bounded only by the dim horizon of the heavens.  To the east, and inside the narrow beach territory of the eastern side of the inlet, was Bon Secours Bay, a sort of estuary of Mobile Bay, of sixteen miles in length.  The passage of the exposed inlet could be made in a small boat only during calm weather, otherwise the voyager might be blown out to sea, or be forced, at random, into the great sound inside the inlet.  In either case the rough waves would be likely to fill the craft and drown its occupant.  In case of accident the best swimmer would have little chance of escape in these semi-tropical waters, as the man-eating shark is always cruising about, waiting, Micawber-like, for something “to turn up.”

The windy weather kept us prisoners on Dauphine Island for two days, but early on the morning of February. 13 a calm prevailed, taking advantage of which, we hurried across the open expanse of water, not daring to linger until our kind host could prepare breakfast.  The shoal water of the approaches to the enterprising cotton port of Mobile make it necessary for large vessels to anchor thirty miles below the city, in a most exposed position.  We passed through this fleet, which was discharging its cargo by lighters, and gained in safety the beach in Bon Secours Bay, near Fort Morgan.

While preparing our breakfast on the glittering white strand, we received a visit from Mr. B. F. Midyett, the light-keeper of Mobile Point.  He was a North Carolinian, but told us that Indian blood flowed in his veins.  He was from the neighborhood of the lost colony of Sir Walter Raleigh, a history of which I gave in my “Voyage of the Paper Canoe.”  Midyett (also spelled Midget) may have been a descendant of that feeble colony of white men which so mysteriously disappeared from history after it had abandoned Roanoke Island, North Carolina, being forced by starvation to take refuge among friendly Indians, when its members, through intermarriage with their protectors, lost their individuality as white men, and founded a race of blue-eyed savages afterwards seen by European explorers in the forests of Albemarle and Pamplico sounds.

The light-keeper begged us to make him a visit; but it was necessary to hurry to the end of Bon Secours Bay before night, as a north wind would give us a heavy beam sea.  Passing “Pilot Town,” where the little cottages of oystermen, fishermen, and pilots were clustered along the beach, we pulled past a forest-clad strand until dusk, when we reached the end of Bon Secours Bay, where it was necessary to make a portage across the woods to the next inland watercourse.