Shore Birds Off Cape Charles

I. -- SUMMER SHOOTING.

SOME men like one thing and some like another, was a truism that fell from the lips of old Mr. Weller.

Mr. Golightly, for example, considers a month at a fashionable watering place with a german every night as the acme of felicity, and there are to him more pleasant memories clustered around a claw-hammer coat and patent-leather pumps, than aught on earth besides.

Mr. Verdant, on the other hand, adores a quiet place on the mountains at a private farmhouse, where he dawdles around the hay field, and helps the pretty rustic maiden to drive the cows home in the evening twilight.

Mr. Nimrod, the very antipode of these two, loves to be arrayed in a blue hunting-shirt, with his pants stuffed in huge waterproof boots, a ten-cent straw hat on his head, a hundred-dollar Greener in his hands; and thus equipped to brave the heat of an August sun, and run a very considerable risk of shuffling off his mortal coil by a sudden attack of coup de soleil.

All along the beach where the surf of the Atlantic beats, can be found that most toothsome morsel known as the "bay bird." They comprise several varieties, chief among which is the curlew, willet, grayback and yellow-leg snipe. The two most famous resorts of these birds in the summer and in the winter are Cobb's Island and Smith Island. At the former there has been such an incessant fusillade kept up every day since the season opened by the visiting sportsmen and oystermen, that the birds have become shy and wild, and large bags are now the exception, not the rule.

A party of two last summer, under the lead of the most accomplished surfman on the Atlantic line, Captain Hitching, of the coast guard at Smith Island, started on a great hunt, making his signal house the point d'appui. Smith Island, or as it is often called, "Cape Charles," is a large piece of land jutting out in the ocean, and by the action of the tide made an island. It is eighteen miles from Cobb's Island and about fifteen miles from Cape Henry, and about forty miles from Old Point. It comprises some four thousand acres, and is bounded by the Atlantic on one side, and Magotty Sound on the other. The life-saving station and lighthouse stand close together on the Atlantic beach. Smith Island obtained its name from the immortal "John," who first landed on this spot, the first solid ground his foot had touched for many a long, weary day, and it ever after bore his name. It is the property of the Lees, in whose family it has remained through ten generations. An effort was made to confiscate it during the war, because it was then the property of the "Confederate chief," but probably on account of its being of so little value, the attempt was abandoned.

A good idea of the topography of the island and the surrounding country can be formed by toiling one's way to the top of the lighthouse, which is 155 feet hight, and from this summit the eye can range over a radius of some fifteen miles. The island lies beneath, in shape of an elongated parallelogram, with the ocean washing its shores for nine miles, its surf gleaming in the sunshine like long, slender bars of frosted silver. All kinds of crafts are visible, from the score of freighted argosies of commerce down to the single steamer, whose trail can be marked by the white foam in its wake. The ocean is sunny blue, changing the further out to opal, and it is a sight that is fascinating in the extreme. But turn your eyes inward and landward, and the pleasure soon ceases. The ground is covered with falling trees, that matted and encircled with bamboo briers. Foul, noisome quagmires, from which gnarled and blackened trunks arise. Impenetrable morasses, which are guarded by the matted vines and trailing creepers. Stagnant lakes, over whose surface there rest a thick covering of green scum, black pools that, festering and corrupting beneath the summer sun, breed myriads of noxious, torturing insects, that worry men almost into insanity and send the cattle plunging frantically into the tangled recesses of the swamp or neck deep into the water for relief from painful stings. Two or three tumble-down houses are on the island, and how the family, man, wife and children, escape from being devoured alive by the armies of mosquitoes baffles an ordinary comprehension.

About one-half of Cape Charles is bounded by the Atlantic, the other half by Magotty Sound. Southward the lighthouse of Cape Henry, seventeen miles distant, gleamed like an ivory needle against the sky. About two miles away, is a small island called Long Point, a splendid location for a club house, but its owner, Mr. Isaac Skidmore, of New York, refuses all offers to buy.

A looker on from this lofty tower cannot help wondering why Smith's Island is not drained. A couple of canals with small branching arms, could change this abode of reptiles and insects into a veritable principality -- a domain whose land would be very fertile; and from its grand surroundings it would be one of the most superb country seats in America. As it is now, the mosquitoes render the place almost uninhabitable, and the Government employees men, women, children and babies, are frequently forced to seek the top of the tower for protection against this rapacious though minute and unrelenting, enemy of mankind. It is a toilsome climb, but once up, it is a delightful lounging place in the evening, a brisk breeze always blowing.

But it is during a night snow storm that this summit makes a scene of such entrancing loveliness that the memory never forgets it. The sublimity of beauty holds one enthralled. The darting gleams of the light, four hundred times intensified by the powerful reflector, shooting with mighty force into the darkness, illuminates each flake until it shines in iridescent hues, and it seems as if showers of pearls, opals, drops of silver, and alabaster are falling and floating in an endless stream, down and around the illimitable expanse. The purity, the whiteness is simply dazzling, while the moaning and sobbing of the wind, and the muffled beat of the surf, makes a pathetic monody its fit accompaniment.

There is one fact in connection with these storms, so strange and marvelous that I would hesitate to write it, but for the reason that every lighthouse keeper and inspector can bear witness of its truth, I take Mr. Goffigon, the superintendent's words down literally. He is a graduate of the University of Virginia, and an accomplished scholar.

"The lighthouse rocks fearfully in a storm," he said.

"How can it rock?" we questioned. "there is no elasticity in brick and mortar."

"I know that," he answered, "still it is so, when I stand inside near the top when a hurricane is raging, my lamp which I hold firmly and steadily clasped in my hand, swings backward and forward like a pendulum, and if I fasten it to a hanging chain from the roof, it will oscillate like the galley light in the forecastle of a ship during a heavy wind. Nay, more; if I fill a tumbler of water three-quarters full, and set it on the floor , the rocking of the tower will spill the water. I have seen this dozens of times, hence there is but one absolute conclusion that can be drawn, and that is the tower swings to and fro; you feel it, you see it, you know it, and the swing is some ten feet from side to side."

"On the other hand, if you go outside, not a vibration of an inch can be discovered."

"I took a position on the ground, a few yards from the lighthouse, once to test the matter thoroughly. It was on the 13th of August, 1881, during the great tornado that raged along the whole Atlantic coast. I shut one eye and measured the outline of the tower against the fixed line of my house. With the closest attention, I could not perceive that the tower swayed either on one side or the other so much as a hair breadth. Yet, inside it rolled so that I was afraid it would topple over and crush us all in its ruin. How the inside can rock so and the outside seem stationary beats me." And the keeper lit his pipe and sat wondering the matter over.

"What else is strange about the lighthouse?" we asked.

"Well, in the summer time during a storm, the lightning strikes the conductor every time; the rod connects with the spiral iron steps,and often when I was ascending I have seen the electric sparks flashing down in vivid white sparks. It was harmless, and as the lowest steps were imbedded in the sand, the earth received the discharge. Another curious thing about the tower is its perfect acoustic qualities, a low whisper is distinctly audible, and two people can converse separated by the whole length more easily than they can in a small room."

Perpetual motion is the grand law of nature. The stars are but restless wanderers in the vast ethereal space. The ocean is ever changing, ever stirring, even in its moments of placid calm. Its current is slowly flowing in its circum-navigation of the globe. There is a never-ending motion of the water, and it is this incessant agitation that keeps the water pure. In this perpetual rolling the waters produce many changes, and man so potent on land can but look on impotent and helpless to guide or control its powers. The ocean, mighty, mysterious, unfathomable, seized in a capricious mood and swallows plan, stream and woodland, and leaves no sign behind, or else it gives us with a royal hand a royal gift.

Take Cape Charles for instance, its original survey called for 4,000 acres, and now Mr. Goffigon says nearly a half has been absorbed by the ocean. In 1864 the lighthouse was by actual measurement three hundred and forty feet from the high water mark, now a high tide washes the base of the tower, and the inmates of the coast guard's house have to paddle about in boats. Captain Hitchings says that the U. S. Coast Survey station will have to be moved back, or else within a year it will be washed away. A simple calculation will show how rapidly Cape Charles is disappearing. There are nine miles of beach, or 47,520 feet, and in eighteen years the ocean has increased inland three hundred and forty feet, making a grand total of 16,292,800 cubic feet of solid land devoured by the rapacious waves, or one thousand and one hundred and eight acres.

In five years the lighthouse will be washed way, as the foundation is only ten feet deep, and the ground is of pure light sand.

Yet these same absorbing, devouring billows, give to Cobb's Island, eighteen miles away, all they rob from Cape Charles and more. In 1840 Cobb's was but a barren sand beach of some fifteen acres in extent. Now its area is one hundred and sixty acres, and every hour and day witnesses its enlargement.

The boy is alive to-day who will some day anchor his boat on a shoal of some twenty feet and exclaim: "Forty years ago this was solid ground, and a lighthouse one hundred and fifty feet high stood somewhere near us."

By looking at the map of Virginia there will be seen a section of partially submerged land between the ocean and the main, called the "Broadwater." It runs from near Chincoteague to Smith Island, and is some forty miles long, with a varying breadth of ten and fifteen miles.

This is the finest bay bird and brant shooting in Virginia and probably along the whole Atlantic coast.

The Broadwater consists of shoals and banks and sea-meadows, through which the sea forces its way in creeks and channels, with a width of an ordinary canal to that of a lesser river. At low tide these streams dwindle away to small rivulets, but when the ocean sends its vast volume of
water surging inland, it soon fills them, and bursting its bounds, the sea-green fluid flushes over the meadows and sand-bars, upon whose dry surface millions of fiddler crabs scurry to and fro. The surroundings change as if by magic. In minacious billows the incoming tide spreads itself over the level surface as fast as one can walk, and soon the eye rests upon a vast unbroken sheet of water that seems a part of the ocean itself.

Some portions of these flats are by the drifting sand more elevated than the others, and it is upon these high plateaus the sportsman builds his blind and spreads is decoys. He waits patiently, well knowing that when the bay birds (by that denominating all kinds of snipe, curlew, willet, yellow-legs and graybacks) will be driven from their feeding grounds by the tide, and fly to higher latitudes.

The sportsman must have two requisites: coolness, and capacity to endure, added to this it is absolutely necessary that he should know how to call the birds, for this accomplishment will decide the size of his bag. A good caller can make either flock or vagrant wanderer head for the decoys, and by a few notes bring them circling around the blind. Nay, more; he can, after a flock has been demoralized and stunned by the volley poured into them, and are flying frantically away, utter the call and bring them back again and again, for the birds seem to lose their heads, and return to the fatal spot, uttering shrill cries that are heard above the noise of the guns.

It is a bright sunny morning, with just enough breeze to ripple the water in miniature waves, when Captain George Hitchings and Sanford Spady appeared on the beach at Cape Charles with their boat. They had everything packed and ready for the hunt.

We soon are under way, and as the boat moves along the channel the marsh hens rise from the ridge on either side and wing their ungainly flight up the stream. There on the left on the flats are a dozen cranes making their meal off of the fiddlers that are incautiously running out of their holes to see if the tide is making; their curiosity costs them dear, for they are gobbled up and go down the long throats; one cannot help wondering what kind of stomachs these birds have, not to feel sick when there are some fifty little restless, aggressive crabs, each armed with a huge claw, in their middles.

It is high noon now, and the sun beats down with a blinding glare. We pass a tall heron, who stretches his long neck above the high rushes to watch the boat as it glides along; it is so hot, and it takes him so long to rise and take wing that he remains stationary, but ducks and bows his head in the most ridiculous manner, and reminds one of an awkward fellow bowing in the minuet.

The tide is rising rapidly, and the boat shoots along the current with redoubled force, and soon the highest point of the marsh is reached. We disembark, and all hands go to work to construct a blind; cedar bushes are set upright in a circle, leaving a small place for the entrance, bunches of sea grass are thrown over all, thus making an effective screen. A rough seat is improvised, the bags of cartridges are opened and suspended from a stout twig. The guide now runs sticks in a half circle around the blind and places the decoys on them; generally about fifty decoys are used; care is taken to plant some in the pools of water in the vicinity, where they can be better seen from a distance than upon the short grass.

All being in readiness, the boat is carried a short distance down the stream, and fastened to the bank, then all hands creep into the blind, and possessing their souls in that great virtue of patience, await further developments.

Whew, how hot it is; the blind keeps out every particle of breeze, and you are imprisoned, as it were, in a tight box with the top off, exposed to the direct rays of a torrid sun. The thermometer is doubtless about 100* in the shade, if such a place could be found, but you feel as if it were up to blood and fever heat; the perspiration pours in copious streams from face and body, until your clothes are as wet as a bathing suit after a dip in the briny.

There is not a sound except the swish of the water as it rises around the grass and bushes. It is too hot to talk, too hot to whistle, to hot even to think aloud, so you droop and cower beneath the glancing beams of golden fire. You get cramped and tired sitting in a constrained position, and your limbs go to sleep, and your backs get cramped, you indulge in a few muttered expletives under your breath, and shift your seat to and fro.

At last the guide, who is always scanning the horizon, gives a succession of loud, clear whistles, and from afar off comes a faint reply. You crouch low in the blind, and cock both barrels of your gun, then looking up, you see some twenty birds flying right for the decoys. A nervous excitable nature would at this critical moment knock the fat in the fire by moving and trying to get his aim before the time. A single incautious gesture, and the approaching flock will be apt to open right and left, and instead of having a double shot in the bunch as they settle over the decoys, you will have to be content with a wild long shot that would nine times out of ten miss.

The guide is whistling fast and quick now, and the sportsman sits motionless, nor does he move until the curlew and willet hover for a second stationary.

Now is the time; as quick as lightning he throws up his piece, takes a hasty sight and pulls the trigger. He does not stop to look at what he kills, that is the guide's department. His business is to reload as fast as possible, so he slips fresh shells in the chambers, and as the birds circle back, he again and again empties his gun. Sometimes when the birds are young they will return a half a dozen times until the last one is wiped out.

The guide now rushes out to secure the birds, and frequently as he is picking them up a flock swoops down, and he is considerably in danger if a nervous shooter occupies the blind. A few years ago Postmaster-General Cresswell put nine No. 10 pellets in Nathan Cobb's stern, who has not done picking them out yet.

Hot, hotter! The water jug is uncorked, and the half-boiled fluid is poured down the parched throats.

The tide during all this excitement has stolen imperceptibly in until it covers the ankles, and a curious picking sensation on the boots causes the owners to look down. A dozen crabs have entered the blind on a voyage of discovery, and are engaged in investigating the singular objects in the water. They sound, tap, pull and shake with their claws the smooth rubber of the boots looking like Mr. Pickwick and the member of the Antiquarian Club examining Bill Stump's mile stone. A stamp of the foot sends these crustaceans sideling through the entrance only to return as soon as the commotion ceases. If the birds don't fly freely and frequently, you can in a second turn from gunning to fishing; crush one of the unwary crabs with your foot, tie a portion of the dismembered carcass to a string, to the end of your handkerchief, and in ten minutes a basket full can be caught.

Two o'clock, and it is broiling hot, you can feel the skin on the bridge of your nose crack from the heat, while the sweat runs in streams down your body; the sun's rays glancing on the mirror-like surface of the water, is reflected, and strikes you with its double rays, making two suns shine upon you instead of one.

You glance around, the meadows are covered, and with the exception of your blind, there is nothing to break the vast expanse. You feel as if you were in the center of the ocean, away from all human kind, shipwrecked as it were and waiting for a rescue.

But to work! the birds are now coming in pairs in dozens and in flocks, the tide is at its highest and they are seeking for some place to feed. For a half an hour you are shooting at lightning express speed, and the fun is fast and furious. The curlews sail overhead, and you fire, the willets quiver over the wooden birds, and you shoot while the yellow-legs settle boldly down among the decoys, and you blaze away, knocking over the real and imitation alike, there is no time to think or pick your aim, the air is filled with screaming birds, and you fire until your shoulder is sore, and arms are stiff.

The waters are now receding, and the flight of the birds becomes less and less frequent. The tops of other bars show above the falling waves, and the birds are scattered over a wide expanse.

At last they cease coming altogether and the boat is brought up, and the decoys are taken up, the sail raised, and the craft beats its way back home with the tired guns lying at full length at the bottom.

From fifty to two hundred birds constitute the day's average, and the sportsman is so tired out that after he arrives home, takes a good wash, eats a big dinner, smokes a soothing pipe, he can go to bed while the sun yet lingers in the heavens and sleep undisturbed and soundly until the next morning. Yes, he can sleep with a soundness and restfulness that he never knows in the city, and though he may be dead tired, dead cramped, and completely played out, yet the next day will find himself as bright as a dollar, and ready for anything.

As for appetite, he can eat a flock of birds at one sitting, and then wish he were like a camel and had three stomachs.

CHASSEUR.