veteran trees
stood shoulder to shoulder, but in the attitude of gia