On the Birds Highway

y the least. The shay, if you so choose to call it, had a decided "flavor of mild decay," and I must say I thought the hour named for its ruin was near at hand, if it did not arrive en route. The only object of interest on the road was an extremely small building pointed out to us by our driver as the only school- house in the locality. A " regular knowledge box" he called it. Reaching the last summit, the dunes lay before us to the east, one wind-tossed ocean of sand ; to the north the Ipswich and to the south the Essex River emptied into the dark, gray Atlantic, while between us and the dunes stretched a broad salt marsh, dotted with duck blinds, to the sea. The white tower of Ipswich Light rose from among the sandhills, and beyond Bug Light stood on the crest of a dune. Our journey ended at a quaint old house on the shores of the Essex River, surrounded on all sides by the shifting sands. Having deposited our luggage in a room whose floor shelved in every direction possible, though anything even or level here would have looked strange and unnatural, we started for the beach beyond the dunes. Herring gulls crowded the uncovered bars by the hundreds, and now and then a few ducks would fly low over the water, passing from one feeding ground to another. The bare ribs of a wreck protruded from the shore, the keel having long ago been buried by the encroaching sands. Large flocks of snow buntings hopped over the seaweed or sat mufHed up on the driftwood, and...