FROM MORN TILL NIGHT ON A FLORIDA RIVER
SIDNEY LANIER
For a perfect journey God gave us a perfect day. The little Ocklawaha steamboat Marion had started on her voyage some hours before daylight. She had taken on her passengers the night previous. By seven o’clock on such a May morning as no words could describe we had made twenty-five miles up the St. Johns. At this point the Ocklawaha flows into the St. Johns, one hundred miles above Jacksonville.
Presently we abandoned the broad highway of the St. Johns, and turned off to the right into the narrow lane of the Ocklawaha. This is the sweetest water-lane in the world, a lane which runs for more than one hundred and fifty miles of pure delight betwixt hedge-rows of oaks and cypresses and palms and magnolias and mosses and vines; a lane clean to travel, for there is never a speck of dust in it save the blue dust and gold dust which the wind blows out of the flags and lilies.
As we advanced up the stream our wee craft seemed to emit her steam in leisurely whiffs, as one puffs one’s cigar in a contemplative walk through the forest. Dick, the pole-man, lay asleep on the guards, in great peril of rolling into the river over the three inches between his length and the edge; the people of the boat moved not, and spoke not; the white crane, the curlew, the heron, the water-turkey, were scarcely disturbed in their [quiet avocations] as we passed, and quickly succeeded in persuading themselves after each momentary excitement of our gliding by, that we were really no monster, but only some [day-dream of a monster].
“Look at that snake in the water!” said a gentleman, as we sat on deck with the engineer, just come up from his watch.
The engineer smiled. “Sir, it is a water-turkey,” he said, gently.
The water-turkey is the most preposterous bird within the range of ornithology. He is not a bird; he is a neck with such [subordinate rights], members, belongings, and heirlooms as seem necessary to that end. He has just enough stomach to arrange nourishment for his neck, just enough wings to fly painfully along with his neck, and just big enough legs to keep his neck from dragging on the ground; and his neck is light-colored, while the rest of him is black. When he saw us he jumped up on a limb and stared. Then suddenly he dropped into the water, sank like a leaden ball out of sight, and made us think he was drowned. Presently the tip of his beak appeared, then the length of his neck lay along the surface of the water. In this position, with his body submerged, he shot out his neck, drew it back, wriggled it, twisted it, twiddled it, and poked it spirally into the east, the west, the north, and the south, round and round with a violence and energy that made one think in the same breath of corkscrews and of lightnings. But what nonsense! All that labor and [perilous contortion] for a beggarly sprat or a couple of inches of water-snake.
Some twenty miles from the mouth of the Ocklawaha, at the right-hand edge of the stream, is the handsomest residence in America. It belongs to a certain alligator of my acquaintance, a very honest and worthy [reptile of good repute]. A little cove of water, dark-green under the overhanging leaves, placid and clear, curves round at the river edge into the flags and lilies, with a curve just heart-breaking for its pure beauty. This house of the alligator is divided into apartments, little bays which are scalloped out by the lily-pads, according to the winding fancies of their growth. My reptile, when he desires to sleep, has but to lie down anywhere; he will find marvelous mosses for his mattress beneath him; his sheets will be white lily-petals; and the green disks of the lily-pads will straightway embroider themselves together above him for his coverlet. He never quarrels with his cook, he is not the slave of a kitchen, and his one house-maid—the stream—forever sweeps his chambers clean. His conservatories there under the glass of that water are ever, without labor, filled with the enchantments of under-water growths.