Swiftly the golden hours fly, as we float over this marvelous river; softly the dusky boatmen chant their love songs, the fires from their "fatwood" cauldron on the upper deck illuminates the stately trees, and the strains of the poet, Butterworth, come plaintively to our mental hearing.
"We have passed funereal glooms,
Cypress caverns, haunted rooms,
Halls of gray moss starred with blooms—
Slowly, slowly, in these straits,
Drifting towards the cypress gates
Of the Ocklawaha.
"In the towers of green o'erhead
Watch the vultures for the dead,
And below the egrets red
Eye the mossy pools like fates,
In the shadowy cypress gates
Of the Ocklawaha.
"Clouds of palm crowns lie behind,
Clouds of gray moss in the wind,
Crumbling oaks with jessamines twined,
Where the ring-doves meet their mates,
Cooing in the cypress gates
Of the Ocklawaha.
"High the silver ibis flies—
Silver wings in silver skies;
In the sun the Saurian lies:
Comes the mockingbird and prates
To the boatman at the gates
Of the Ocklawaha.
"Now the broader waters gleam—
Seems my voyage upon the stream
Like a semblance of a dream,
And the dream my Soul elates;
Life flows through the cypress gates
Of the Ocklawaha.
"Ibis, thou wilt fly again,
Ring-dove, thou wilt sigh again,
Jessamines bloom in golden rain;
And a loving song-bird waits
Me beyond the cypress gates
Of the Ocklawaha."
CHAPTER XIX.
SUNBEAM, THE SEMINOLE.
When I had concluded the recitation of the poem which closes the preceding chapter, a fine-looking gentleman sitting near us arose, and lifting his hat very gracefully, said: