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Updated: May 10, 2025
Early one morning as she sat and cried, her tears flowed down and formed a little pool, a very little pool among the grass, the lank sea grass stems on which she crouched. Surprised, she saw a movement in the sand, the pool of tears was being changed into a child, a very little child, so small that when the mother picked up a mussel shell, she could cradle the small form within its pearly curve.
Entranced, we paddle on until we leave behind all trace of ocean swell, and if the tide be low so that old sea-soaked snags are seen upon the shore, and boulders thick with barnacles and varied coloured sea-weeds in shades of brown and red, and here and there great clusters of blue mussel shells, these all, if the water be calm and undisturbed by wind, are mirrored on the surface of the stream, forming pictures most rare and beautiful.
We passed several dry swamps, surrounded with tea-tree thickets, and heaps of fresh water mussel shells. A rich iron-stone rock cropped out frequently; its surface had the appearance of having been netted.
They seemed to be unacquainted with fishing, by the way they looked at the English fish-hooks, and their rejection of the fish offered them; though near their fires quantities of mussel shells were found, showing that they lived partly on shell-fish.
"Now let's go back and see if there's anything doing with the rest of the fresh-water clams," suggested Max. But, although every shell was opened and carefully examined, only a couple of seed pearls were found, not worth mentioning alongside the four fine ones. "Anyhow," said Toby, as the last mussel was passed, "it wasn't a s-s-skunk. We g-g-got one b-b-bully old p-p-prize, didn't we, Steve?"
Now a strange thing happens. The mouth of the Starfish opens into a kind of bag which slips between the oyster shells. The Starfish, as it were, turns itself inside-out! It then eats the oyster and leaves the clean shell. Mussels are smaller, so they are eaten in a different way. The Starfish merely presses the mussel into its mouth, cleans out the shells, and throws them away.
"I see," said Robinson, "that I must thoroughly prepare the soil before planting my seed." But he had no spade and no other tool that would stand the strain of digging among tough matted roots. But he must succeed. He put a new handle in the stone hoe or pick he had already made. His mussel shell spade was worn out. He must set himself to fashion out another.
He couldn't run worth a cent; but there was no braver or truer man ever drew a ramrod or tore a cartridge than Tennessee. Reader, did you ever eat a mussel? Well, we did, at Shelbyville. We were camped right upon the bank of Duck river, and one day Fred Dornin, Ed Voss, Andy Wilson and I went in the river mussel hunting. Every one of us had a meal sack.
Conspicuous at this pow-wow was Tecumseh, who across his close-fitting buckskin hunting jacket, which descended to his knees and was trimmed with split leather fringe, wore a belt of wampum, made of the purple enamel of mussel shells cut into lengths like sections of a small pipe-stem, perforated and strung on sinew. On his head he wore a toque of eagle plumes.
Didn't I tell you that there's a world of work to be done over the mussel? But if you like to walk along, why, I'll tell you anything I can." "Thanks, ever so much," the boy said; "but what puzzles me in this Bulletin is the mussel's marsupium, or pouch. Has a fresh-water mussel really got a pouch like a kangaroo?" The Deputy Commissioner pushed his hat back over his forehead.
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