I have little to say about the
city, except that it struck me as a fine place, many of the streets
being wide and bordered with trees, and that it contains numerous
churches, hospitals, stores, and other public buildings.

On landing, the judge immediately engaged a schooner, known by the
high-sounding name of the _Great Alexander_. Her skipper's name was
Ebenezer Crump. The craft was not unlike an Irish "hooker;" her great
beam showed that she was likely to carry her canvas well. That very
evening the judge and his family, my father, Tim, and I, accompanied by
Rochford and Lejoillie, went on board, and dropped down the river with
the tide, ready to sail the following morning.

We had plenty to amuse us. Crossing the bar at daybreak with a fair
breeze, we ran along outside the line of islands which fringe the coast
of Georgia, and which are devoted to the cultivation of "sea-island
cotton." The water teemed with fish, and birds innumerable came flying
round us. The most remarkable of the latter were the scissor-bills,
with black plumage, which went skimming along the surface, scooping up
with their long lower mandible any unwary mollusc or fish of small size
which came within their reach, and uttering every instant loud and
discordant cries. Lejoillie told us that they were of the gull tribe,
about twenty inches in length. The peculiarity of their beak consists
in the lower mandible being considerably longer than the other into
which it shuts. It is of an orange-red at the base, and deepens into
black at the tip. To prevent the water rushing into its throat as it
skims the surface with its beak, the bird is provided with a very small
gullet. When unable to procure food by the method we saw it employing,
Lejoillie said that it frequents the sea-shore as the tide is ebbing,
where, finding mollusca with open valves, it inserts the lower mandible
of its beak so as to prevent the shell from shutting; and then dashing
it down on a rock, breaks it, and devours the inhabitant.

We frequently caught sight, too, of the frigate-bird, with its long
forked tail sweeping behind as it came swooping down on its prey, which
its keen eyes enable it to see from afar.

More curious to those who, like myself, have never been in the tropics,
were the coveys of flying-fish, which rose out of the water, and even
darted to great distances before their fins became dry and they fell
again into their native element. Lejoillie told