Transcriber's Note:

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation in the original document have been preserved.

Page 266: Ocklawaha should possibly be Okalewaha

PALMETTO-LEAVES

BY

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.

ILLUSTRATED.

BOSTON:
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY,
(LATE TICKNOR & FIELDS, AND FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO.)
1873.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873,
By JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO.,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.

Boston:
Stereotyped and Printed by Rand, Avery, & Co.

CONTENTS.

MAP OF THE ST. JOHN RIVER, FLORIDA.

NOBODY'S DOG.

ES, here he comes again! Look at him! Whose dog is he? We are sitting around the little deck-house of the Savannah steamer, in that languid state of endurance which befalls voyagers, when, though the sky is clear, and the heavens blue, and the sea calm as a looking-glass, there is yet that gentle, treacherous, sliding rise and fall, denominated a ground-swell.

Reader, do you remember it? Of all deceitful demons of the deep, this same smooth, slippery, cheating ground-swell is the most diabolic. Because, you see, he is a mean imp, an underhanded, unfair, swindling scamp, who takes from you all the glory of endurance. Fair to the eye, plausible as possible, he says to you, "What's the matter? What can you ask brighter than this sky, smoother than this sea, more glossy and calm than these rippling waves? How fortunate that you have such an exceptionally smooth voyage!"

And yet look around the circle of pale faces fixed in that grim expression of endurance, the hands belonging to them resolutely clasping lemons,—those looks of unutterable, repressed disgust and endurance. Are these people seasick? Oh, no! of course not. "Of course," says the slippery, plausible demon, "these people can't be sick in this delightful weather, and with this delightful, smooth sea!"

But here comes the dog, now slowly drooping from one to another,—the most woe-begone and dejected of all possible dogs. Not a bad-looking dog, either; not without signs about him of good dog blood.

We say one to another, as we languidly review his points, "His hair is fine and curly: he has what might be a fine tail, were it not drooping in such abject dejection and discouragement. Evidently this is a dog that has seen better days,—a dog that has belonged to somebody, and taken kindly to petting." His long nose, and great limpid, half-human eyes, have a suggestion of shepherd-dog blood about them.

He comes and seats himself opposite, and gazes at you with a pitiful, wistful, intense gaze, as much as to say, "Oh! do you know where HE is? and how came I here?—poor, miserable dog that I am!" He walks in a feeble, discouraged way to the wheel-house, and sniffs at the salt water that spatters there; gives one lick, and stops, and comes and sits quietly down again: it's "no go."

"Poor fellow! he's thirsty," says one; and the Professor, albeit not the most nimble of men, climbs carefully down the cabin-stairs for a tumbler of water, brings it up, and places it before him. Eagerly he laps it all up; and then, with the confiding glance of a dog not unused to kindness, looks as if he would like more. Another of the party fills his tumbler, and he drinks that.

"Why, poor fellow, see how thirsty he was!" "I wonder whose dog he is?" "Somebody ought to see to this dog!" are comments passing round among the ladies, who begin throwing him bits of biscuit, which he snaps up eagerly.

"He's hungry too. Only see how hungry he is! Nobody feeds this dog. Whom does he belong to?"

One of the ship's stewards, passing, throws in a remark, "That dog's seasick: that's what's the matter with him. It won't do to feed that dog; it won't: it'll make terrible work."

Evidently some stray dog, that has come aboard the steamer by accident,—looking for a lost master, perhaps; and now here he is alone and forlorn. Nobody's dog!

One of the company, a gentle, fair-haired young girl, begins stroking his rough, dusty hair, which though fine, and capable of a gloss if well kept, now is full of sticks and straws. An unseemly patch of tar disfigures his coat on one side, which seems to worry him: for he bites at it now and then aimlessly; then looks up with a hopeless, appealing glance, as much as to say, "I know I am looking like a fright; but I can't help it. Where is HE? and where am I? and what does it all mean?"

But the caresses of the fair-haired lady inspire him with a new idea. He will be "nobody's dog" no longer: he will choose a mistress.

From that moment he is like a shadow to the fair-haired lady: he follows her steps everywhere, mournful, patient, with drooping tail and bowed head, as a dog not sure of his position, but humbly determined to have a mistress if dogged faith and persistency can compass it. She walks the deck; and tick, tick, pitapat, go the four little paws after her. She stops: he stops, and looks wistful. Whenever and wherever she sits down, he goes and sits at her feet, and looks up at her with eyes of unutterable entreaty.

The stewards passing through the deck-house give him now and then a professional kick; and he sneaks out of one door only to walk quietly round a corner and in at the other, and place himself at her feet. Her party laugh, and rally her on her attractions. She now and then pats and caresses and pities him, and gives him morsels of biscuit out of her stores. Evidently she belongs to the band of dog-lovers. In the tedious dulness of the three-days' voyage the dog becomes a topic, and his devotion to the fair-haired lady an engrossment.

We call for his name. The stewards call him "Jack:" but he seems to run about as well for one name as another; and it is proposed to call him "Barnes," from the name of the boat we are on. The suggestion drops, from want of energy in our very demoralized company to carry it. Not that we are seasick, one of us: oh, no! Grimly upright, always at table, and eating our three meals a day, who dares intimate that we are sick? Perish the thought! It is only a dizzy, headachy dulness, with an utter disgust for every thing in general, that creeps over us; and Jack's mournful face reflects but too truly our own internal troubles.

But at last here we are at Savannah and the Scriven House; and the obliging waiters rush out and take us in and do for us with the most exhaustive attention. Here let us remark on the differences in hotels. In some you are waited on sourly, in some grudgingly, in some carelessly, in some with insolent negligence. At the Scriven House you are received like long-expected friends. Every thing is at your hand, and the head waiter arranges all as benignantly as if he were really delighted to make you comfortable. So we had a golden time at the Scriven House, where there is every thing to make the wayfarer enjoy himself.

Poor Jack was overlooked in the bustle of the steamer and the last agonies of getting landed. We supposed we had lost sight of him forever. But lo! when the fair-haired lady was crossing the hall to her room, a dog, desperate and dusty, fought his way through the ranks of waiters to get to her.

"It isn't our dog; put him out gently; don't hurt him," said the young lady's father.

But Jack was desperate, and fought for his mistress, and bit the waiter that ejected him, and of course got kicked with emphasis into the street.

The next morning, one of our party, looking out of the window, saw Jack watching slyly outside of the hotel. Evidently he was waiting for an opportunity to cast himself at the feet of his chosen protectress.

"If I can only see her, all will yet be right," he says to himself.

We left Savannah in the cars that afternoon; and the last we heard of Jack, he had been seen following the carriage of his elected mistress in a drive to Bonaventure.

What was the end of the poor dog's romance we have never heard. Whether he is now blessed in being somebody's dog,—petted, cared for, caressed,—or whether he roves the world desolate-hearted as "nobody's dog," with no rights to life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness, we have no means of knowing.

But the measureless depth of dumb sorrow, want, woe, entreaty, that there are in a wandering dog's eyes, is something that always speaks much to us,—dogs in particular which seem to leave their own kind to join themselves to man, and only feel their own being complete when they have formed a human friendship. It seems like the ancient legends of those incomplete natures, a little below humanity, that needed a human intimacy to develop them. How much dogs suffer mentally is a thing they have no words to say; but there is no sorrow deeper than that in the eyes of a homeless, friendless, masterless dog. We rejoice, therefore, to learn that one portion of the twenty thousand dollars which the ladies of Boston have raised for "Our Dumb Animals" is about to be used in keeping a home for stray dogs.

Let no one sneer at this. If, among the "five sparrows sold for two farthings," not one is forgotten by our Father, certainly it becomes us not to forget the poor dumb companions of our mortal journey, capable, with us, of love and its sorrows, of faithfulness and devotion. There is, we are told, a dog who haunts the station at Revere, daily looking for the return of a master he last saw there, and who, alas! will never return. There are, many times and oft, dogs strayed from families, accustomed to kindness and petting, who have lost all they love, and have none to care for them. To give such a refuge, till they find old masters or new, seems only a part of Christian civilization.

The more Christ's spirit prevails, the more we feel for all that can feel and suffer. The poor brute struggles and suffers with us, companion of our mysterious travel in this lower world; and who has told us that he may not make a step upward in the beyond? For our own part, we like that part of the poor Indian's faith,—

"That thinks, admitted to yon equal sky,

His faithful dog shall bear him company."

So much for poor Jack. Now for Savannah. It is the prettiest of Southern cities, laid out in squares, planted with fine trees, and with a series of little parks intersecting each street, so that one can walk on fine walks under trees quite through the city, down to a larger park at the end of all. Here there is a fountain whose charming sculpture reminds one of those in the south of France. A belt of ever-blooming violets encircles it; and a well-kept garden of flowers, shut in by an evergreen hedge, surrounds the whole. It is like a little bit of Paris, and strikes one refreshingly who has left New York two days before in a whirling snow-storm.

The thing that every stranger in Savannah goes to see, as a matter of course, is Bonaventure.

This is an ancient and picturesque estate, some miles from the city, which has for years been used as a cemetery.

How shall we give a person who has never seen live-oaks or gray moss an idea of it?

Solemn avenues of these gigantic trees, with their narrow evergreen leaves, their gnarled, contorted branches feathered with ferns and parasitic plants, and draped with long swaying draperies of this gray, fairy-like moss, impress one singularly. The effect is solemn and unearthly; and the distant tombs, urns, and obelisks gleaming here and there among the shadows make it more impressive.

Beneath the trees, large clumps of palmetto, with their waving green fans, give a tropical suggestion to the scene; while yellow jessamine wreathe and clamber from tree to tree, or weave mats of yellow blossoms along the ground. It seems a labyrinth of fairy grottoes, and is in its whole impression something so unique, that no one should on any account miss of seeing it.

Savannah is so pleasant a city, and the hotels there are so well kept, that many find it far enough south for all their purposes, and spend the winter there. But we are bound farther towards the equator, and so here we ponder the question of our onward journey.

A railroad with Pullman sleeping-cars takes one in one night from Savannah to Jacksonville, Fla.; then there is a steamboat that takes one round by the open sea, and up through the mouth of the St. John's River, to Jacksonville. Any one who has come to see scenery should choose this route. The entrance of the St. John's from the ocean is one of the most singular and impressive passages of scenery that we ever passed through: in fine weather the sight is magnificent.

Besides this, a smaller boat takes passengers to Jacksonville by what is called the inside passage,—a circuitous course through the network of islands that lines the shore. This course also offers a great deal of curious interest to one new to Southern scenery, and has attractions for those who dread the sea. By any of these courses Florida may be gained in a few hours or days, more or less, from Savannah.

A FLOWERY JANUARY IN FLORIDA.

Mandarin, Fla., Jan. 24, 1872.

ES, it is done. The winter is over and past, and "the time of the singing of birds is come." They are at it beak and claw,—the red-birds, and the cat-birds, and the chattering jays, and the twittering sparrows, busy and funny and bright. Down in the swamp-land fronting our cottage, four calla-lily buds are just unfolding themselves; and in the little garden-plat at one side stand rose-geraniums and camellias, white and pink, just unfolding. Right opposite to the window, through which the morning sun is pouring, stands a stately orange-tree, thirty feet high, with spreading, graceful top, and varnished green leaves, full of golden fruit. These are the veritable golden apples of the Hesperides,—the apples that Atalanta threw in the famous race; and they are good enough to be run after. The things that fill the New-York market, called by courtesy "oranges,"—pithy, wilted, and sour,—have not even a suggestion of what those golden balls are that weigh down the great glossy green branches of yonder tree. At the tree's foot, Aunt Katy does her weekly washing in the open air the winter through. We have been putting our tape-measure about it, and find it forty-three inches in girth; and for shapely beauty it has no equal. It gives one a sort of heart-thrill of possession to say of such beauty, "It is mine." No wonder the Scripture says, "He that is so impoverished that he hath no oblation chooseth a tree that will not rot." The orange-tree is, in our view, the best worthy to represent the tree of life of any that grows on our earth. It is the fairest, the noblest, the most generous, it is the most upspringing and abundant, of all trees which the Lord God caused to grow eastward in Eden. Its wood is white and hard and tough, fit to sustain the immense weight of its fruitage. Real good ripe oranges are very heavy; and the generosity of the tree inclines it to fruit in clusters. We counted, the other day, a cluster of eighteen, hanging low, and weighing down the limb.

But this large orange-tree, and many larger than this, which are parts of one orchard, are comparatively recent growths. In 1835, every one of them was killed even with the ground. Then they started up with the genuine pluck of a true-born orange-tree, which never says die, and began to grow again. Nobody pruned them, or helped them, or cared much about them any way; and you can see trees that have grown up in four, five, and six trunks,—just as the suckers sprung up from the roots. Then, when they had made some progress, came the orange-insect, and nearly killed them down again. The owners of the land, discouraged, broke down the fences, and moved off; and for a while the land was left an open common, where wild cattle browsed, and rubbed themselves on the trees. But still, in spite of all, they have held on their way rejoicing, till now they are the beautiful creatures they are. Truly we may call them trees of the Lord, full of sap and greenness; full of lessons of perseverance to us who get frosted down and cut off, time and time again, in our lives. Let us hope in the Lord, and be up and at it again.

It is certainly quite necessary to have some such example before our eyes in struggling to found a colony here. We had such a hard time getting our church and schoolhouse!—for in these primitive regions one building must do for both. There were infinite negotiations and cases to go through before a site could be bought with a clear title; and the Freedman's Bureau would put us up a building where school could be taught on week-days, and worship held on Sundays: but at last it was done; and a neat, pleasant little place it was.

We had a little Mason and Hamlin missionary organ, which we used to carry over on Sundays, and a cloth, which converted the master's desk of week-days into the minister's pulpit; and as we had minister, organist, and choir all in our own family, we were sure of them at all events; and finally a good congregation was being gathered. On week-days a school for whites and blacks was taught, until the mismanagement of the school-fund had used up the sum devoted to common schools, and left us without a teacher for a year. But this fall our friend Mr. D., who had accepted the situation of county overseer of schools, had just completed arrangements to open again both the white and the black schools, when, lo! in one night our poor little schoolhouse was burned to the ground, with our Mason and Hamlin organ in it. Latterly it had been found inconvenient to carry it backward and forward; and so it had been left, locked in a closet, and met a fiery doom. We do not suppose any malicious incendiarism. There appears evidence that some strolling loafers had gotten in to spend the night, and probably been careless of their fire. The southern pine is inflammable as so much pitch, and will almost light with the scratch of a match. Well, all we had to do was to imitate the pluck of the orange-trees, which we immediately did. Our neighborhood had increased by three or four families; and a meeting was immediately held, and each one pledged himself to raise a certain sum. We feel the want of it more for the schoolhouse than even for the church. We go on with our Sunday services at each other's houses; but alas for the poor children, black and white, growing up so fast, who have been kept out of school now a year, and who are losing these best months for study! To see people who are willing and anxious to be taught growing up in ignorance is the sorest sight that can afflict one; and we count the days until we shall have our church and schoolhouse again. But, meanwhile, Mandarin presents to our eyes a marvellously improved aspect. Two or three large, handsome houses are built up in our immediate neighborhood. Your old collaborator of "The Christian Union" has a most fascinating place a short distance from us, commanding a noble sweep of view up and down the river. On our right hand, two gentlemen from Newark have taken each a lot; and the gables of the house of one of them overlook the orange-trees bravely from the river.

This southern pine, unpainted, makes a rich, soft color for a house. Being merely oiled, it turns a soft golden brown, which harmonizes charmingly with the landscape.

How cold is it here? We ask ourselves, a dozen times a day, "What season is it?" We say, "This spring," "This summer," and speak of our Northern life as "last winter." There are cold nights, and, occasionally, white frosts: but the degree of cold may be judged from the fact that the Calla Ethiopica goes on budding and blossoming out of doors; that La Marque roses have not lost their leaves, and have long, young shoots on them; and that our handmaiden, a pretty, young mulattress, occasionally brings to us a whole dish of roses and buds which her devoted has brought her from some back cottage in the pine-woods. We have also eaten the last fresh tomatoes from the old vines since we came; but a pretty severe frost has nipped them, as well as cut off a promising lot of young peas just coming into pod. But the pea-vines will still grow along, and we shall have others soon.

We eat radishes out of the ground, and lettuce, now and then, a little nipped by the frost; and we get long sprays of yellow jessamine, just beginning to blossom in the woods.

Yes, it is spring; though still it is cold enough to make our good bright fire a rallying-point to the family. It is good to keep fire in a country where it is considered a great point to get rid of wood. One piles and heaps up with a genial cheer when one thinks, "The more you burn, the better." It only costs what you pay for cutting and hauling. We begin to find our usual number of letters, wanting to know all this, that, and the other, about Florida. All in good time, friends. Come down here once, and use your own eyes, and you will know more than we can teach you. Till when, adieu.

THE WRONG SIDE OF THE TAPESTRY.

T is not to be denied that full half of the tourists and travellers that come to Florida return intensely disappointed, and even disgusted. Why? Evidently because Florida, like a piece of embroidery, has two sides to it,—one side all tag-rag and thrums, without order or position; and the other side showing flowers and arabesques and brilliant coloring. Both these sides exist. Both are undeniable, undisputed facts, not only in the case of Florida, but of every place and thing under the sun. There is a right side and a wrong side to every thing.

Now, tourists and travellers generally come with their heads full of certain romantic ideas of waving palms, orange-groves, flowers, and fruit, all bursting forth in tropical abundance; and, in consequence, they go through Florida with disappointment at every step. If the banks of the St. John's were covered with orange-groves, if they blossomed every month in the year, if they were always loaded with fruit, if pine-apples and bananas grew wild, if the flowers hung in festoons from tree to tree, if the ground were enamelled with them all winter long, so that you saw nothing else, then they would begin to be satisfied.

But, in point of fact, they find, in approaching Florida, a dead sandy level, with patches behind them of rough coarse grass, and tall pine-trees, whose tops are so far in the air that they seem to cast no shade, and a little scrubby underbrush. The few houses to be seen along the railroad are the forlornest of huts. The cattle that stray about are thin and poverty-stricken, and look as if they were in the last tottering stages of starvation.

Then, again, winter, in a semi-tropical region, has a peculiar desolate untidiness, from the fact that there is none of that clearing of the trees and shrubs which the sharp frosts of the northern regions occasion. Here the leaves, many of them, though they have lost their beauty, spent their strength, and run their course, do not fall thoroughly and cleanly, but hang on in ragged patches, waiting to be pushed off by the swelling buds of next year. In New England, Nature is an up-and-down, smart, decisive house-mother, that has her times and seasons, and brings up her ends of life with a positive jerk. She will have no shilly-shally. When her time comes, she clears off the gardens and forests thoroughly and once for all, and they are clean. Then she freezes the ground solid as iron; and then she covers all up with a nice pure winding-sheet of snow, and seals matters up as a good housewife does her jelly tumblers under white-paper covers. There you are fast and cleanly. If you have not got ready for it, so much the worse for you! If your tender roots are not taken up, your cellar banked, your doors listed, she can't help it: it's your own lookout, not hers.

But Nature down here is an easy, demoralized, indulgent old grandmother, who has no particular time for any thing, and does every thing when she happens to feel like it. "Is it winter, or isn't it?" is the question that is likely often to occur in the settling month of December, when everybody up North has put away summer clothes, and put all their establishments under winter-orders.

Consequently, on arriving in mid-winter time, the first thing that strikes the eye is the ragged, untidy look of the foliage and shrubbery. About one-third of the trees are deciduous, and stand entirely bare of leaves. The rest are evergreen, which by this time, having come through the fierce heats of summer, have acquired a seared and dusky hue, different from the vivid brightness of early spring. In the garden you see all the half-and-half proceedings which mark the indefinite boundaries of the season. The rose-bushes have lost about half their green leaves. Some varieties, however, in this climate, seem to be partly evergreen. The La Marque and the crimson rose, sometimes called Louis Philippe, seem to keep their last year's foliage till spring pushes it off with new leaves.

Once in a while, however, Nature, like a grandmother in a fret, comes down on you with a most unexpected snub. You have a cold spell,—an actual frost. During the five years in which we have made this our winter residence, there have twice been frosts severe enough to spoil the orange-crop, though not materially injuring the trees.

This present winter has been generally a colder one than usual; but there have been no hurtful frosts. But one great cause of disgust and provocation of tourists in Florida is the occurrence of these "cold snaps." It is really amusing to see how people accustomed to the tight freezes, the drifting snow wreaths, the stinging rain, hail, and snow, of the Northern winter, will take on when the thermometer goes down to 30° or 32°, and a white frost is seen out of doors. They are perfectly outraged. "Such weather! If this is your Florida winter, deliver me!" All the while they could walk out any day into the woods, as we have done, and gather eight or ten varieties of flowers blooming in the open air, and eat radishes and lettuce and peas grown in the garden.

Well, it is to be confessed that the cold of warm climates always has a peculiarly aggravating effect on the mind. A warm region is just like some people who get such a character for good temper, that they never can indulge themselves even in an earnest disclaimer without everybody crying out upon them, "What puts you in such a passion?" &c. So Nature, if she generally sets up for amiability during the winter months, cannot be allowed a little tiff now and then, a white frost, a cold rain-storm, without being considered a monster.

It is to be confessed that the chill of warm climates, when they are chilly, is peculiar; and travellers should prepare for it, not only in mind, but in wardrobe, by carrying a plenty of warm clothing, and, above all, an inestimable India-rubber bottle, which they can fill with hot water to dissipate the chill at night. An experience of four winters leads us to keep on about the usual winter clothing until March or April. The first day after our arrival, to be sure, we put away all our furs as things of the past; but we keep abundance of warm shawls, and, above all, wear the usual flannels till late in the spring.

Invalids seeking a home here should be particularly careful to secure rooms in which there can be a fire. It is quite as necessary as at the North; and, with this comfort, the cold spells, few in number as they are, can be easily passed by.

Our great feature in the Northern landscape, which one never fails to miss and regret here, is the grass. The nakedness of the land is an expression that often comes over one. The peculiar sandy soil is very difficult to arrange in any tidy fashion. You cannot make beds or alleys of it: it all runs together like a place where hens have been scratching; and consequently it is the most difficult thing in the world to have ornamental grounds.

At the North, the process of making a new place appear neat and inviting is very rapid. One season of grass-seed, and the thing is done. Here, however, it is the most difficult thing in the world to get turf of any sort to growing. The Bermuda grass, and a certain coarse, broad-leafed turf, are the only kind that can stand the summer heat; and these never have the beauty of well-ordered Northern grass.

Now, we have spent anxious hours and much labor over a little plot in our back-yard, which we seeded with white clover, and which, for a time, was green and lovely to behold; but, alas! the Scripture was too strikingly verified: "When the sun shineth on it with a burning heat, it withereth the grass, and the grace of the fashion of it perisheth."

The fact is, that people cannot come to heartily like Florida till they accept certain deficiencies as the necessary shadow to certain excellences. If you want to live in an orange-orchard, you must give up wanting to live surrounded by green grass. When we get to the new heaven and the new earth, then we shall have it all right. There we shall have a climate at once cool and bracing, yet hot enough to mature oranges and pine-apples. Our trees of life shall bear twelve manner of fruit, and yield a new one every month. Out of juicy meadows green as emerald, enamelled with every kind of flower, shall grow our golden orange-trees, blossoming and fruiting together as now they do. There shall be no mosquitoes, or gnats, or black-flies, or snakes; and, best of all, there shall be no fretful people. Everybody shall be like a well-tuned instrument, all sounding in accord, and never a semitone out of the way.

Meanwhile, we caution everybody coming to Florida, Don't hope for too much. Because you hear that roses and callas blossom in the open air all winter, and flowers abound in the woods, don't expect to find an eternal summer. Prepare yourself to see a great deal that looks rough and desolate and coarse; prepare yourself for some chilly days and nights; and, whatever else you neglect to bring with you, bring the resolution, strong and solid, always to make the best of things.

For ourselves, we are getting reconciled to a sort of tumble-down, wild, picnicky kind of life,—this general happy-go-luckiness which Florida inculcates. If we painted her, we should not represent her as a neat, trim damsel, with starched linen cuffs and collar: she would be a brunette, dark but comely, with gorgeous tissues, a general disarray and dazzle, and with a sort of jolly untidiness, free, easy, and joyous.

The great charm, after all, of this life, is its outdoorness. To be able to spend your winter out of doors, even though some days be cold; to be able to sit with windows open; to hear birds daily; to eat fruit from trees, and pick flowers from hedges, all winter long,—is about the whole of the story. This you can do; and this is why Florida is life and health to the invalid.

We get every year quantities of letters from persons of small fortunes, asking our advice whether they had better move to Florida. For our part, we never advise people to move anywhere. As a general rule, it is the person who feels the inconveniences of a present position, so as to want to move, who will feel the inconvenience of a future one. Florida has a lovely winter; but it has also three formidable summer months, July, August, and September, when the heat is excessive, and the liabilities of new settlers to sickness so great, that we should never wish to take the responsibility of bringing anybody here. It is true that a very comfortable number of people do live through them; but still it is not a joke, by any means, to move to a new country. The first colony in New England lost just half its members in the first six months. The rich bottom-lands around Cincinnati proved graves to many a family before they were brought under cultivation.

But Florida is peculiarly adapted to the needs of people who can afford two houses, and want a refuge from the drain that winter makes on the health. As people now have summer-houses at Nahant or Rye, so they might, at a small expense, have winter-houses in Florida, and come here and be at home. That is the great charm,—to be at home. A house here can be simple and inexpensive, and yet very charming. Already, around us a pretty group of winter-houses is rising: and we look forward to the time when there shall be many more; when, all along the shore of the St. John's, cottages and villas shall look out from the green trees.

A LETTER TO THE GIRLS.

Mandarin, Fla., Feb. 13, 1872.

ES, the girls! Let me see: who are they? I mean you, Nellie, and Mary, and Emily, and Charlotte, and Gracie, and Susie, and Carry, and Kitty, and you of every pretty name, my charming little Pussy Willow friends! Dear souls all, I bless your bright eyes, and fancy you about me as a sort of inspiration to my writing. I could wish you were every one here. Don't you wish that "The Arabian Nights" were true? and that there were really little square bits of enchanted carpet, on which one has only to sit down and pronounce two cabalistic words, and away one goes through the air, sailing off on visits? Then, girls, wouldn't we have a nice wide bit of carpet? and wouldn't we have the whole bright flock of you come fluttering down together to play croquet with us under the orange-trees this afternoon? And, while you were waiting for your turns to come, you should reach up and pull down a bough, and help yourselves to oranges; or you should join a party now going out into the pine-woods to gather yellow jessamine. To-day is mail-day; and, as the yellow jessamine is in all its glory, the girls here are sending little boxes of it North to their various friends through the mail. They have just been bringing in long wreaths and clusters of it for me to look at, and are consulting how to pack it. Then this afternoon, when we have done croquet, it is proposed that we form a party to visit Aunt Katy, who lives about two miles away in the pine-woods, "over on Julington" as the people here say. "On Julington" means on a branch of the St. John's named Julington Creek, although it is as wide as the Connecticut River at Hartford. We put the oldest mule to an old wagon, and walk and ride alternately; some of us riding one way, and some the other.

The old mule, named Fly, is a worn-out, ancient patriarch, who, having worked all his days without seeing any particular use in it, is now getting rather misanthropic in his old age, and obstinately determined not to put one foot before the other one bit faster than he is actually forced to do. Only the most vigorous urging can get him to step out of a walk, although we are told that the rogue has a very fair trot at his command. If any of the darky tribe are behind him, he never thinks of doing any thing but pricking up his ears, and trotting at a decent pace; but, when only girls and women are to the fore, down flop his ears, down goes his head, and he creeps obstinately along in the aforementioned contemplative manner, looking, for all the world, like a very rough, dilapidated old hair-trunk in a state of locomotion.

Well, I don't blame him, poor brute! Life, I suppose, is as much a mystery to him as to the philosophers; and he has never been able to settle what it is all about, this fuss of being harnessed periodically to impertinent carts, and driven here and there, for no valuable purpose that he can see.

Such as he is, Fly is the absolute property of the girls and women, being past farm-work; and though he never willingly does any thing but walk, yet his walk is considerably faster than that of even the most agile of us, and he is by many degrees better than nothing. He is admitted on all hands to be a safe beast, and will certainly never run away with any of us.

As to the choice of excursions, there are several,—one to our neighbor Bowens to see sugar-making, where we can watch the whole process, from the grinding of the cane through the various vats and boilers, till at last we see the perfected sugar in fine, bright, straw-colored crystals in the sugar-house. We are hospitably treated to saucers of lovely, amber-colored sirup just on the point of crystallization,—liquid sugar-candy,—which, of course, we do not turn away from. Then, again, we can go down the banks of the river to where our neighbor Duncan has cleared up a little spot in what used to be virgin forest, and where now a cosey little cottage is beginning to peep through its many windows upon the river-view. Here a bright little baby—a real little Florida flower—has lately opened a pair of lovely eyes, and is growing daily in grace and favor. In front of this cottage, spared from the forest, are three great stately magnolias, such trees as you never saw. Their leaves resemble those of the India-rubber tree,—large, and of a glossy, varnished green. They are evergreen, and in May are covered with great white blossoms, something like pond-lilies, and with very much the same odor. The trees at the North called magnolias give no idea whatever of what these are. They are giants among flowers; seem worthy to be trees of heaven.

Then there are all sorts of things to be got out of the woods. There are palmetto-leaves to be pressed and dried, and made into fans; there is the long wire-grass, which can be sewed into mats, baskets, and various little fancy articles, by busy fingers. Every day brings something to explore the woods for: not a day in winter passes that you cannot bring home a reasonable little nosegay of flowers. Many of the flowers here do not have their seasons, but seem to bloom the year round: so that, all the time, you are sure of finding something. The woods now are full of bright, delicate ferns that no frosts have touched, and that spring and grow perennially. The book of Nature here is never shut and clasped with ice and snow as at the North; and, of course, we spend about half our time in the open air.

The last sensation of our circle is our red-bird. We do not approve of putting free birds in cages; but Aunt Katy brought to one of our party such a beautiful fellow, so brilliant a red, with such a smart, black crest on his head, and such a long, flashing red tail, that we couldn't resist the desire to keep him a little while, just to look at him. Aunt Katy insisted that he wouldn't take it to heart; that he would be tame in a few days, and eat out of our hands: in short, she insisted that he would consider himself a fortunate bird to belong to us.

Aunt Katy, you must know, is a nice old lady. We use that term with a meaning; for, though "black as the tents of Kedar," she is a perfect lady in her manners: she was born and brought up, and has always lived, in this neighborhood, and knows every bird in the forest as familiarly as if they were all her own chickens; and she has great skill in getting them to come to her to be caught.

Well, our red-bird was named Phœbus, of a kind that Audubon calls a cardinal-grossbeak; and a fine, large, roomy cage was got down for him, which was of old tenanted by a very merry and rackety cat-bird; and then the question arose, "What shall we do with him?" For you see, girls, having a soft place in our heart for all pets, instead of drowning some of our kittens in the fall, as reasonable people should, we were seduced by their gambols and their prettiness to let them all grow up together; and the result is, that we have now in our domestic retinue four adult cats of most formidable proportions. "These be the generations" of our cats: first, Liz, the mother; second, Peter, her oldest son; third, Anna and Lucinda, her daughters. Peter is a particularly martial, combative, obnoxious beast, very fluffy and fussy, with great, full-moon, yellow eyes, and a most resounding, sonorous voice. There is an immense deal of cat in Peter. He is concentrated cathood, a nugget of pure cat; and in fact we are all a little in awe of him. He rules his mother and sisters as if he had never heard of Susan Anthony and Mrs. Stanton. Liz, Anna, and Lucinda are also wonderfully-well-developed cats, with capital stomachs. Now comes the problem: the moment the red-bird was let into his cage, there was an instant whisk of tails, and a glare of great yellow eyes, and a sharpening of eye-teeth, that marked a situation. The Scripture tells us a time is coming when the lion shall lie down with the lamb; but that time hasn't come in Florida. Peter is a regular heathen, and hasn't the remotest idea of the millennium. He has much of the lion in him; but he never could lie down peaceably with the lamb, unless indeed the lamb were inside of him, when he would sleep upon him without a twinge of conscience. Unmistakably we could see in his eyes that he considered Phœbus as caught for his breakfast; and he sat licking his chops inquiringly, as who should ask, "When will the cloth be laid, and things be ready?"

Now, the party to whom the red-bird was given is also the patron-saint, the "guide, philosopher, and friend," of the cats. It is she who examines the plates after each meal, and treasures fragments, which she cuts up and prepares for their repast with commendable regularity. It is she who presides and keeps order at cat-meals; and forasmuch as Peter, on account of his masculine strength and rapacity, is apt to get the better of his mother and sisters, she picks him up, and bears him growling from the board, when he has demolished his own portion, and is proceeding to eat up theirs.

Imagine, now, the cares of a woman with four cats and a bird on her mind! Phœbus had to be carefully pinned up in a blanket the first night; then the cage was swung by strong cords from the roof of the veranda. The next morning, Peter was found perched on top of it, glaring fiendishly. The cage was moved along; and Peter scaled a pillar, and stationed himself at the side. To be sure, he couldn't get the bird, as the slats were too close for his paw to go through; but poor Phœbus seemed wild with terror. Was it for this he left his native wilds,—to be exposed in a prison to glaring, wild-eyed hyenas and tigers?

The cats were admonished, chastised, "scat"-ed, through all the moods and tenses; though their patroness still serves out their commons regularly, determined that they shall not have the apology of empty stomachs. Phœbus is evidently a philosopher,—a bird of strong sense. Having found, after two or three days' trial, that the cats can't get him; having clusters of the most delicious rice dangling from the roof of his cage, and fine crisp lettuce verdantly inviting through the bars,—he seems to have accepted the situation; and, when nobody is in the veranda, he uplifts his voice in song. "What cheer! what cheer!" he says, together with many little twitters and gurgles for which we have no musical notes. Aunt Katy promises to bring him a little wife before long; and, if that be given him, what shall hinder him from being happy? As April comes in, they shall build their nest in the cage, and give us a flock of little red-birds.

Well, girls, we are making a long letter; and this must do for this week.

A WATER-COACH, AND A RIDE IN IT.

Monday, Feb. 26, 1872.

EAR girls, wouldn't you like to get into that little white yacht that lies dancing and courtesying on the blue waters of the St. John's this pleasant Monday morning?

It is a day of days. Spring has come down with all her smiles and roses in one hour. The great blue sheet of water shimmers and glitters like so much liquid lapis lazuli; and now the word comes in from our neighbor, the owner of the pleasure-yacht, "Wouldn't you like to go sailing?"

Of course we should! That is exactly what we do want. And forthwith there is a running and a mustering of the clans, and a flapping of broad palmetto-hats; and parties from all the three houses file down, and present themselves as candidates for pleasure. A great basket of oranges is hoisted in, and the white sails spread; and with "Youth at the prow, and Pleasure at the helm," away we go, the breezes blowing manfully at our sails. The river is about five miles from shore to shore, and we have known it of old for a most enticing and tricksy customer. It gently wooes and seduces you; it starts you out with all manner of zephyrs, until you get into the very middle, two miles from land on either side, when down goes your limp sail, and the breeze is off on some other errand, and you are left to your reflections. Not immediately did this happen to us, however; though, when we came to the middle of the river, our course was slow enough to give plenty of opportunity to discuss the basket of oranges. We settle it among us that we will cross to Doctor's Lake. This name is given to a wide bayou which the river makes, running up into the forest for a track of about nine miles. It is a famous fishing and hunting region, and a favorite and chosen abode of the alligators. At the farther end of it are said to be swamps where they have their lairs, and lay their eggs, and hatch out charming young alligators. Just at the opening where the river puts into this lake are the nets of the shad-fishers, who supply the Jacksonville market with that delicious article. We are minded to go over and fill our provision-baskets before they go.

Now we near the opposite shore of the river. We see the great tuft of Spanish oaks which marks the house of the old Macintosh plantation, once the palmiest in Florida. This demesne had nine thousand acres of land, including in it the Doctor's Lake and the islands therein, with all the store of swamps and forests and alligators' nests, wild-orange groves, and palmetto-jungles. It was a sort of pride of territory that animated these old aboriginal planters; for, of the whole nine thousand acres which formed the estate, only about five hundred ever were cleared, and subject to cultivation. One of these days we are projecting to spend a day picnicking on this old plantation, now deserted and decaying; and then we can tell you many curious things in its history. But now we are coming close alongside the shad-nets. We find no fishermen to traffic with. Discerning a rude hut on the opposite side of the bayou, we make for that, expecting there to find them. We hail a boy who lies idly in a boat by the shore.

"Halloo, my fine fellow! Can you tell us where the people are that tend that net?"

"Don't know," is the reply that comes over the water.

"Can you sell us any fish?"

"Got a couple o' trout."

"Bring 'em along." And away we go, rippling before the breeze; while the boy, with the graceful deliberation which marks the movements of the native population, prepares to come after us.

"I don't believe he understood," said one.

"Oh, yes! He's only taking his time, as they all do down here. He'll be along in the course of the forenoon."

At last he comes alongside, and shows a couple of great black-looking, goggle-eyed fish, which look more like incipient cod or haddock than trout. Such as they are, however, we conclude a bargain for them; and away goes our boy with fifty cents in his pocket. What he can want of fifty cents in a hut on the other side of Doctor's Lake is a question. Can he trade with alligators? But he has a boat; and we foresee that that boat will make a voyage across to the grocery on the opposite point, where whiskey, pork, and flour are sold. Meanwhile we looked at the little rude hut again. It was Monday morning; and a string of clothes was fluttering on a line, and a good many little garments among them. There is a mother, then, and a family of children growing up. We noticed the sheen of three or four orange-trees, probably wild ones, about the house. Now we go rippling up the bayou, close along by the shore. The land is swampy, and the forests glister with the shining, varnished leaves of the magnolias; and we saw far within the waving green fans of the swamp-palmetto. The gum-trees and water-oaks were just bursting into leaf with that dazzling green of early spring which is almost metallic in brilliancy. The maples were throwing out blood-red keys,—larger and higher-colored than the maples of the North. There is a whir of wings; and along the opposite shore of the bayou the wild-ducks file in long platoons. Now and then a water-turkey, with his long neck and legs, varies the scene. There swoops down a fish-hawk; and we see him bearing aloft a silvery fish, wriggling and twisting in his grasp. We were struck with the similarity of our tastes. He was fond of shad: so were we. He had a wriggling fish in his claws; and we had a couple flapping and bouncing in the basket, over which we were gloating. There was but one point of difference. He, undoubtedly, would eat his fish raw; whereas we were planning to have ours cut in slices, and fried with salt pork. Otherwise the fish-hawk and we were out on the same errand, with the same results.

Yet at first view, I must confess, when we saw him rise with a wriggling fish in his claws, he struck us as a monster. It seemed a savage proceeding, and we pitied the struggling fish, while ours were yet flapping in the basket. This eating-business is far from pleasant to contemplate. Every thing seems to be in for it. It is "catch who catch can" through all the animal kingdom till it comes up to man; and he eats the whole, choosing or refusing as suits his taste. One wonders why there was not a superior order of beings made to eat us. Mosquitoes and black-flies get now and then a nip, to be sure; but there is nobody provided to make a square meal of us, as we do on a wild turkey, for example. But speaking of eating, and discussing fried fish and salt pork, aroused harrowing reflections in our company. We found ourselves at one o'clock in the middle of Doctor's Lake, with the dinner-shore at least five miles away; and it was agreed, nem. con., that it was time to put about. The fish-hawk had suggested dinner-time.

And now came the beauty of the proceeding. We drove merrily out of Doctors Lake into the beautiful blue middle of the St. John's: and there the zephyrs gayly whispered, "Good-by, friends; and, when you get ashore, let us know." The river was like a molten looking-glass, the sun staring steadfastly down. There is nothing for it but to get out the oars, and pull strong and steady; and so we do. It is the old trick of this St. John's, whereby muscular development is promoted. First two gentlemen row; then a lady takes one oar, and we work our way along to the shore; but it is full four o'clock before we get there.

As we approach, we pass brisk little nine-year-old Daisy, who is out alone in her boat, with her doll-carriage and doll. She has been rowing down to make a morning call on Bessie, and is now returning. Off on the end of the wharf we see the whole family watching for our return. The Professor's white beard and red fez cap make a striking point in the tableau. Our little friend Bob, and even baby and mamma, are on the point of observation. It is past four o'clock, dinner long over; and they have all been wondering what has got us. We walk straight up to the house, with but one idea,—dinner. We cease to blame the fish-hawk, being in a condition fully to enter into his feelings: a little more, and we could eat fish as he does,—without roasting. Doubtless he and Mrs. Fish-hawk, and the little Fish-hawks, may have been discussing us over their savory meal; but we find little to say till dinner is despatched.

The last hour on board the boat had been devoted to a course of reflections on our folly in starting out without luncheon, and to planning a more advised excursion up Julington Creek with all the proper paraphernalia; viz., a kerosene-stove for making coffee, an embankment of ham-sandwiches, diversified with cakes, crackers, and cheese. This, it is understood, is to come off to-morrow morning.

Tuesday Morning, Feb. 27.—Such was to have been my programme; but, alas! this morning, though the day rose bright and clear, there was not a breath of wind. The river has looked all day like a sheet of glass. There is a drowsy, hazy calm over every thing. All our windows and doors are open; and every sound seems to be ringingly distinct. The chatter and laughing of the children, (God bless 'em!) who are all day long frolicking on the end of the wharf, or rowing about in the boats; the leisurely chip, chip, of the men who are busy in mending the steamboat wharf; the hammer of the carpenters on the yet unfinished part of our neighbor's house; the scream of the jays in the orange-trees,—all blend in a sort of dreamy indistinctness.

To-day is one of the two red-letter days of our week,—the day of the arrival of the mail. You who have a driblet two or three times a day from the mail cannot conceive the interest that gathers around these two weekly arrivals. The whole forenoon is taken up with it. We sit on the veranda, and watch the mail-boat far down the river,—a mere white speck as she passes through the wooded opening above Jacksonville. She grows larger and larger as she comes sailing up like a great white stately swan, first on the farther side of the river till she comes to Reed's Landing; and then, turning her white breast full toward Mandarin Wharf, she comes ploughing across, freighted with all our hopes and fears. Then follows the rush for our mail; then the distribution: after which all depart to their several apartments with their letters. Then follow readings to each other, general tidings and greetings; and when the letters are all read twice over, and thoroughly discussed, come the papers. Tuesday is "The Christian Union" day, as well as the day for about a dozen other papers; and the Professor is seen henceforward with bursting pockets, like a very large carnation bursting its calyx. He is a walking mass of papers.

The afternoon has been devoted to reflection, gossiping, and various expeditions. B. and G. have gone boating with Mr. ——; and come home, on the edge of the evening, with the animating news that they have seen the two first alligators of the season. That shows that warm weather is to be expected; for your alligator is a delicate beast, and never comes out when there is the least danger of catching cold. Another party have been driving "Fly" through the woods to Julington Creek, and come back reporting that they have seen an owl. The Professor gives report of having seen two veritable wild-turkeys and a blue crane,—news which touches us all tenderly; for we have as yet had not a turkey to our festive board. We ourselves have been having a quiet game of croquet out under the orange-trees, playing till we could see the wickets no longer. So goes our day,—breezy, open-aired, and full of variety. Your world, Mr. Union, is seen in perspective, far off and hazy, like the opposite shores of the river. Nevertheless, this is the place to read papers and books; for every thing that sweeps into this quiet bay is long and quietly considered. We shall have something anon to say as to how you all look in the blue perspective of distance.

Meanwhile, we must tell the girls that Phœbus has wholly accommodated himself to his situation, and wakes us, mornings, with his singing. "What cheer! what cheer!" he says. Whether he alludes to the four cats, or to his large cage, or to his own internal determination, like Mark Tapley, to be jolly, isn't evident.

Last week, Aunt Katy brought a mate for him, which was christened Luna. She was a pretty creature, smaller, less brilliant, but gracefully shaped, and with a nice crest on her head. We regret to say that she lived only a few hours, being found dead in the cage in the morning. A day or two since, great sympathy was expressed for Phœbus, in view of the matrimonial happiness of a pair of red-birds who came to survey our yellow jessamine with a view to setting up housekeeping there. Would not the view of freedom and wedded joys depress his spirits? Not a bit of it. He is evidently cut out for a jolly bachelor; and, as long as he has fine chambers and a plenty of rough rice, what cares he for family life? The heartless fellow piped up, "What cheer! what cheer!" the very day that he got his cage to himself. Is this peculiar? A lady at our table has stated it as a universal fact, that, as soon as a man's wife dies, he immediately gets a new suit of clothes. Well, why shouldn't he? Nothing conduces more to cheerfulness. On the whole, we think Phœbus is a pattern bird.

P. S.—Ask the author of "My Summer in a Garden" if he can't condense his account of "Calvin's" virtues into a tract, to be distributed among our cats. Peter is such a hardened sinner, a little Calvinism might operate well on him.

PICNICKING UP JULINGTON.

Mandarin, Fla., Feb. 29, 1872.

HIS twenty-ninth day of February is a day made on purpose for a fishing-party. A day that comes only once in four years certainly ought to be good for something; and this is as good a day for picnicking up Julington as if it had been bespoken four years ahead. A bright sun, a blue sky, a fresh, strong breeze upon the water,—these are Nature's contributions. Art contributes two trim little white yachts, "The Nelly" and "The Bessie," and three row-boats. Down we all troop to the landing with our luncheon-baskets, kerosene-stove, tea-kettle, and coffee-pot, baskets of oranges, and fishing-reels.

Out flutter the sails, and away we go. No danger to-day of being left in the lurch in the middle of the river. There is all the breeze one wants, and a little more than the timorous love; and we go rippling and racing through the water in merry style. The spray flies, so that we need our water-proofs and blankets; but the more the merrier. We sweep gallantly first by the cottage of your whilom editor in "The Union," and get a friendly salute; and then flutter by D——'s cottage, and wave our handkerchiefs, and get salutes in return. Now we round the point, and Julington opens her wide blue arms to receive us. We pass by Neighbor H——'s, and again wave our handkerchiefs, and get answering salutes. We run up to the wharf to secure another boat and oarsman in the person of Neighbor P——, and away we fly up Julington. A creek it is called, but fully as wide as the Connecticut at Hartford, and wooded to the water on either side by these glorious Florida forests.

It is a late, backward spring for Florida; and so these forests are behindhand with their foliage: yet so largely do they consist of bright polished evergreen trees, that the eye scarcely feels the need of the deciduous foliage on which the bright misty green of spring lies like an uncertain vapor. There is a large admixture in the picture of the cool tints of the gray moss, which drapes every tree, and hangs in long pendent streamers waving in the wind. The shores of the creek now begin to be lined on either side with tracts of a water-lily which the natives call bonnets. The blossom is like that of our yellow pond-lily; but the leaves are very broad and beautiful as they float like green islands on the blue waters. Here and there, even in the centre of the creek, are patches of them intermingled with quantities of the water-lettuce,—a floating plant which abounds in these tracts. Along the edges of these water-lily patches are the favorite haunts of the fish, who delight to find shelter among the green leaves. So the yachts come to anchor; and the party divides into the three row-boats, and prepares to proceed to business.

We have some bustle in distributing our stove and tea-kettle and lunch-baskets to the different boats, as we are to row far up stream, and, when we have caught our dinner, land, and cook it. I sit in the bow, and, being good for nothing in the fishing-line, make myself of service by holding the French coffee-pot in my lap. The tea-kettle being at my feet on one side, the stove on the other, and the luncheon-basket in full view in front, I consider myself as, in a sense, at housekeeping. Meanwhile the fishing-reels are produced, the lines thrown; and the professional fishermen and fisherwomen become all absorbed in their business. We row slowly along the bobbing, undulating field of broad green bonnet-leaves, and I deliver myself to speculations on Nature. The roots of these water-lilies, of the size of a man's arm, often lie floating for yards on the surface, and, with their scaly joints, look like black serpents. The ribbed and shining leaves, as they float out upon the water, are very graceful. One is struck with a general similarity in the plant and animal growths in these regions: the element of grotesqueness seems largely to enter into it. Roots of plants become scaly, contorted, and lie in convolutions like the coils of a serpent. Such are the palmetto-shrubs, whose roots lie in scaly folds along the ground, catching into the earth by strong rootlets, and then rising up here and there into tall, waving green fans, whose graceful beauty in the depths of these forests one is never tired of admiring. Amid this serpent-like and convoluted jungle of scaly roots, how natural to find the scaly alligator, looking like an animated form of the grotesque vegetable world around! Sluggish, unwieldy, he seems a half-developed animal, coming up from a plant,—perhaps a link from plant to animal. In memory, perhaps, of a previous woodland life, he fills his stomach with pine-knots, and bits of board, wherever he can find one to chew. It is his way of taking tobacco. I have been with a hunter who dissected one of these creatures, and seen him take from his stomach a mass of mingled pine-knots, with bits of brick, worn smooth, as if the digestive fluids had somewhat corroded them. The fore leg and paw of the alligator has a pitiful and rather shocking resemblance to a black human hand; and the muscular power is so great, that in case of the particular alligator I speak of, even after his head was taken off, when the incision was made into the pectoral muscle for the purpose of skinning, this black hand and arm rose up, and gave the operator quite a formidable push in the chest.

We hope to see some of these creatures out; but none appear. The infrequency of their appearance marks the lateness and backwardness of our spring. There!—a cry of victory is heard from the forward boat; and Mademoiselle Nelly is seen energetically working her elbows: a scuffle ensues, and the captive has a free berth on a boat, without charge for passage-ticket. We shout like people who are getting hungry, as in truth we are. And now Elsie starts in our boat; and all is commotion, till a fine blue bream, spotted with black, is landed. Next a large black trout, with his wide yellow mouth, comes up unwillingly from the crystal flood. We pity them; but what are we to do? It is a question between dinner and dinner. These fish, out marketing on their own account, darted at our hook, expecting to catch another fish. We catch them; and, instead of eating, they are eaten.

After all, the instinct of hunting and catching something is as strong in the human breast as in that of cat or tiger; and we all share the exultation which sends a shout from boat to boat as a new acquisition is added to our prospective dinner-store.

And now right in front of us looms up from the depth of a group of pines and magnolias a white skeleton of a tree, with gnarled arms, bleached by years of wind and sun, swathed with long waving folds of gray moss. On the very tip-top of this, proudly above all possibility of capture, a fish-hawk's nest is built. Full eighty feet in the air, and about the size of a flour-barrel; built like an old marauding baron's stronghold in the middle ages, in inaccessible fastnesses; lined within and swathed without with gray moss,—it is a splendid post of observation. We can see the white head and shoulders of the bird perched upon her nest; and already they perceive us. The pair rise and clap their wings, and discourse to each other with loud, shrill cries, perhaps of indignation, that we who have houses to dwell in, and beef and chickens to eat, should come up and invade their fishing-grounds.

The fish-hawk—I beg his pardon, the fish-eagle; for I can see that he is a bird of no mean size and proportions—has as good a right to think that the river and the fish were made for him as we; and better too, because the Creator has endowed him with wonderful eyesight, which enables him, from the top of a tree eighty feet high, to search the depths of the river, mark his prey, and dive down with unerring certainty to it. He has his charter in his eyes, his beak, his claws; and doubtless he has a right to remonstrate, when we, who have neither eyes, beaks, nor claws adapted to the purpose, manage to smuggle away his dinner. Thankful are we that no mighty hunter is aboard, and that the atrocity of shooting a bird on her nest will not be perpetrated here. We are a harmless company, and mean so well by them, that they really might allow us one dinner out of their larder.

We have rowed as far up Julington as is expedient, considering that we have to row down again; and so we land in the immediate vicinity of our fish-eagle's fortress, greatly to his discontent. Wild, piercing cries come to us now and then from the heights of the eyry; but we, unmoved, proceed with our dinner-preparations.

Do you want to know the best way in the world of cooking fish? Then listen.

The fish are taken to the river by one, and simply washed of their superfluous internals, though by no means scaled. A moment prepares them for the fire. Meanwhile a broad hole has been dug in the smooth white sand; and a fire of dry light wood is merrily crackling therein. The kerosene-stove is set a-going; the tea-kettle filled, and put on to boil; when we disperse to examine the palmetto-jungles. One or two parties take to the boats, and skim a little distance up stream, where was a grove of youthful palmetto-trees. The palmetto-shrub is essentially a different variety from the tree. In moist, rich land, the shrub rears a high head, and looks as if it were trying to become a tree; but it never does it. The leaf, also, is essentially different. The full-grown palm-leaf is three or four yards long, curiously plaited and folded. In the centre of both palmetto and palm is the bud from whence all future leaves spring, rising like a green spike. This bud is in great request for palmetto-hats; and all manner of palm-work; and it was for these buds that our boating-party was going. A venturesome boy, by climbing a neighboring tree and jumping into the palm, can succeed in securing this prize, though at some risk of life and limb. Our party returned with two palm-buds about two yards long, and one or two of the long, graceful leaves.

But now the fire has burned low, and the sand-hole is thoroughly heated. "Bring me," says the presiding cook, "any quantity of those great broad bonnet-leaves." And forth impetuous rush the youth; and bonnet-leaves cool and dripping are forthcoming, wherewith we double-line the hole in the sand. Then heads and points, compactly folded, go in a line of fish, and are covered down green and comfortable with a double blanket of dripping bonnet-leaves. Then, with a flat board for our shovel, we rake back first the hot sand, and then the coals and brands yet remaining of the fire. Watches are looked at; and it is agreed by old hands experienced in clam-bakes that half an hour shall be given to complete our dinner.

Meanwhile the steaming tea-kettle calls for coffee, and the French coffee-pot receives its fragrant store; while the fish-hawk, from his high tower of observation, interjects plaintive notes of remonstrance. I fancy him some hoarse old moralist, gifted with uncomfortable keen-sightedness, forever shrieking down protests on the ways of the thoughtless children of men.

What are we doing to those good fish of his, which he could prepare for the table in much shorter order? An old hunter who has sometimes explored the ground under the fish-hawk's nest says that bushels of fish-bones may be found there, neatly picked, testifying to the excellent appetite which prevails in those cloud-regions, and to the efficiency of the plan of eating fish au naturel.

We wander abroad, and find great blue and white violets and swamp-azaleas along the river's brink; and we take advantage of the not very dense shade of a long-leaved pine to set out the contents of our luncheon-baskets. Ham-sandwiches, hard-boiled eggs, cakes in tempting variety, jellies and fruits, make their appearance in a miscellaneous sort of way. And now comes the great operation of getting out our fish. Without shovel, other than a bit of inflammable pine-board, the thing presents evident difficulties: but it must be done; and done it is.

A platter is improvised of two large palmetto-leaves. The fire is raked off, and the fish emerge from their baking-place, somewhat the worse as to external appearance; but we bear them off to the feast. In the trial process we find that the whole external part of the fish—scales, skin, and fins—comes off, leaving the meat white and pure, and deliciously juicy. A bit well salted and peppered is forthwith transferred to each plate; and all agree that never fish was better and sweeter. Then coffee is served round; and we feast, and are merry. When the meal is over, we arrange our table for the benefit of the fish-hawks. The fragments of fish yet remaining, bits of bread and cake and cheese, are all systematically arranged for him to take his luncheon after we are gone. Mr. Bergh himself could not ask more exemplary conduct.

For now the westering sun warns us that it is time to be spreading our sails homeward; and, well pleased all, we disperse ourselves into our respective boats, to fish again as we pass the lily-pads on the shore. The sport engages every one on board except myself, who, sitting in the end of the boat, have leisure to observe the wonderful beauty of the sky, the shadows of the forests-belts in the water, and the glorious trees.

One magnolia I saw that deserved to be called an archangel among the sons of the forest. Full a hundred feet high it stood, with a trunk rising straight, round, and branchless for full fifty feet, and crowned with a glorious head of rich, dark, shining leaves. When its lily-blossoms awake, what a glory will it become, all alone out there in the silent forest, with only God to see!

No: let us believe, with Milton, that

"Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth

Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep;"

and the great magnolia-trees may spring and flower for them.

The fishing luck still continues; and the prospects for a breakfast to-morrow morning are bright. One great fellow, however, makes off with hook, spoon, and all; and we see him floundering among the lily-pads with it in his mouth, vastly dissatisfied with his acquisition. Like many a poor fellow in the world's fishing, he has snapped at a fine bait, and got a sharp hook for his pains.

Now we come back to the yachts, and the fishing is over. The sun is just going down as we raise our white sails and away for the broad shining expanse of the St. John's. In a moment the singers of our party break forth into song and glee; and catches roll over the water from one yacht to the other as we race along neck and neck.

The evening wind rises fresh and fair, and we sweep down the beautiful coast. Great bars of opal and rose-color lie across the western sky: the blue waves turn rosy, and ripple and sparkle with the evening light, as we fly along. On the distant wharf we see all the stay-at-homes watching for us as we come to land after the most successful picnic that heart could conceive. Each fisherwoman has her fish to exhibit, and her exploits to recount; and there is a plentiful fish-breakfast in each of the houses.

So goes the 29th of February on the St. John's.

MAGNOLIA.

Mandarin, Fla., March 6, 1872.

AGNOLIA is a name suggestive of beauty; and, for once, the name does not belie the fact. The boarding-house there is about the pleasantest winter resort in Florida. We have been passing a day and night there as guest of some friends, and find a company of about seventy people enjoying themselves after the usual fashions of summer watering-places. The house is situated on a little eminence, and commands a fine sweep of view both up and down the river. In the usual fashion of Southern life, it is surrounded with wide verandas, where the guests pass most of their time,—the ladies chatting, and working embroidery; the gentlemen reading newspapers, and smoking.

The amusements are boating and fishing parties of longer or shorter duration, rides and walks along the shore, or croquet on a fine, shady croquet-ground in a live-oak grove back of the house.

We tried them all. First we went in a row-boat about a couple of miles up a little creek. The shore on either side was ruffled with the green bonnet-leaves, with here and there a golden blossom. The forest-trees, which were large and lofty, were almost entirely of the deciduous kind, which was just bursting into leaf; and the effect was very curious and peculiar. One has often remarked what a misty effect the first buddings of foliage have. Here there was a mist of many colors,—rose-colored, pink, crimson, yellow, and vivid green, the hues of the young leaves, or of the different tags and keys of the different species of trees. Here and there a wild plum, sheeted in brilliant white, varied the tableau. We rowed up to shore, drew down a branch, and filled the laps of the ladies with sprays of white flowers. The sun beat down upon us with the power of August; and, had it not been for the fresh breeze that blew up from the creek, we should have found it very oppressive. We returned just in time to rest for dinner. The dining-hall is spacious and cheerful; and the company are seated at small tables, forming social groups and parties. The fare was about the same as would be found in a first-class boarding-house at the North. The house is furnished throughout in a very agreeable style; and an invalid could nowhere in Florida have more comforts. It is more than full, and constantly obliged to turn away applicants; and we understand that families are now waiting at Green Cove for places to be vacated here. We are told that it is in contemplation, another season, to put up several cottages, to be rented to families who will board at the hotel. At present there is connected with the establishment one house and a cottage, where some of the guests have their rooms; and, as the weather is so generally mild, even invalids find no objection to walking to their meals.

The house is a respectable, good-sized, old-fashioned structure; and, being away from the main building, is preferred by some who feel the need of more entire quiet. Sitting on the front steps in the warm afternoon sunshine, and looking across to the distant, hazy shores, miles away, one could fancy one's self in Italy,—an illusion which the great clumps of aloes, and the tall green yuccas, and the gold-fruited orange-trees, help to carry out. Groups of ladies were seated here and there under trees, reading, working, and chatting. We were called off by the making-up of a croquet-party.

The croquet-ground is under the shade of a fine grove of live-oaks, which, with their swaying drapery of white moss, form a graceful shade and shelter. We shared the honor of gaining a victory or two under the banner of a doctor of divinity, accustomed, we believe, to winning laurels on quite other fields in the good city of New York. It has been our general experience, however, that a man good for any thing else is commonly a good croquet-player. We would notify your editor-in-chief, that, if ever he plays a game against Dr. C——, he will find a foeman worthy of his steel.

In the evening the whole company gathered in the parlors, made cheerful by blazing wood-fires. There were song-singing and piano-playing, charades and games, to pass the time withal; and all bore testimony to the very sociable and agreeable manner in which life moved on in their circle.

Magnolia is about three-quarters of a mile from Green-Cove Springs, where are two or three large, well-kept boarding-houses. There is a very pleasant, shady walk through the woods from one place to the other; and the mail comes every day to Green Cove, and is sent for, from the Magnolia House, in a daily morning carriage. It is one of the amusements of the guests to ride over, on these occasions, for a little morning gossip and shopping, as Magnolia, being quite sequestered, does not present the opportunity to chaffer even for a stick of candy. Of course, fair ones that have been accustomed to the periodical excitement of a shopping-tour would sink into atrophy without an opportunity to spend something. What they can buy at Green Cove is a matter of indifference. It is the burning of money in idle purses that injures the nervous system.

There are no orange-groves on this side of the river. The orange-trees about the house are entirely of the wild kind; and, for merely ornamental purposes, no tree more beautiful could be devised. Its vivid green, the deep gold-color of its clusters of fruit, and the exuberance with which it blossoms, all go to recommend it. Formerly there were extensive orange-groves, with thousands of bearing trees, on this side of the river. The frost of 1835 killed the trees, and they have never been reset. Oranges are not, therefore, either cheap or plenty at Magnolia or Green Cove. Nothing shows more strikingly the want of enterprise that has characterized this country than this. Seedling oranges planted the very next day after the great frost would have been in bearing ten years after, and would, ere now, have yielded barrels and barrels of fruit; and the trees would have grown and taken care of themselves. One would have thought so very simple and easy a measure would have been adopted.

At eleven o'clock the next morning we took steamer for Mandarin, and went skimming along the shores, watching the white-blossoming plum-trees amid the green of the forest. We stopped at Hibernia, a pleasant boarding-house on an island called Fleming's, after a rich Col. Fleming who formerly had a handsome plantation there. There is a fine, attractive-looking country-house, embowered in trees and with shaded verandas, where about forty boarders are yearly accommodated. We have heard this resort very highly praised as a quiet spot, where the accommodations are homelike and comfortable. It is kept by the widow of the former proprietor; and we are told that guests who once go there return year after year. There is something certainly very peaceful and attractive about its surroundings.

But now our boat is once more drawing up to the wharf at Mandarin; and we must defer much that we have to say till next week. Phœbus, we are happy to say to our girl correspondents, is bright and happy, and in excellent voice. All day long, at intervals, we can hear him from the back veranda, shouting, "What cheer! what cheer!" or sometimes abbreviating it as "Cheer, cheer, cheer!"

Since we have been writing, one of those characteristic changes have come up to which this latitude is subject. The sun was shining, the river blue, the windows open, and the family reading, writing, and working on the veranda, when suddenly comes a frown of Nature,—a black scowl in the horizon. Up flies the wind; the waves are all white-caps; the blinds bang; the windows rattle; every one runs to shut every thing; and for a few moments it blows as if it would take house and all away. Down drop oranges in a golden shower; here, there, and everywhere the lightning flashes; thunder cracks and rattles and rolls; and the big torrents of rain come pouring down: but, in the back-porch, Phœbus between each clap persists in shouting, "What cheer! what cheer!" Like a woman in a passion, Nature ends all this with a burst of tears; and it is raining now, tenderly and plaintively as if bemoaning itself.

Well, we wouldn't have missed the sight if we had been asked; and we have picked up a bushel of oranges that otherwise somebody must have climbed the trees for.

Meanwhile the mail is closing. Good-by!

YELLOW JESSAMINES.

Mandarin, Fla., March 14, 1872.

HEY talk about Florida being the land of flowers: I'm sure I don't see where the flowers are."

The speaker was a trim young lady, with pretty, high-heeled boots, attired in all those charming mysteries behind and before, and up and down, that make the daughter of Eve look like some bright, strange, tropical bird. She had come to see Florida; that is, to take board at the St. James. She had provided herself with half a dozen different palmetto-hats, an orange-wood cane tipped with an alligator's tooth, together with an assortment of cranes' wings and pink curlews' feathers, and talked of Florida with the assured air of a connoisseur. She had been on the boat up to Enterprise; she had crossed at Tekoi over to St. Augustine, and come back to the St. James; and was now prepared to speak as one having authority: and she was sure she did not see why it was called a land of flowers. She hadn't seen any.

"But, my dear creature, have you ever been where they grow? Have you walked in the woods?"

"Walked in the woods? Gracious me! Of course not! Who could walk in sand half up to one's ankles? I tried once; and the sand got into my boots, and soiled my stockings: besides, I'm afraid of snakes."

"Then, my dear, you will never be a judge on the question whether Florida is or is not a land of flowers. Whoever would judge on that question must make up her mind to good long tramps in the woods; must wear stout boots, with India-rubbers, or, better still, high India-rubber boots. So equipped, and with eyes open to see what is to be seen, you will be prepared to explore those wild glades and mysterious shadows where Nature's beauties, marvels, and mysteries are wrought. The Venus of these woods is only unveiled in their deepest solitudes."

For ourselves, we claim to have experience in this matter of flowers; having always observed them in all lands. We were impressed more by the flowers of Italy than by any thing else there; yes, more than by the picture-galleries, the statues, the old ruins. The sight of the green lawns of the Pamfili Doria, all bubbling up in little rainbow-tinted anemones; the cool dells where we picked great blue-and-white violets; the damp, mossy shadows in the Quirinal gardens, where cyclamen grow in crimson clouds amid a crush of precious old marbles and antiques; the lovely flowers, unnamed of botany, but which we should call a sort of glorified blue-and-white daisies, that we gathered in the shadowy dells near Castle Gandolpho,—these have a freshness in our memory that will last when the memory of all the "stun images" of the Vatican has passed away.

In our mind's eye we have compared Florida with Italy often, and asked if it can equal it. The flowers here are not the same, it is true. The blue violets are not fragrant. We do not find the many-colored anemones, nor the cyclamen. Both can be planted out here, and will grow readily; but they are not wild flowers, not indigenous.

"Well, then, are there others to compensate?" We should say so.

The yellow jessamine itself, in its wild grace, with its violet-scented breath, its profuse abundance, is more than a substitute for the anemones of Italy.

If you will venture to walk a little way in the sand beyond our back-gate, we will show you a flower-show this morning such as Chiswick or the Crystal Palace cannot equal.

About a quarter of a mile we walk: and then we turn in to what is called here an oak-hammock; which is, being interpreted, a grove of live-oak-trees, with an underbrush of cedar, holly, and various flowering-shrubs. An effort has been made to clear up this hammock. The larger trees have some of them been cut down, but not removed. The work of clearing was abandoned; and, the place being left to Nature, she proceeded to improve and beautify it after a fashion of her own. The yellow jessamine, which before grew under the shadow of the trees, now, exultant in the sunshine which was let in upon it, has made a triumphant and abounding growth, such as we never saw anywhere else. It is the very Ariel of flowers,—the tricksy sprite, full of life and grace and sweetness; and it seems to take a capricious pleasure in rambling everywhere, and masquerading in the foliage of every kind of tree. Now its yellow bells twinkle down like stars from the prickly foliage of the holly, where it has taken full possession, turning the solemn old evergreen into a blossoming garland. Now, sure enough, looking up full sixty feet into yonder water-oak, we see it peeping down at us in long festoons, mingling with the swaying, crapy streamers of the gray moss. Yonder a little live-oak-tree has been so completely possessed and beflowered, that it shows a head of blossoms as round as an apple-tree in May. You look below, and jessamine is trailing all over the ground, weaving and matting, with its golden buds and open bells peeping up at you from the huckleberry-bushes and sedge-grass.

Here is a tree overthrown, and raising its gaunt, knotted branches in air, veiled with soft mossy drapery. The jessamine springs upon it for a trellis: it weaves over and under and around; it throws off long sprays and streamers with two golden buds at the axil of every green leaf, and fluttering out against the blue of the sky. Its multiform sprays twist and knot and tie themselves in wonderful intricacies; and still where every green leaf starts is a yellow flower-bud. The beauty of these buds is peculiar. They have little sculptured grooves; and the whole looks as if it might have been carved of fairy chrysolite for a lady's ear-drop. Our little brown chambermaid wears them dangling in her ears; and a very pretty picture she makes with them. Coal-black Frank looks admiringly after her as she trips by with them shaking and twinkling to his confusion, as he forgets for a moment to saw wood, and looks longingly after her. No use, Frank. "Trust her not: she is fooling thee." Her smiles are all for lighter-colored beaux. But still she wears yellow jessamine in her crapy hair, and orders Frank to bring her wreaths and sprays of it whenever she wants it; and Frank obeys. That's female sovereignty, the world over!

In this same hammock are certain tall, graceful shrubs, belonging, as we fancy, to the high-huckleberry tribe, but which the Floridians call sparkleberry. It is the most beautiful white ornamental shrub we have ever seen. Imagine a shrub with vivid green foliage, hanging profusely with wreaths of lilies-of-the-valley, and you have as near as possible an idea of the sparkleberry. It is only in bud now, being a little later than the jessamine, and coming into its glory when the jessamine is passing away.

The regular employment now of every afternoon is to go out in the mule-cart with old Fly into the woods, flower-hunting.

It is as lovely an afternoon-work as heart could wish; the sky is so blue, the air so balmy, and at every step there is something new to admire. The coming-out of the first leaves and tags and blossom-keys of the deciduous trees has a vividness and brilliancy peculiar to these regions. The oak-hammock we have been describing as the haunt of yellow jessamine is as picturesque and beautiful a tree-study as an artist could desire. There are tall, dark cedars, in which the gray films of the long moss have a peculiarly light and airy appearance. There is the majestic dome of the long-leaved Southern pine, rising high over all the other trees, as in Italy the stone-pine. Its leaves are from twelve to eighteen inches long; and the swaying of such pines makes a susurrus worth listening to. The water-oak is throwing out its bright young leaves of a gold-tinted green; and the live-oak, whose leaves are falling now, is bursting into little velvety tags, premonitory of new foliage. Four species of oaks we notice. The live-oak, the water-oak, and a species of scrub-tree which they call the olive-leaved oak, are all evergreens, and have narrow, smooth leaves. Then there are what are familiarly called black-jacks,—a deciduous oak, which bears a large, sharply-cut, indented leaf, of a character resembling our Northern ones. Besides these, the prickly-ash, with its curiously knobbed and pointed branches, and its graceful, feathery leaves, forms a feature in the scene. Underneath, great clumps of prickly-pear are throwing out their queer buds, to be, in turn, followed by bright yellow blossoms.

To an uninstructed eye, the pine-woods in which we ride look like a flat, monotonous scene. The pines rise seventy, eighty, and a hundred feet in the air, so that their tops are far above, and cast no shade. This is a consideration of value, however, for a winter's ride; for one enjoys the calm sunshine. Even in days when high winds are prevailing along the river-front, the depth of these pine-woods is calm, sunny, and still; and one can always have a pleasant walk there. When the hotter months come on, the live-oaks and water-oaks have thick, new foliage, and the black-jacks and hickory and sweet-gum trees throw out their shade to shelter the traveller. Every mile or two, our path is traversed by a brook on its way to the St. John's. The natives here call a brook a "branch;" and a branch is no small circumstance, since all the finest trees and shrubbery grow upon its banks. You can look through the high, open pillars of the pine-trees, and watch the course of a branch half a mile from you by the gorgeous vegetation of the trees which line its shores.

We jog along in our mule-cart, admiring every thing as we go. We are constantly exclaiming at something, and tempted to get out to gather flowers. Here and there through the long wire-grass come perfect gushes of blue and white violets. The blue violets are large, and, of necessity, are obliged to put forth very long stems to get above the coarse, matted grass. The white are very fragrant, and perfectly whiten the ground in some moist places. There is a large, fragrant kind, very scarce and rare, but of which we have secured several roots. We are going this afternoon to the "second branch" after azaleas. We stop at a little distance, when its wall of glossy verdure rises up before us. There is no accomplishment of a mule in which Fly is better versed than stopping and standing still. We fancy that we hear him, in his inner consciousness, making a merit of it, as we all do of our pet virtues. He is none of your frisky fellows, always wanting to be going, and endangering everybody that wants to get in or out with prances and curvets,—not he! He is a beast that may be trusted to stand for any length of time without an attempt at motion. Catch him running away! So we leave Fly, and determine to explore the branch.

The short palmettoes here are grown to the height of fifteen feet. Their roots look like great scaly serpents, which, after knotting and convoluting a while, suddenly raise their crests high in air, and burst forth into a graceful crest of waving green fans. These waving clumps of fan-like leaves are the first and peculiar feature of the foliage. Along the shore here, clumps of pale pink azaleas grow high up, and fill the air with sweetness. It is for azaleas we are come; and so we tread our way cautiously,—cautiously, because we have heard tales of the moccasin-snake—fearful gnome!—said to infest damp places, and banks of rivers. In all our Floridian rambles, we never yet have got sight of this creature; though we have explored all the moist places, and sedgy, swampy dells, where azaleas and blue iris and white lilies grow. But the tradition that such things are inspires a wholesome care never to set a foot down without looking exactly where it goes. "The branch," we find, is lighted up in many places by the white, showy blossoms of the dogwood, of which, also, we gather great store. We pile in flowers—azalea and dogwood—till our wagon is full, and then proceed with a trowel to take up many nameless beauties.

There is one which grows on a high, slender stalk, resembling in its form a primrose, that has the purest and intensest yellow that we ever saw in a flower. There is a purple variety of the same species, that grows in the same neighborhoods. We have made a bed of these woodland beauties at the roots of our great oak, so that they may finish their growth, and seed, if possible, under our own eye.

By the by, we take this occasion to tell the lady who writes to beg of us to send her some seeds or roots of Florida plants or flowers, that we have put her letter on file, and perhaps, some day, may find something to send her. Any one who loves flowers touches a kindred spot in our heart. The difficulty with all these flowers and roots sent North is, that they need the heat of this climate to bring them to perfection. Still there is no saying what a real plant-lover may do in coaxing along exotics. The "run" we have been exploring has, we are told, in the season of them, beautiful blue wisteria climbing from branch to branch. It does not come till after the yellow jessamine is gone. The coral-honeysuckle and a species of trumpet-creeper also grow here, and, in a little time, will be in full flower. One of our party called us into the run, and bade us admire a beautiful shrub, some fifteen feet high, whose curious, sharply-cut, deep-green leaves were shining with that glossy polish which gives such brilliance. Its leaves were of waxen thickness, its habit of growth peculiarly graceful; and our colored handmaiden, who knows the habits of every plant in our vicinity, tells us that it bears a white, sweet blossom, some weeks later. We mentally resolve to appropriate this fair Daphne of the woods on the first opportunity when hands can be spared to take it up and transport it.

But now the sun falls west, and we plod homeward. If you want to see a new and peculiar beauty, watch a golden sunset through a grove draperied with gray moss. The swaying, filmy bands turn golden and rose-colored; and the long, swaying avenues are like a scene in fairyland. We come home, and disembark our treasures. Our house looks like a perfect flower-show. Every available vase and jar is full,—dogwood, azaleas, blue iris, wreaths of yellow jessamine, blue and white violets, and the golden unknown, which we christen primroses. The daily sorting of the vases is no small charge: but there is a hand to that department which never neglects; and so we breathe their air and refresh our eyes with their beauty daily.

Your cold Northern snow-storms hold back our spring. The orange-buds appear, but hang back. They are three weeks later than usual. Our letters tell us frightful stories of thermometers no end of the way below zero. When you have a snow-storm, we have a cold rain: so you must keep bright lookout on your ways up there, or we shall get no orange-blossoms.

We have received several letters containing questions about Florida. It is our intention to devote our next paper to answering these. We are perfectly ready to answer any number of inquiries, so long as we can lump them all together, and answer them through "The Christian Union."

One class of letters, however, we cannot too thankfully remember. Those who have read our papers with so much of sympathy as to send in contributions to our church here have done us great good. We have now a sum contributed with which we hope soon to replace our loss. And now, as the mail is closing, we must close.

P. S.—We wish you could see a gigantic bouquet that Mr. S—— has just brought in from the hummock. A little shrub-oak, about five feet high, whose spreading top is all a golden mass of bloom with yellow jessamine, he has cut down, and borne home in triumph.

What an adornment would this be for one of the gigantic Japanese vases that figure in New-York drawing-rooms! What would such a bouquet sell for?

"FLORIDA FOR INVALIDS."

E find an aggrieved feeling in the minds of the Floridian public in view of a letter in "The Independent," by Dr. ——, headed as above; and we have been urgently requested to say something on the other view of the question.

Little did we suppose when we met our good friend at Magnolia, apparently in the height of spirits, the life of the establishment, and head promoter of all sorts of hilarity, that, under all this delightful cheerfulness, he was contending with such dreary experiences as his article in "The Independent" would lead one to suppose. Really, any one who should know the doctor only from that article might mistake him for a wretched hypochondriac; whereas we saw him, and heard of him by universal repute at Magnolia, as one of the cheeriest and sunniest of the inmates, taking every thing by the smoothest handle, and not only looking on the bright side himself, but making everybody else do the same. Imagine, therefore, our utter astonishment at finding our buoyant doctor summing up his Florida experience in such paragraphs as these:—

"From what I have observed, I should think Florida was nine-tenths water, and the other tenth swamp. Many are deceived by the milder climate here; and down they come—to die. The mildness, too, is exaggerated. Yesterday morning, the thermometer was at thirty-six degrees. Outside, our winter overcoats were necessary; and great wood-fires roared within. Now and then the thermometer reaches eighty degrees at mid-day; but, that very night, you may have frost.

"Another fact of Florida is malaria. How could it be otherwise? Souse Manhattan Island two feet deep in fresh water, and wouldn't the price of quinine rise?

"I have no objection to the term 'sunny South;' it is a pretty alliteration: but I object to its application to Georgia and Florida in February. I wish you could have seen me last Friday night. We were riding two hundred and sixty miles through a swamp,—Okefinokee of the geographies. I was clad in full winter suit, with heavy Russian overcoat."

But a careful comparison of the incidents in his letter solves the mystery. The letter was written in an early date in the doctor's Floridian experience, and before he had had an opportunity of experiencing the benefit which he subsequently reaped from it.

We perceive by the reference to last Friday night, and the ride through Okefinokee Swamp, that the doctor was then fresh from the North, and undergoing that process of disenchantment which many Northern travellers experience, particularly those who come by railroad. The most ardent friends of Florida must admit that this railroad is by no means a prepossessing approach to the land of promise; and the midnight cold upon it is something likely to be had in remembrance. When we crossed it, however, we had a stove, which was a small imitation of Nebuchadnezzar's furnace, to keep us in heart. Otherwise there is a great deal of truth in our friend's allegations. As we have elsewhere remarked, every place, like a bit of tapestry, has its right side and its wrong side; and both are true and real,—the wrong side with its tags and rags, and seams and knots, and thrums of worsted, and the right side with its pretty picture.

It is true, as the doctor says, that some invalids do come here, expose themselves imprudently, and die. People do die in Florida, if they use the means quite as successfully as in New York. It is true that sometimes the thermometer stands at seventy at noon, and that the nights are much cooler; it is true we have sometimes severe frosts in Florida; it is true we have malaria; it is true that there are swamps in Florida; and it is quite apt to be true, that, if a man rides a hundred miles through a swamp at night, he will feel pretty chilly.

All these are undeniable truths. We never pretended that Florida was the kingdom of heaven, or the land where they shall no more say, "I am sick." It is quite the reverse. People this very winter have in our neighborhood had severe attacks of pneumonia; and undoubtedly many have come to Florida seeking health, and have not found it.

Yet, on the other hand, there are now living in Florida many old established citizens and land-owners who came here ten, twenty, and thirty years ago, given over in consumption, who have here for years enjoyed a happy and vigorous life in spite of Okefinokee Swamp and the malaria.

Undoubtedly the country would be much better to live in if there were no swamps and no malaria; and so, also, New England would be better to live in if there were not six months winter and three more months of cold weather there. As to malaria, it is not necessary to souse Manhattan Island under water to get that in and around New York. The new lands in New York will give you chills and fever quite as well as Florida. You can find malarial fevers almost anywhere in the towns between New York and New Haven; and it is notorious that many estates in the vicinity of New York and Philadelphia sell cheap on that very account, because they are almost as malarious as some Italian villas.

Florida is not quite so bad as that yet, although it has its share of that malaria which attends the development of land in a new country. But the malarial fevers here are of a mild type, and easily managed; and they are generally confined to the fall months. The situation of Florida, surrounded by the sea, and the free sweep of winds across it, temper the air, and blow away malarious gases.

In regard to consumptives and all other invalids, the influence of a Floridian climate depends very much on the nature of the case and the constitution of the individual.

If persons suffer constitutionally from cold; if they are bright and well only in hot weather; if the winter chills and benumbs them, till, in the spring, they are in the condition of a frost-bitten hot-house plant,—alive, to be sure, but with every leaf gone,—then these persons may be quite sure that they will be the better for a winter in Florida, and better still if they can take up their abode there.

But if, on the contrary, persons are debilitated and wretched during hot weather, and if cool weather braces them, and gives them vigor and life, then such evidently have no call to Florida, and should be booked for Minnesota, or some other dry, cold climate. There are consumptives belonging to both these classes of constitution; and the coming of one of the wrong kind to Florida is of no use to himself, and is sure to bring discredit on the country. A little good common sense and reflection will settle that matter.

Again: there is a form of what passes for consumption, which is, after all, some modification of liver-complaint; and, so far as we have heard or observed, Florida is no place for these cases. The diseases here are of the bilious type; and those who have liver-complaint are apt to grow worse rather than better. But there are classes of persons on whom the climate of Florida acts like a charm.

There are certain nervously-organized dyspeptics who require a great deal of open, out-door life. They are in comfortable health during those months when they can spend half their time in the open air. They have no particular disease; but they have no great reserved strength, and cannot battle with severe weather. They cannot go out in snow or wind, or on chilly, stormy days, without risking more harm than they get good. Such, in our Northern climate, are kept close prisoners for six months. From December to May, they are shut in to furnace-heated houses or air-tight stoves. The winter is one long struggle to keep themselves up. For want of the out-door exercise which sustains them in summer, appetite and sleep both fail them. They have restless nights and bad digestion, and look anxiously to the end of winter as the only relief. For such how slowly it drags! They watch the almanac. The sun crosses the line; the days grow a minute longer: spring will come by and by. But by what cruel irony was the month of March ever called spring?—March, which piles snow-storms and wind-storms on backs almost broken by endurance. The long agony of March and April is the breaking-point with many a delicate person who has borne pretty well the regular winter.

Said one who did much work, "I bear it pretty well through December. I don't so much mind January. February tires me a little; but I face it bravely. But by March I begin to say, 'Well, if this don't stop pretty soon, I shall: I can't get much farther.'" But our heaviest snow-storms and most savage cold are often reserved for March; and to many an invalid it has given the final thrust: it is the last straw that breaks the camel's back. But after March, in New England, comes April, utterly untrustworthy, and with no assured out-door life for a delicate person. As to the month of May, the poet Cowper has a lively poem ridiculing the poets who have made the charms of May the subject of their songs. Mother Nature is represented as thus addressing them:—

"'Since you have thus combined,' she said,

'My favorite nymph to slight,

Adorning May, that peevish maid,

With June's undoubted right,

The minx, cursed for your folly's sake,

Shall prove herself a shrew;

Shall make your scribbling fingers ache,

And bite your noses blue.'"

Which she generally does.

So it is not really till June that delicately-constituted persons, or persons of impaired vigor, really feel themselves out of prison. They have then about five months at most in which they can live an open-air life, before the prison-doors close on them again.

Now, the persons who would be most benefited by coming to Florida are not the desperately diseased, the confirmed consumptives, but those of such impaired physical vigor that they are in danger of becoming so. An ounce of prevention here is worth many pounds of cure. It is too often the case that the care and expense that might have prevented disease from settling are spent in vain after it has once fastened. Sad it is indeed to see the wan and wasted faces, and hear the hollow death-cough, of those who have been brought here too late. Yet, in hundreds of instances, yes, in thousands, where one more severe Northern winter would have fastened disease on the vitals, a winter in a Southern climate has broken the spell. The climate of Florida is also of peculiar advantage in all diseases attended by nervous excitability. The air is peculiarly soothing and tranquillizing: it is the veritable lotos-eater's paradise, full of quiet and repose. We have known cases where the sleeplessness of years has given way, under this balmy influence, to the most childlike habit of slumber.

For debility, and the complaints that spring from debility, Florida is not so good a refuge, perhaps, as some more northern point, like Aiken. The air here is soothing, but not particularly bracing. It builds up and strengthens, not by any tonic effect in itself so much as by the opportunity for constant open-air life and exercise which it affords.

For children, the climate cannot be too much praised. In our little neighborhood are seven about as lively youngsters as could often be met with; and the winter has been one long out-door play-spell. There has not been a cough, nor a cold, nor an ailment of any kind, and scarce an anxiety. All day long we hear their running and racing,—down to the boat-wharves; in the boats, which they manage as dexterously as little Sandwich-Islanders; fishing; catching crabs, or off after flowers in the woods, with no trouble of hail, sleet, or wet feet. Truly it is a child's Eden; and they grow and thrive accordingly.

Now as to malaria. That is a word requiring consideration to those who expect to make Florida a permanent home, but having no terrors for those who come to spend winters merely. There is no malaria in winter; and Dr. C—— may be consoled in reflecting that frost always destroys it: so that, when the thermometer is, as he says, at thirty-two degrees, there is no danger, even though one be in the same State with forty swamps. In fact, for ourselves, we prefer a cool winter such as this has been. An October-like winter, when it is warm in the middle of the day, and one can enjoy a bright fire on the hearth morning and night, is the most favorable to out-door exercise and to health.

But merely to come to Florida, and idle away time at the St. James or the St. Augustine Hotel, taking no regular exercise, and having no employment for mind or body, is no way to improve by being here. It is because the climate gives opportunity of open-air exercise that it is so favorable; but, if one neglects all these opportunities, he may gain very little.

It cannot be too often impressed on strangers coming here, that what cold there is will be more keenly felt than in a Northern climate. Persons should vary their clothing carefully to the varying temperature, and be quite as careful to go warmly clad as in colder States. In our furnace-heated houses at the North we generally wear thick woollen dresses and under-flannels, and keep up a temperature of from seventy to eighty degrees. In the South we move in a much lower temperature, and have only the open fire upon the hearth. It is therefore important to go warmly clad, and particularly to keep on flannels until the warm weather of April becomes a settled thing.

In regard to the healthfulness of Florida, some things are to be borne in mind. In a State that has the reputation of being an invalid's asylum, many desperate cases necessarily take refuge, and, of course, many die. Yet, notwithstanding the loss from these causes, the census of 1860 showed that the number of deaths from pulmonary complaints is less to the population than in any State of the Union. In Massachusetts, the rate is one in two hundred and fifty-four; in California, one in seven hundred and twenty-seven; in Florida, one in fourteen hundred and forty-seven. Surgeon-Gen. Lawson of the United-States army, in his report, asserts that "the ratio of deaths to the number of cases of remittent fevers has been much less among the troops serving in Florida than in other portions of the United States. In the middle division, the proportion is one death to thirty-six cases of fever; in the northern, one to fifty-two; in Texas, one to seventy-eight; in California, one in a hundred and twenty-two; while in Florida it is one in two hundred and eighty-seven."

Such statistics as these are more reliable than the limited observation of any one individual. In regard to sudden changes of climate, Florida is certainly not in all parts ideally perfect. There are, at times, great and sudden changes there, but not by any means as much so as in most other States of the Union.

Sudden changes from heat to cold are the besetting sin of this fallen world. It is the staple subject for grumbling among the invalids who visit Italy; and, in fact, it is probably one of the consequences of Adam's fall, which we are not to be rid of till we get to the land of pure delight. It may, however, comfort the hearts of visitors to Florida to know, that, if the climate here is not in this respect just what they would have it, it is about the best there is going.

All this will be made quite clear to any one who will study the tables of observations on temperature contained in "The Guide to Florida," where they can see an accurate account of the range of the thermometer for five successive years as compared with that in other States.

One thing cannot be too often reiterated to people who come to Florida; and that is, that they must not expect at once to leave behind them all sickness, sorrow, pain, inconvenience of any kind, and to enter at once on the rest of paradise.

The happiness, after all, will have to be comparative; and the inconveniences are to be borne by reflecting how much greater inconveniences are avoided. For instance, when we have a three-days' damp, drizzling rain-storm down here, we must reflect, that, at the North, it is a driving snow-storm. When it is brisk, cold weather here, it is an intolerable freeze there. The shadow and reflection of all important changes at the North travel down to us in time. The exceptionally cold winter at the North has put our season here back a month behind its usual spring-time. The storms travel downward, coming to us, generally, a little later, and in a modified form.

We cannot better illustrate this than by two experiences this year. Easter morning we were waked by bird-singing; and it was a most heavenly morning. We walked out in the calm, dewy freshness, to gather flowers to dress our house,—the only church we have now in which to hold services. In the low swamp-land near our home is a perfect field of blue iris, whose bending leaves were all beaded with dew; and we walked in among them, admiring the wonderful vividness of their coloring, and gathering the choicest to fill a large vase. Then we cut verbenas, white, scarlet, and crimson, rose-geraniums and myrtle, callas and roses; while already on our tables were vases of yellow jessamine, gathered the night before. The blue St. John's lay in misty bands of light and shade in the distance; and the mocking-birds and red-birds were singing a loud Te Deum.

Now for the North. A friend in Hartford writes, "I was awaked by the patter of snow and sleet on the window-pane. Not a creature could go out to church, the storm was so severe: even the Irish were obliged to keep housed. With all we could do with a furnace and morning-glory stove, we could not get the temperature of our house above fifty-five degrees."

In the latter part of the day, we at Mandarin had some rough, chilling winds, which were the remains of the Northern Easter storm; but we were wise enough to rejoice in the good we had, instead of fretting at the shadow of evil.

SWAMPS AND ORANGE-TREES.

March 25, 1872.

FTER a cold, damp, rainy week, we have suddenly had dropped upon us a balmy, warm, summer day,—thermometer at eighty; and every thing out of doors growing so fast, that you may see and hear it grow.

The swampy belt of land in front of the house is now bursting forth in clouds of blue iris of every shade, from the palest and faintest to the most vivid lapis-lazuli tint. The wild-rose-bushes there are covered with buds; and the cypress-trees are lovely with their vivid little feathers of verdure. This swamp is one of those crooks in our lot which occasions a never-ceasing conflict of spirit. It is a glorious, bewildering impropriety. The trees and shrubs in it grow as if they were possessed; and there is scarcely a month in the year that it does not flame forth in some new blossom. It is a perpetual flower-garden, where creepers run and tangle; where Nature has raptures and frenzies of growth, and conducts herself like a crazy, drunken, but beautiful bacchante. But what to do with it is not clear. The river rises and falls in it; and under all that tangle of foliage lies a foul sink of the blackest mud. The black, unsavory moccasin-snakes are said and believed to have their lair in those jungles, where foot of man cares not to tread. Gigantic bulrushes grow up; clumps of high water-grasses, willows, elms, maples, cypresses, Magnolia glauca (sweet-bay), make brave show of foliage. Below, the blue pickerel-weed, the St. John's lily, the blue iris, wild-roses, blossoming tufts of elder, together with strange flowers of names unspoken, make a goodly fellowship. The birds herd there in droves; red-birds glance like gems through the boughs; cat-birds and sparrows and jays babble and jargon there in the green labyrinths made by the tangling vines. We muse over it, meanwhile enjoying the visible coming-on of spring in its foliage. The maples have great red leaves, curling with their own rapid growth; the elms feather out into graceful plumes; and the cypress, as we said before, most brilliant of all spring greens, puts forth its fairy foliage. Verily it is the most gorgeous of improprieties, this swamp; and we will let it alone this year also, and see what will come of it. There are suggestions of ditching and draining, and what not, that shall convert the wild bacchante into a steady, orderly member of society. We shall see.

Spring is a glory anywhere; but, as you approach the tropics, there is a vivid brilliancy, a burning tone, to the coloring, that is peculiar. We are struck with the beauty of the cat-briers. We believe they belong to the smilax family; and the kinds that prevail here are evergreen, and have quaintly-marked leaves. Within a day or two, these glossy, black-green vines have thrown out trembling red sprays shining with newness, with long tendrils waving in the air. The vigor of a red young shoot that seems to spring out in an hour has something delightful in it.

Yellow jessamine, alas! is fading. The ground is strewn with pale-yellow trumpets, as if the elves had had a concert and thrown down their instruments, and fled. Now the vines throw out young shoots half a yard long, and infinite in number; and jessamine goes on to possess and clothe new regions, which next February shall be yellow with flowers.

Farewell for this year, sweet Medea of the woods, with thy golden fleece of blossoms! Why couldst thou not stay with us through the year? Emerson says quaintly, "Seventy salads measure the life of a man." The things, whether of flower or fruit, that we can have but once a year, mark off our lives. A lover might thus tell the age of his lady-love: "Seventeen times had the jessamine blossomed since she came into the world." The time of the bloom of the jessamine is about two months. In the middle of January, when we came down, it was barely budded: the 25th of March, and it is past.

But, not to give all our time to flowers, we must now fulfil our promise to answer letters, and give practical information.

A gentleman propounds to us the following inquiry: "Apart from the danger from frosts, what is the prospect of certainty in the orange-crop? Is it a steady one?"

We have made diligent inquiry from old, experienced cultivators, and from those who have collected the traditions of orange-growing; and the result seems to be, that, apart from the danger of frost, the orange-crop is the most steady and certain of any known fruit.

In regard to our own grove, consisting of a hundred and fifteen trees on an acre and a half of ground, we find that there has been an average crop matured of sixty thousand a year for each of the five years we have had it. Two years the crop was lost through sudden frost coming after it was fully perfected; but these two years are the only ones since 1835 when a crop has been lost or damaged through frost.

Our friend inquires with regard to the orange-insect. This was an epidemic which prevailed some fifteen or twenty years ago, destroying the orange-trees as the canker-worms did the apple-trees. It was a variety of the scale-bug; but nothing has been seen of it in an epidemic form for many years, and growers now have no apprehensions from this source.

The wonderful vital and productive power of the orange-tree would not be marvelled at could one examine its roots. The ground all through our grove is a dense mat or sponge of fine yellow roots, which appear like a network on the least displacing of the sand. Every ramification has its feeder, and sucks up food for the tree with avidity. The consequence is, that people who have an orange-grove must be contented with that, and not try to raise flowers; but, nevertheless, we do try, because we can't help it. But every fertilizer that we put upon our roses and flower-beds is immediately rushed after by these hungry yellow orange-roots. At the root of our great live-oak we wanted a little pet colony of flowers, and had muck and manure placed there to prepare for them. In digging there lately, we found every particle of muck and manure netted round with the fine, embracing fibres from the orange-tree ten feet off. The consequence is, that our roses grow slowly, and our flower-garden is not a success.

Oleanders, cape-jessamines, pomegranates, and crape-myrtles manage, however, to stand their ground. Any strong, woody-fibred plant does better than more delicate flowers; as people who will insist upon their rights, and fight for them, do best in the great scramble of life.

But what a bouquet of sweets is an orange-tree! Merely as a flowering-tree it is worth having, if for nothing else. We call the time of their budding the week of pearls. How beautiful, how almost miraculous, the leaping-forth of these pearls to gem the green leaves! The fragrance has a stimulating effect on our nerves,—a sort of dreamy intoxication. The air, now, is full of it. Under the trees the white shell-petals drift, bearing perfume.

But, not to lose our way in poetic raptures, we return to statistics drawn from a recent conversation with our practical neighbor. He has three trees in his grounds, which this year have each borne five thousand oranges. He says that he has never failed of a steady crop from any cause, except in the first of the two years named; and, in that case, it is to be remembered the fruit was perfected, and only lost by not being gathered.

He stated that he had had reports from two men whom he named, who had each gathered ten thousand from a single tree. He appeared to think it a credible story, though a very remarkable yield.

The orange can be got from seed. Our neighbor's trees, the largest and finest in Mandarin, are seedlings. Like ours, they were frozen down in 1835, and subsequently almost destroyed by the orange-insect; but now they are stately, majestic trees of wonderful beauty. The orange follows the quality of the seed, and needs no budding; and in our region this mode of getting the trees is universally preferred. Fruit may be expected from the seed in six years, when high cultivation is practised. A cultivator in our neighborhood saw a dozen trees, with an average of three hundred oranges on each, at seven years from the seed. Young seedling plants of three years' growth can be bought in the nurseries on the St. John's River.

Our young folks have been thrown into a state of great excitement this afternoon by the introduction among them of two live alligators. Our friend Mr. P—— went for them to the lair of the old alligator, which he describes as a hole in the bank, where the eggs are laid. Hundreds of little alligators were crawling in and out, the parents letting them shift for themselves. They feed upon small fish. Our young protégé snapped in a very suggestive manner at a stick offered to him, and gave an energetic squeak. We pointed out to the children, that, if it were their finger or toe that was in the stick's place, the consequences might be serious. After all, we have small sympathy with capturing these poor monsters. We shall have some nice tales to tell of them anon. Meanwhile our paper must end here.

LETTER-WRITING.

April 14.

UR Palmetto correspondence increases daily. Our mail comes only twice a week; and, as the result of the two last mails, we find fifteen letters, propounding various inquiries about Florida. Now, it would be a most delightful thing to be on sociable terms with all the world; and we would be glad to reply to each one of these letters. Many of them are sprightly and amusing: all are written in good faith, containing most natural and rational inquiries. But, let any one attempt the task of writing fifteen letters on one subject, and he will soon find that it is rather more than can be done by one who expects to do any thing else.

Some of the inquiries, however, we may as well dispose of in the beginning of this letter.

And first as to the little boy who has lost his cat, and wishes to know if we cannot spare Peter to take her place. Alas! we have a tale of sadness to unfold. When we began our "Palmetto-Leaves," we were the embarrassed possessor of four thrifty cats: now every one of them has passed to the land of shades, and we are absolutely catless. Peter, we regret to say, was killed in consequence of being mistaken for a rabbit, one moonlight night, by an enterprising young sportsman; Annie was unfortunately drowned; and 'Cindy fell victim to some similar hallucination of the young son-of-a-gun who destroyed Peter. In short, only our old family mother-cat remained; but, as she had a fine litter of kittens, there was hope that the line would be continued. We established her sumptuously in a box in the back-shed with her nurslings; but, as cruel Fate would have it, a marauding dog came smelling about, and a fight ensued, in which Puss's fore-leg was broken, or, to speak quite literally, chewed up.

Wounded and bleeding, but plucky to the last, she drove off the dog with a "predestined scratched face," and, taking up her kittens one by one in her mouth, traversed a long veranda, jumped through a window into the bed-room of one of her mistresses, and deposited her nurslings under the bed.

All agreed that a cat of such spirit and gallantry had shown that she ought to vote by her ability to fight, and that she was at least worthy of distinguished attention. So the next day the whole family sat in council on the case. Chloroform was administered: and, while Puss was insensible, a promising young naturalist set and bandaged the limb; but, alas! without avail. The weather was hot; and the sufferings of the poor creature soon became such, that we were thankful that we had the power, by a swift and painless death, to put an end to them. So a pistol-ball sent Puss to the land where the good cats go; and the motherless kitties found peace under the blue waters of the St. John's. The water-nymphs, undoubtedly, "held up their pearled wrists and took them in," and doubtless made blessed pets of them. So that is the end of all our cats.

Phœbus rejoices now; for there is none to molest or make him afraid. His songs increase daily in variety. He pipes and whistles; occasionally breaks forth into a litany that sounds like "Pray do, pray do, pray do!" then, suddenly changing the stop, he shouts, "De deevil! de deevil! de deevil!" but, as he is otherwise a bird of the most correct habits, it cannot be supposed that any profanity is intended. This morning being Sunday, he called "Beecher, Beecher, Beecher!" very volubly. He evidently is a progressive bird, and, for aught we know, may yet express himself on some of the questions of the day.

The next letter on our file wants to know the prices of board at Green-Cove Springs, Magnolia, and Hibernia. The prices at these places vary all the way from twelve to thirty-five dollars per week, according to accommodations. The higher prices are in larger hotels, and the smaller in private boarding-houses. "The Florida Guide" says board can be obtained in Jacksonville, in private families, at from eight to ten dollars per week.

There are three more letters, asking questions about the culture of the orange; to which the writers will find answers, so far as we can give them, when we come to speak of the orange-orchards up the river.

A lady writes to ask if we know any way of preserving figs.

Practically, we know nothing about the fig-harvest, having never been here when they were ripe. Our friends tell us that they are not successful in preserving them in cans. They make a delicious though rather luscious preserve done in the ordinary way, like peaches. But we will give our inquiring friend the benefit of a piece of information communicated to us by an old native Floridian, who professed to have raised and prepared figs as fine as those in Turkey. His receipt was as follows: "Prepare a lye from the ashes of the grape-vine; have a kettle of this kept boiling hot over the fire; throw in the figs, and let them remain two minutes; skim them out and drain them on a sieve, and afterwards dry in the sun." Such was his receipt, which we have never tried. Probably any other strong lye would answer as well as that from the grape-vine.

As to those who have asked for flowers from Florida, we wish it were in our power to grant their requests; but these frail beauties are not transferable. We in our colony have taxed the resources of our postal arrangements to carry to our friends small specimens, but with no very encouraging results.

We have just been making the grand round, or tour up the St. John's to Enterprise, across to St. Augustine, and back; which is necessary to constitute one an accomplished Floridian sight-seer: and it had been our intention to devote this letter to that trip; but there is so much to say, there are so many wonders and marvels to be described, that we must give it a letter by itself. No dreamland on earth can be more unearthly in its beauty and glory than the St. John's in April. Tourists, for the most part, see it only in winter, when half its gorgeous forests stand bare of leaves, and go home, never dreaming what it would be like in its resurrection-robes. So do we, in our darkness, judge the shores of the river of this mortal life up which we sail, ofttimes disappointed and complaining. We are seeing all things in winter, and not as they will be when God shall wipe away all tears, and bring about the new heavens and new earth, of which every spring is a symbol and a prophecy. The flowers and leaves of last year vanish for a season; but they come back fresher and fairer than ever.