“That’s a large magnolia,” said I.

He assented.

“That’s about as large as magnolias ever grow, isn’t it?”

“No, sir; down in the gall there’s magnolias a heap bigger ’n that.”

“A gall?  What’s that?”

“A baygall, sir.”

“And what’s a baygall?”

“A big wood.”

“And why do you call it a baygall?”

He was stumped, it was plain to see.  No doubt he would have scratched his head, if that useful organ had been accessible.  He hesitated; but it isn’t like an uneducated man to confess ignorance. “’Cause it’s a desert,” he said, “a thick place.”

“Yes, yes,” I answered, and he resumed his march.

The road was traveled mostly by negroes.  On Sunday afternoons it looked quite like a flower garden, it was so full of bright dresses coming home from church.  “Now’-days folks git religion so easy!” one young woman said to another, as they passed me.  She was a conservative.  I did not join the procession, but on other days I talked, first and last, with a good many of the people; from the preacher, who carried a handsome cane and made me a still handsomer bow, down to a serious little fellow of six or seven years, whom I found standing at the foot of the hill, beside a bundle of dead wood.  He was carrying it home for the family stove, and had set it down for a minute’s rest.  I said something about his burden, and as I went on he called after me:  “What kind of birds are you hunting for?  Ricebirds?” I answered that I was looking for birds of all sorts.  Had he seen any ricebirds lately?  Yes, he said; he started a flock the other day up on[1] the hill.  “How did they look?” said I.  “They is red blackbirds,” he returned.  This was not the first time I had heard the redwing called the ricebird.  But how did the boy know me for a bird-gazer?  That was a mystery.  It came over me all at once that possibly I had become better known in the community than I had in the least suspected; and then I remembered my field-glass.  That, as I could not help being aware, was an object of continual attention.  Every day I saw people, old and young, black and white, looking at it with undisguised curiosity.  Often they passed audible comments upon it among themselves.  “How far can you see through the spyglass?” a bolder spirit would now and then venture to ask; and once, on the railway track out in the pine lands, a barefooted, happy-faced urchin made a guess that was really admirable for its ingenuity.  “Looks like you’re goin’ over inspectin’ the wire,” he remarked.  On rare occasions, as an act of special grace, I offered such an inquirer a peep through the magic lenses,—­an experiment that never failed to elicit exclamations of wonder.  Things were so near!  And the observer looked comically incredulous, on putting down the glass, to find how suddenly the landscape had slipped away again.  More than one colored man wanted to know its price, and expressed a fervent desire to possess one like it; and probably, if I had ever been assaulted and robbed in all my solitary wanderings through the flat-woods and other lonesome places, my “spyglass” rather than my purse—­the “lust of the eye” rather than the “pride of life”—­would have been to thank.