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are resistant or homogeneous because of the nature of their calling. The oystermen of Chesapeake Bay, for example, are individualistic still because their work requires them to live among the coves and marshes of the Bay shore (a country full of haunting character), and to commune with the misty spirits of that waterway. I called on one such oysterman on the Maryland side of the Bay, off the main road, on one of the innumerable spits of land that project from the western shore of the Delaware peninsula. There was snow on the ground, and the road struggled through scrubby dunes and harsh, sparse fields. Now and again we came across a grey lagoon, with its rushes bent by the wind and a sliver of ice around its banks. The trees were thin and nasty; away over the marshes was the chilly line of the sea.
    Among all this desolation the oysterman lived, on the edge of the Bay, in a house with a shingle roof, painted a greenish yellow. When I reached this homestead across the snow I looked in through a window and saw an antique American interior. The house was built in the seventeenth century, and had a profusion of beams, niches, crannies and fireplaces, and a flavour of smoke and old-fashioned food. Against this honourable background (as I peered through the window) the oysterman and his family moved with dignity. There was the woman of the house, plain and honest of face, like a Dutchwoman in a painting, in a blue woollen dress and carpet slippers; she was sitting in a worn wooden chair, saying something over her shoulder, and feeding a small baby. From time to time another child, a little older, propelled himself into my line of vision in an infant’s chair mounted on wheels, which he manœuvred with some skill among the furniture and even up and down the steps and unevennesses which characterized the general surface of the floor. The householder, a youngish man in shirtsleeves, was doing something to his pipe with a penknife, half leaning, half sitting on a table. At one end of the room a wood fire blazed; and very soon I was warming my hands in front of it.
    This man combined two trades. He farmed a few hard acres with thehelp of an elderly tractor, and he fished for oysters off the shore; from the window of his living-room you could see the reedy creek, a melancholy inlet, where his boat was moored. The withered solitude of the place had affected him, and though he was obliging and kindly he seemed a remote and introspective person, living away there among the marshes; not so enigmatic as an oyster, perhaps, but akin in character to some sedgy water bird that stalks on spindly legs along the seashore. I complained to him, mildly, about the quality of the oysters of eastern America. They are cheap and available everywhere, in almost every coffee-shop; but they are slobbery molluscs, unpleasant in appearance and unsubtle in taste, watery objects, commonly swamped (with reason) in tomato sauce. He agreed sadly that they were lacking in character. Even on the Pacific Coast, where a few people were still breeding the small, delicate Puget Sound oyster, the huge Japanese variety (introduced into American waters since the war) had flooded the market. “I guess that’s the way with Americans,” he remarked. “If it’s big, it’s gotta be good; and if it’s only good, you gotta make it bigger.”
    Far up in the northern States, on the borders of Canada, live the French folk of Maine and Vermont, a sturdy racial minority. We stayed one night in a small town in Vermont, between Lake Champlain and the rich green country of the maple trees. It was a shabby little place, built on a cross-roads, with a few murky drapers’ shops, a tavern or two, a garage, and a general merchant’s (where you could buy, so lavish is the American Press, no fewer than thirteen daily newspapers). The best place to sleep seemed to be an inn with a wide veranda and slightly dirty windows. Its paint was flaking, its steps were cracked, and an aroma of hoary