It Was The Home Of A Methodist Exhorter, Mr. Silas J. Betts.

I told him how anxious I was to make a quick portage to the nearest southern water, Little Assawaman Bay, not much more than three miles distant by road.

After calmly examining my boat, he said: "It is now half-past eleven o'clock. Wife has dinner about ready. I'll hurry her up a little, and while she is putting it on the table we will get the cart ready." The cart was soon loaded with pine needles as a bed for the canoe. We lashed her into a firm position with cords, and went in to dinner.

In a short time after, we were rattling over a level, wooded country diversified here and there by a little farm. The shallow bay, the east side of which was separated from the ocean by sandy hills, was bounded by marshes. We drove close to the water and put the Maria Theresa once more into her true element. A friendly shake of the hand as I paid the conscientious man his charge of one dollar for his services, with many thanks for his hospitality, for which he would accept nothing - and the canoe was off, threading the narrow and very shallow channel-way of this grassy-bottomed bay.

The tall tower of Fenwick's Island Light, located on the boundary line of Delaware and Maryland, was now my landmark. It rises out of the low land that forms a barrier against which the sea breaks. The people on the coast pronounce Fenwick "Phoenix." Phoenix Island, they say, was once a part of the mainland, but a woman, wishing to keep her cattle from straying, gave a man a shirt for digging a narrow ditch between Little and Great Assawaman bays. The tide ebbed and flowed so strongly through this new channel-way that it was worn to more than a hundred feet in width, and has at high tide a depth in places of from ten to fifteen feet of water. The opening of this new thoroughfare so diminished the flow of water through the Little Assawaman Inlet to the sea, that it became closed. The water was almost fresh here, as the nearest inlet which admits salt water at high tide is at Chincoteague Island, some fifty miles distant.

Passing to the west of the light-house through this passage, I thought of what a woman could do, and almost expected to hear from the rippling waters the "Song of the Shirt," which would have been in this case a much more cheerful one than Hood's. I now entered Great Assawaman Bay, the waters of which lay like a mirror before me; and nearly five miles away, to the southwestern end, the tall forests of the Isle of Wight loomed up against the setting sun. Ducks rose in flocks from the quiet waters as my canoe glided into their close vicinity. If I could have taken less cargo, I should have carried a light gun; but this being impossible, a pocket revolver was my only fire-arm:

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