A midsummer noontide has surely some merit, and when I failed to find fish, frog, or salamander for my young friend, it became necessary to point to some feature of the spot that made it worth a visit. To my discomfiture, I could find nothing. Trees have been talked of overmuch, and there were no wild flowers. The August bloom gave, as yet, only a hint of what was coming. I had hit upon a most unlucky interim during which no man should go upon a picnic. In despair and empty-handed, we took to our boat and started up the creek. It was a fortunate move, for straightway the waters offered that which I had vainly sought for on shore. Here were flowers in abundance. The pickerel-weed was in bloom, the dull-yellow blossoms of the spatterdock dotted the muddy shores, bind-weed here and there offered a single flower as we passed by, and never was golden-dodder more luxuriant. Still, it is always a little disappointing when Flora has the world to herself, and while we were afloat it was left to a few crows and a single heron to prove that she had not quite undisputed sway. Up the creek with many a turn and twist, and now on a grassy knoll we land again, where a wonderful spring pours a great volume of sparkling water into the creek. Here at last we have an object lesson that should bear fruit when we recall the day. Not a cupful of this clear cold water could we catch but contained a few grains of sand, and for so many centuries has this carrying of sand grains been in progress that now a great ridge has choked the channel where once rode ships at anchor. An obscure back-country creek now, but less than two centuries ago the scene of busy industry. Perhaps no one is now living who saw the last sail that whitened the landscape. Pages of old ledgers, a bit of diary, and old deeds tell us something of the place; but the grassy knoll itself gives no hint of the fact that upon it once stood a warehouse. Yet a busy place it was in early colonial times, and now utterly neglected. It is difficult to realize how very unsubstantial is much of man’s work. As we sat upon the grassy slope, watching the outgoing tide as it rippled and broke in a long line of sparkling bubbles, I rebuilt, for the moment, the projecting wharf, of which but a single log remains, and had the quaint shallops of pre-Revolutionary time riding at anchor. There were heard, in fact, the cry of a heron and the wild scream of a hawk; but these, in fancy, were the hum of human voices and the tramp of busy feet. [Illustration: _The Old Drawbridge, Crosswick’s Creek_]