fields and woods to see what manner of country we are in.  Bending our steps first toward the huge old oak which seems to hang upon the very edge of the green hill near the house, we suddenly find ourselves just over a large basin enclosed with an octagonal brick wall, except where the clear water runs out over silvery gravel between curbings of heavy plank.  This is the spring, and a queer sort of spring it is.  Just under the tree-roots the water is but a few inches deep over a bed of bluish-gray limestone, and in no part of the basin, which is about twelve by twenty feet, does it seem to be more than a half fathom in depth.  But just under the ledge of rock a shelving hole slopes back under the hill, the bottom of which no man has ever found.  This hole is only about three feet by two, and the narrow outlet to the basin is but four inches deep, and loses itself within fifty yards in an oozy bog.  Yet, peering into the depth, you catch a glimpse of the black head and beady white eyes of a mudfish at least two feet long, and presently of the silvery side of a three-pound bass which glides across the opening.  Drop a line with the cork set at ten feet, and you will draw out of the very bosom of the earth a mess of fat perch and bream each as large and as thick as your hand, and eels three feet in length are sometimes caught in the basin at night.  Two miles away, in the direction of the “run,” there are on Woodboo plantation two similar basins connected by a shallow streamlet, and with no outlet which a minnow could navigate:  one of them is large enough for a little skiff to float on, and the gray rock slopes down to a centre depth of ten feet.  Just where the sides meet is a long, irregular fissure, out of which huge bass, pike, jack and mudfish are constantly emerging, and into which they retreat when disturbed.  Hundreds of perch, bream and young bass sport in the shallow parts, and are easily caught with rod and line, the water being so clear that you can watch the fish gorging the bait, and strike when the entire hook disappears.  Now, where do these fish live? where do they breed? and upon what do they feed?  But the mystery does not end there.  About a mile in the opposite direction as we walk through a little belt of wet pineland, where the woodcock runs across our path or whistles up from the wet leaves, we come suddenly upon a dozen or more little basins, the largest not over six feet by nine, which have no outlet whatever.  One hole about two feet in diameter goes sheer down between two pine trees to a depth never yet fathomed:  you cannot see it until right on it, and you cannot use a rod, but drop your line about twelve feet deep, and your cork will go down like lead, while you pull up red perch and blue bream until your arm wearies of the sport.  I have caught five dozen in a winter’s afternoon, for the fish bite best in the coldest weather, the temperature of the water being sixty-two degrees the year round, irrespective of the weather.