The sun has set, and we are now entering upon a night of darkness, in a wilderness of leaves and blooms, on the water, near thickets where the hungry wolf lurks for his prey, and the bear growls from his covert of security; where the wild deer nips the grass and feasts from herbage green, frequenting haunts where the hounds lose their trail, and the foot of the civilized hunter has never trod. A bright blaze, made from light-wood knots, is placed in a frame on the bow of our craft, and, like the “pillar of fire” which preceded the Israelites through the wilderness, is our guide. Here, encircled by trees whose long limbs overlap each other so thickly that only a glimmer of dawn is seen through the small openings, our flame-lit craft winds up the serpentine stream, and our night-fires send out a glare which illumines the darkness far as the eye can see, while on the boughs above our heads in silence sits the owl, with only an occasional “Who!” to let us know vitality is not entirely extinct in these wilds.
The queer, dusky-looking figures, moving about with their pine torches, flashing through the darkness, and yelling at each other in cases of emergency, when our boat appears trying to climb a tree, remind us of the historic plutonian regions. As we glide along, our pathway is marked by volumes of pyrotechnic showers more numerous and brilliant than can be conceived, which burst from the smoke-stacks, and fall on the water before they are extinguished. Phantom-like we move, while weird forms retire before us, but still clinging to our boat as the connecting-link between civilized and savage life, a thoughtless move from it in any direction being a dangerous and hazardous experiment.
Every landing has its name, kept up as a mark of distinction by the boatmen and settlers, but unknown to history.
CHAPTER V.
MANY incidents of travel are related by different savants, and those of humbler pretensions, who circulate through the country for various purposes; but the following stands without a parallel as a genuine fact, so far as last heard from, in the wilds of Florida.