HOTS UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES UJN1VEK51T* 01 CALIKUKM14 X\ i. LOS ANGELES LIBRARY FLORIDA DAYS Florida Days BY MARGARET DELAND AUTHOR OF JOHN WARD, PREACHER J THE OLD GARDEN AND OTHER VERSES, ETC. ILLUSTRATED By LOUIS K. HARLOW BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1889 ■ > » » j 1 ■ ' > * j > - j * 1 1JG517 Copyright, 1889 By Little, Brown, and Company Slnibrroilp 13rrsss : fOHN WlLSON AND Son, Camrridgk t • • • • • • f it * « I TO LORIN DELANO May 12, 1SS9 PREFACE. OS •i— i /^NCE upon a time, very long ago, the Traveller about the world was care- ful to carry with him a Journal, leather- covered, and with brass tips upon the corners ; not infrequently it was closed by a stout hasp and padlock, for the thought that by any chance a stranger might gaze upon his pages filled the modest Traveller with dismay. With this Diary open upon his knee, with careful quill, and with most delicate and precise penmanship, it was the habit of this Person (who was apt to refer to him- self as the Private Individual) to note viii PREFACE. his emotions as he gazed upon a mountain flushed with dawn, or the gray stretch of the breathing sea, or into the faces of men so unhappy as to have been born in other countries than his own. To this he added — scrupulous about an inch, and credit- ing with careful courtesy his information to the Verger — the height of the nave of a cathedral or the genealogy of a Royal House, or any of those rumors which commend themselves under the name of History. The Journal and a mended pen gave ample opportunity for graceful sentences, for moral reflections, for intense self-consciousness, — called by ne the "Love of Approbation;" — for was not each carefully written word to be read by the tender eves of those whom the Traveller had left at home ? We havi n such Diaries, all of us, ('.though very probably the writers jour- PREFACE. IX ncycd into an Unknown Country before we opened our eyes upon our well-known world. For the most part these dingy volumes lie in long untravclled trunks, — hair-covered, and studded with brass nail- heads, — which have been pushed under the dusty rafters of the garret. The Journals are preserved by force of habit, and with a decent regard for the Past ; but no one ever reads them. All the world admits that the Journal is as ob- solete as the Private Individual himself. Besides, the ink has faded, and the details and the platitudes are alike wearying. In fact, the Diaries belong to that Once tipon a Time which was the age of the spinet and tambour-frame, the days of modest youth and travelling by stage-coach, — in a word, to Leisure and Good Manners. And more than this, they were written only for those who were left behind. X PREFACE. But to-day, no one is left behind ; every one has been everywhere and seen everything, so that information is as unnecessary as it is tiresome. Indeed, the Author who under any amiable dis- guise might venture to instruct, would be instantly detected as an encumbrance, — named occasionally in a less dignified manner, — and when not received with compassionate amusement (or ignored) would find his well-meaning volume labelled " Guide-book? and thrust upon the dusty upper shelf of a book-shop. Instruction, like an unused garment, has become old-fashioned, and fallen into wrinkles and decay. All is said, and there is nothing new under the sun! This admitted, what has the preface of a book upon Florida to say? Only that Artist and Author have no such threadbare motive as information to excuse or to PREFACE. xi commend their book. Instead, there has been but the desire to bring the remem- brance of emotions which were the Read- er's own ; to spread the yellow sunshine before his dreaming eyes; to steep his ovcrwise insistent consciousness in a fog of content ; to gather a misty memory of beautiful days. — to strike the key-note of a harmony which each soul may fulfil. So modest an object will not deserve the ruffled protest of the Learned Reader. His own remembrance is all that Florida Days will venture to suggest. M. D. August 12. 1SS9. CONTENTS. Z\)t QToton. St. Augustine. PAGE Daybreak 21 Noon 64 Night 89 iTIjf Countru. Along the St. Johns. The River 115 The Woods and Swamps 142 The Men 172 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Page The Old Gates. (Colored Plate) . . Frontispie*. i Anastasia Island. (Vignette) Title Anastasia Island 21 The Light-house 23 The "Leap up of the Sux" 25 Coquina Reef 26 Spanish Ships 28 Sir Francis Drake 30 The Old Coquina Light-house 32 Spanish Bayonets . 33 Old House, St. Augustine 34 Balconies overhanging the Streets in St. Augustine 35 The Barracks 37 xvi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Page The Sea-wall 39 St. Augustine from the Island. (Etching) . 40 The Cathedral, from an old Water-color Drawing 43 The Cathedral from the Plaza 47 The Bells of the Cathedral 49 Plaza and Slave-market 51 Old Spanish Houses. St. Augustine .... 55 Gates of the City . 57 Donkey-cart 58 A Mule's Head 60 A Street in St. Augustine 61 The Oldest House in St. Augustine ... 64 An Old Spanish Garden 68 Ri \!t of an Old House 71 I'm King's Forge 74 Pigeon-cotes 79 A Ba< k Yard in St. Augustine 83 Catalina's Grave 86 Fort Marion. (Colored Plate) 89 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. xvii Pace The Old Moat 89 End of the Fort and Moat 92 Sentry-box 95 Interior, — The Inclined Plane 97 The Sergeant 103 The Watch-tower 106 An Old Cannon 108 From the Sea-wall 109 "The Keen Brightness of Northern Skies" 112 Live-oak. (Colored Plate) 115 The River 115 Branch of Live-oak 119 The Pines 123 The Buzzards 126 A Wash-foot Baptist Meeting 137 Palmettos on the St. John's. (Colored Plate) 142 Mouth of St. John's River 143 The Rank Growth of the River 145 The Dragon-flies 147 "They go down to the Sea in Ships" . . . 152 XViii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Page The St. John's 158 Crackers 160 POST-OFFICK ON THE RlVER l6C Spanish Moss 169 A Palmetto Swamp 170 An Old House. (Etching) 172 Ck.u kers Fishing 173 Florida Cracker's Home 179 A Creek 187 Ox the Edge of the River 191 I 111. St. John's River 195 Night 197 A Florida Home 199 THE TOWN. FLORIDA DAYS. THE TOWN. DAYBREAK. " Morn, in the white wake of the morning star, Came furrowing all the Orient into gold." THE strip of water which lies between the island and the shore, is as gray at dawn as the sky behind the orange-trees in the west. It rises and falls with quick and heavy heaving, like the bosom of a dreamer who is beginning, reluctantly, to shake off the night in which he has been steeped. Beyond, toward the East, is 22 FLORIDA DAYS. the unbroken stretch of sea ; and then, Europe and Africa in the flood of day. Here, lumi- nous darkness, and expectation. It lies so low, this narrow heap of sand and shells, that from a distance it seems but a higher ridge of the gray water, except where the column of the light- house rises like a cloudy pillar touched with fire, and where a line of glistening white shows that waves break along the level shore. The island, set like a jewel in the murmuring and waiting sea, is touched by the first gleam of light; and the waves, lapping and folding upon its shores, lift themselves up out of silence, with the rising exhilaration of the dawn. The tower of the light-house catches the earliest hint of day; and the lamps, which have burned with stead}-, cheerful blaze all night, grow pale, and melt and flicker; — one hardly notices when the}- go out altogether in the growing bright- ness, which holds a promise of violet and rose. Tin- shadows separate, and stretch themselves, and loosen their grasp upon the low-growing palmettos and Spanish bayonets, so that each wet, shining leaf has a strange distinctness in THE TOWN. 23 the gray air. The flush that spreads across the horizon, glimmers even on the bank of clouds in the west; the darkness and mist unfold, like the petals of a mighty flower, re- vealing each instant, deeper and deeper secrets in its eolden heart. Dawn sucks the flame of the morning star into itself, — a flake of light, sparkling, white and serene, then lost for very 24 FLORIDA DAYS. brightness ! It is as though the star were itself the dawn, for no one sees it die. Then, from behind the curve of the world a rim of gold lifts and widens, and a quivering column of fire shoots up and down, — into the air, and into the water, which is as luminous as a green crystal. That leap up of the sun is as glad as a child's laugh ; it is as a renewal of the world's youth. The waves crowd and shout to wel- come him as he comes stepping gloriously from crest to crest, across the sea. A spark, flashing through each curving hollow that beckons him along, lengthens and widens, until a golden path quivers from the horizon to the shore. The moment of distinctness in the gray of dawn is lost ; the island melts into a shining haze, — it is full day in an instant. Shafts of light wheel and sink into the waves; the world of sky and sea and far-off, low-lying shore is swallowed up in light; the round sun is no longer a distinct and golden ball, but lias be- come tin- sky itself. And the spreading sea is one boundless flash and gleam, smiling and swinging, shining with a light which does not THE T( tWN. 25 seem to come from the sun, but from the bosom of the air itself. The wonderful ex- panse of breathing, shimmering blue is broken by lines of far-off waves, — so far off that one only hears a murmur of that tumbling crash of spray, which marks with changing curves and circles, their gay advance upon the reefs of shells. These low white reefs have grown with the ages. Perhaps each moment has its monument 26 FLORIDA DAYS. in a shell so small and exquisitely frail that the faintest pressure would grind it to dust; yet, washed up in these ledges, and pounded by the waves, and smothered by sand grinding down into every crevice, the shells have been cemented together until they have hardened into a composite that is cut and quarried like rock. For miles along the island these ledges run, crumbling beneath the fierce white fingers of the waves, and then renewed again and again. Coquina this shell-stone is called, and blocks of it were hewed here once by convicts brought from Spain. One wonders if these fierce, un- happy men, working in chain-gangs, and ferry- ing the sparkling heaps over to the shore to grow into walls and gateways and the great bas- THE T()\V\. tions of the fort, ever saw that a vast and beau- tiful meaning might lie in broken human Lives? How blank to the little creature in its tiny shell, which lived its short life with myriads like itself, were the purposes of those great currents in the depths of the sea that plucked its life away from it; yet, perhaps, no more meaningless than were his own sin and pain to the wicked man, toiling in blazing heat above the shell-banks on the island, with a ring and chain around his ankle and with a bitter heart. How could he tell the purpose of his broken life, or know that it might be needed in the path of that " Far-off divine event To which the whole creation moves ! " The island, lying so low that from the oppo- site beach one can look across it to the reefs and breakers, was the safeguard of the town, sleeping tranquilly among its palms and oranges when it had need of protection. For the ledges and sand-bars extend far into the sea, like the finerers of an unseen hand waiting to clutch and crush the ships of any foe. 2 g FLORIDA DAYS. And how many foes there were ! Indeed, that narrow edge of flowers and trees, where the shell-stone houses had been built, was contin- ually importuned by men and elements. The winds and waves assailed it from about the w. northern end of the island, and it seemed a hundred times as though it must yield to the unbrace of the entreating sea. Men, steering triumphantly across the treacherous reefs, rav- aged it with fire and sword again and again ; its beauty and its promise tempted every buc- THE TOWN. 29 cancer who swept his glass across the low-lying barrier of the island, where, to be sure, there was a little watch-tower, on which a flag was to be raised, to indicate the approach of pirates, and allow the townspeople huddled on the shore time enough to run away. Yet the island is so flat that doubtless it was often the watch- tower which first caught the keen eyes of the outlook on those high pooped vessels with swelling sails and straining masts. One can hear the order of Sir Francis Drake to " put about " that he might discover what this little- group of buildings could be, and so the " Golden Hinde" was turned from her course for yet heavier ladings of gold and spoil. No eye was keener than Sir Francis's. Perhaps he prided himself upon it, remembering how, on the Isthmus, he had "climbed the goodlie and great high tree," and gazed upon the Pacific, into which he besought God that he " might sail an English ship." There is a curious charm about this dead man, who was as free and brave and cruel as his own ocean. His worn, brown face, as keen 30 FLORIDA DAYS. and kind as the sun and wind together, showed as little certainty of fair weather; but men loved him. A man of no justice, perhaps, hut of great generosity. Tndeed, there was a certain frank cordiality about him even when aged in murder. He was so full of joy- ousness — s<> free from anything like the mcan- n. ^ of spite — that he would have taken it ill THE TOWN. 31 had his victims felt a personal affront while his knife was at their throats. J le seems to have grown drunk with glory and with blood: so did the passion for murder and for gain increase ! One falls to thinking how such a soul could occupy itself after a certain " sharp distemper " had brought him to that last day, when his one- possession was a sail-cloth, weighted, and the only noise he could make in the world the splash into the swinging water at the ship's bows, — a bubble on the surface, and then the smooth and shining blue again. Surely he must have found it a weary thing to wake and find himself a naked soul in the gray silence of eternity ! The wooden watch-tower on the island went to pieces a hundred years ago, and a coquina light-house took its place ; but not very long since, it, too, fell with an awful crash, in a great hurricane. It could no longer deny the entreat- ing sea, which had plucked at its foundations for many a year, as though jealous that its own shells should resist it. 32 FLORIDA DAYS. The Spanish bayonet grows thick among the fallen walls; indeed, those glittering green spears are brave enough to grow anywhere; their tough roots tie them like twine to ledges v- s ' xr 9 r I that overhang the water, or knot under the sand until no spot is too shallow or too exposed for them. Even the white roads which wander across the island art- so encroached upon by their sharp thorns that walking is not always pleasant. THE T< >WN. 33 And that reminds one of the pleasure of ima- gination, as exemplified by the pages of a novel. For it is recorded that a man came from his hut " through a thicket of Spanish bayonets" ! The possible and the im- possible are not, appar- ently, the things with which a novelist need be concerned. Over on the shore these fierce and glis- tening leaves have been ban- ished, and kind- lier weeds have taken their 34 FL<>kIl>A DAYS. places along the roadsides, — although, indeed, there is nothing more stately than the spring into the sparkling air of the bayonet's flower- shaft, hung with white bells of blossom. In the morning light the town stands clear and distinct; later, the golden gauze of noon folds it like a veil; but now the houses, crowd- ing sociably along the narrow streets, with bal- conies that lean towards one another like the wrinkled foreheads of gossiping dames, arc all ir and individual. With the young day there is an alertness of life, a keen joyousness, THE T( IWN. 35 that fades, as the hours press upon one another, into the calmest content. Everything is white and sparkling ; the white sand shines, the white coquina walls gleam and faintly glitter, the white sjalleries with scarlet gerani- urns and verbenas pushing out into the sun- shine, have a look of absolute cleanliness and 36 FLORIDA DAYS. sharpness of detail ; but it is all a mood of the hour, and softens as the day grows. Perhaps it lasts longer about the barracks than anywhere else: the uniform of the sentinel pacing up and down his beat beside the sea- wall, is so fresh and new; there is such a keen, clean smell of lime, for each possible stone and stump has its coat of whitewash; and every- thing about the place is in exact and cheerful order. There is an air of modern life here, of hurry and importance, which does not belong to the old town, and was surely never known inside these gray walls while the building was still a convent. But that time is very long past; it was given up to the garrison a little more than a hundred years ago. One stops in the shadow of the doorway, to think of the prayers that were said here once, and of the consuming desire that once burned beneath the white silence of convent living. The desire was for salvation, truly, but it took the place of a thirst for gold or glory or love, and made Life; for one must desire something, to be alive: perhaps absolute satisfaction is only i III. T< IWN. 37 another name for Death. Here at least, in the sunshine by the sea-wall, there is an ebb of the soul's vitality, as the sleepy hours drift into noon, for one is content with mere existence. I /» ililfflPfft* The Missionary and the Adventurer had set foot on this golden soil together. Indeed, the Missionary would not have come had not the Adventurer proclaimed the way. It would be interesting to know whether the souls of those 14 G517 38 FLORIDA DAYS. saints in the convent were ever perplexed to account for the necessity of the Adventurer, with his love of gold and his cruel ambition, — if they ever thought of that mysterious rooting of good in evil which continually confuses the mind and even drives it into contented sinning. Sometimes, indeed, the Adventurer was so . when the old Cathe THE TOWN. 49 dral was built, and had doubtless traditions and memories of its own, before it began to ring in the joys and sorrows of these hundred years to the sleepy town. One fancies it marking, in its gray belfry shades, the con- tradictions of human life which have danced and burst like bubbles on the surface of these two hun- dred years. A r hand upon the bell-rope, and it has clanged joyously for the vic- tory of an invader, and again as gayly for his defeat. It has pealed for a king's life, 4 50 FLORIDA DAYS. which meant another king's death; it has rung for birth and burial, for famine and plenty. And then, the rope dropping into a careless coil from the ringer's hand, it has thrilled and suner with wonderful unseen vibration, telling over to itself, perhaps, its own thoughts. There is something about this sibilant whisper of a bell, after it has done man's bidding and he has left it, which is as though it spoke its own mind in silent laughter at his little joys or griefs. The Plaza and the market-place beyond have often answered its call for this thing or for that. No doubt it summoned the loyal subjects of King George to burn Hancock and Jefferson in effigy just as loudly as it has called for flags and music each fourth morning in July ever since. It has watched the people coming out from early Mass to their day's work in the Market, to chatter and cheat, — the more com- fortably, perhaps, because prayers have been duly said; and from its perch beneath the golden cross, it has seen the soldiers manoeu- vring in the Plaza, sometimes with all the re- THE TOWN. 51 ality of war, and again with light-hearted imitation of earnestness. It lias rung, too, for that strange gayety of Good Friday night, — the reaction from the forty days of darkness, which wore the ^uise of devotion. ^^ %»£ -:** For to shoot at straw figures decked with feathers and tinsel was a spiritual exercise, when one called the effigies jews. So, with light-hearted laughter, as night fell, the Jews were hung here and there in the Plaza, under the live-oak trees or upon the lamp-posts, so that when morning dawned there might be no FLORIDA DAYS. time lost in proving who was the best marks- man and the most devoted Christian. For very- man}- years this was the custom upon that Sat- urday which lies between a dark day and a shining day, that pause between death and life, while the dead Christ waited in the Cathedral. On Easter eve the joyousness began again, and young men went about the city singing the story of Jesus and the Resurrection. The musical Spanish and the starlight were wor- ship in themselves. The singers knew the words by heart; so who stopped to wonder, or to search for deeper meaning in them? "Let us leave off mourning," — - &) so the English rims, — " Let us sing with joy, Let us go and give Our salutation to Mary, O Mary ! " And at midnight She gave birth to a child, The infinite God, In a stable. At mid-day THE TOWN. c? The angels go singing Peace and abundance, And glory to God alone. O Marv ! " And so on, through that Story which belongs to all the ages: of Birth and Death, and of that inevitable morning, which came to the dead Christ, even as it comes always, upon the heels of Death, with a meaning which Eter- nity can only blur, and toward which all Time has travelled. That solemn "day after he has died," when a man's life stands naked, with- out hope or illusion to make it beautiful ; — the empty days have not come yet to stand, pitifully, between Truth and Love ; — even those fisher-folk in Galilee saw that morning- ! Perhaps the necessity of the world found its expression because of their misery that day. And it is because of that necessity that the young men, with flowers in their hands, went about through the streets and in the Plaza, singing in the starlight of the glory of the Resurrection ! 54 FLORIDA DAYS. The singers could buy their flowers in the market, which is but a little way from the Cathedral. Whitewashed pillars uphold its ancient roof, and its brick floor is so old that it is worn into hollows; it used to be filled with stalls, where great heaps of vegetables and yellow oranges were displayed for sale, or where the wet sides of fish sparkled on every scale with wonderful color. There were sun- bonneted women gossiping in the sunshine across their wares; men smoking under the streamers of moss from the live-oak trees, or chaffering over their mules and horses ; — a crowding, good-natured, quick-tempered peo- ple, bringing color and laughter into the little square; they came for the most part from the country beyond, along the shining shell-road and through the city gates. As long ago as the beginning of this century tin- tov/ers of tin: gateway in the wall about the town were crumbling and broken with age, so that they must have witnessed many things unknown to the tranquil life which comes and THE TOWN. 57 goes under their gray shadows to-day. They see nothing more startling now than lovers whispering in the twilight, perhaps ; or the fi \ gay tramp of marching feet which have never known the hurry and terror of war; or a sob beside a funeral bier. True, Love and Death, — there could have been nothing more ultimate than they; but the expression changes; and these square 5S FLORIDA DAYS. pillars crumbling slowly in the white, hot sun- shine, have seen quick and nervous lives and cruel deaths. The iron gates which used to hang between the two coquina towers were always closed at night, and fastened with pon- derous bolts, so that the little town might sleep peacefully within them. How many of the King of Spain they have rc- pulsed when the town was garrisoned by his diers, and how >>frcn they have received sheltered terror-stricken wretches flying from the outlaws of the plains beyond! A |! oes jolting through now, in a little trt, full of yellow oranges. He rhaps, in a full sweet voice, but with a THE TOWN. 59 certain wild note in it, which it will take many generations yet to tame. " Oh, my Lawd," he says, leaning forward, his elbows resting on his ragged knees, and the reins slipping care- lessly between his fingers, — " Oh, my Lawd, don't you forgit me, Oh, my Lawd, don't you forgit me, Oh, my Lawd, don't you forgit me, Down by Bab'lon's stream ! " With this morning freshness in the sparkling air, he sings because he cannot help it ; — long ago the Lord remembered the captivity in Babylon, — but the song has found no deeper meaning in his soul ; it is only a simple re- joicing in the sunshine. It is hard to realize, in the comfortable content among the negroes, living tranquil, sleepy lives in the old town, that these words were ever sung with tears and prayers; such pain meant alertness and eager life, for which one looks now, for the most part, in vain. These people would surely never rouse themselves to contradict the man who asserted, with grim disdain of all intense life, that the happiest moment each day, to the gQ FLORIDA DAYS. happiest person, was the moment when con- fess began to melt into sleep. A woman, sitting in the sun with half-shut -. her pipe gone out perhaps, her head restine aeainst the door-post, is quite satisfied And happy. She would be the first to say that these days o( peace and sleep were better than the old desire and the quicker thought. It has seemed to be either one extreme or the other with them, — the goad of pain, - and activity ; or the down of comfort, — and dreams. The boy in the jolting car, even though he sings, is half lie apostrophizes his mule, or the which tumble about his feet, with violence of words, but with a face full of lazy nature; indeed, he and his beast have !<• placid way of taking life. The mule ^ not mark his abusive entreaties to proceed, ny more than the boy notices or objects when gray friend comes to a halt, and, turning owly in the broken, rope-mended harness. THE TOWN. 63 bites at a fly upon his shaggy side. But who shall dogmatize on such an attitude of the mind? Indifference, after all, may be height instead of depth. Does not "A. />'." (his modesty has given us no more than his initials) write as long ago as 1595, in "The Noblenesse of the Asse ; a work rare, learned, and excellent," of that characteristic and admirable calm? — " He [the asse] refuseth no burden ; he goeth whither he is sent without any contradiction ; he lifts not his foot against any one; he bytes not; if strokes be given him, he careth not for them." A. B.'s honest appreciation of this patient and respectable animal leads him yet a little fur- ther. Their " goodly, sweet, and continual bray- ing," he says ; and adds that such brayings " forme a melodious and proportionate kinde of musicke." Still, all this is but the small adorn- ment of an estimable character ; the great thing is his beast's " tranquil calm." NOON. In the afternoon they came into a land In which it seemed always afternoon. round the oast the languid air did swoon, ce one that hath a weary dream." A DATE-PALM, leaning across a fence thai is gray with lichen, looks down into tin- silent street, which THE TOWN. 65 seems in the blaze of sunshine to be sunk in sleep. The flood of light laps and ripples against crumbling walls. A man with a lean dog at his heels passes with noiseless foot- steps, like a shape in a dream. A woman, leaning from the upper window of a house beside the sea-wall, laughs, and a spark of sunshine flashes from the gold cross swinging at her brown, warm throat, and then dims and fades in the overpowering brightness ; her voice, which seems to have dropped through golden distances, melts into the flowering silence of the hot noon. The heavy sweetness of distant orange orchards has, without a breath of wind, invaded the old town ; it makes the air, which is the very light itself, a subtle caress ; and it brings a deeper dreaming, and a greater content with Life and Love and Death : they seem all one in this flood of ineffable shining. The point at which each experience touches the current of Life and claims personality, is strangely blurred and smoothed. The individual sinks into the mighty stream, and his conscious- ness is only the sunshine itself, and the air, and 5 FLORIDA DAYS. .sith, perhaps, the same rejoicing in them liat the date-palm has, or the gray fence, imbling under the tufts of lichen. n hack against the coquina wall, which here and there, as the sun strikes the if an iridescent wonder, which meant life in the green stillness of the sea a thousand ; to feel, and to desire to feel, of no re importance in the universe than a block the broken wall, or the motionless shadow the date-palm, lying like a gray feather upon • of the dreaming street, — is good ul. Experiences begin to show their latively, and the proportions of life themselv But it needs the coquina nine faintly in the sunshine, and the eath of the drowsy air, and the shadow of the • the jarring atom of consciousness ck into the tranquil and enfolding purpose of Such an hour is the man's Bo-tree, truly, he gains the whole world, if he can " nl. lordinary what a shame (not a pas- and tumultuous shame, — that were not THE 'lOW.X. 67 worth while, — but what a slow and placid shame) fills the dreamer against the wall, that there should ever have been any anxiety or wonder or grief in life. What arrogance to wonder ! What folly to grieve ! It is all as it should be, somehow and somewhere. It is not worth while to question how and where. A leaf from the vine hanging over the wall drifts down through the still heat: as well that it should set itself to question the currents of the ocean, lying in a blue and shimmering curve against a sky which is pale with light. No, it is not worth while ; nothing is worth while, and yet all things are. Gardens sleep behind these high walls, which shut them in so closely from the silent street, that it seems as though the air never stirs under the shadows of the oranges and oleanders. The only movement is the thread of water, trickling from the mossy basin of the fountain in the centre, and then losing itself in the deep grass ; though if a sunbeam through the roof of leaves strikes it, it has one sparkling instant of jewelled 6S FLORIDA DAYS. light before it fades into green dusk again. The grass is thick in the wet darkness along the walls under the tangle of jessamine ; and inging superbly out of the shadows at its feet, a great palm will lift its stately head into the dazzling sky. Such a garden is very still ; the jessamine on the wall holds the brimming light unspilled in its Id chalice; a petal from a rose's open bosom floats rather than falls in the stagnant air, al- though, up above, the palm-branches swing and whisper, rustling faintly in a wind which is not felt below. Heavy-headed mscs make the air faint wit) ' and orange-trees, thick with bios- THE TOWN. 69 soms, drop white petals on the worn, wet bricks of the path ; all is very silent, drunk with sun and air and perfume. There is no thought, no ten- sion, no meaning, anywhere. A wooden bench, painted green very long ago, has crumbled and rotted, and breaking in the middle fallen down into the deep grass. A single shaft of sunshine threading the shadows, strikes hot upon a line of rusted nail-heads that hold it to the support- ing post beneath ; and there a lizard, bright- eyed, alert, lies like a scarlet thread. A cloud of midges circle above the fallen blossoms of the orange-tree, which are floating in the clear, dark water in the stone basin. The years have left no more permanent life here than the dancing midge, or the white cup of a fallen flower ! There is an empty wicker cage under the hanging balcony of one of the deserted houses about which such gardens lie ; but the bird must have flown away a score of years ago, and not even a hint of its grief and its captivity remains, for a scarlet tanager balances gayly upon the swinging door before it darts like a winged flame up into the blue. rQ FLORIDA DAYS. Nature knows no sentiment. Her weeds and s come boldly up between the broken planks of the porch, with a joyousness which is almost insolent. A Cherokee rose lifts its silver shield in the doorway, and a tangle of blossom- in- briers chokes one narrow window and pushes between the fallen weather-boards. Indeed, so many weather-boards have loosened and fallen, that there is an entrance at more than one place ; and the door, too, stands open. Strange- ly enough, a rusted key hangs still beneath the lintel, as though to guard a threshold over which the lizard glides, and shadows come and go. The wall upon the street is of coquina. The windows in it have been boarded up, for sill and sash have long since vanished, so readily does wood crumble in the hot, wet shadows; but even these shutters have warped and bro- ken, so that the passer-by can peer into the dusky room within. Its haul earthen floor is ttted with a dim, white mould; there is no furniture except some empty shelves upon the 11, and a crucifix over the narrow mantel, which is only a projecting ledge of the shell- THE TOWN. 73 stone chimney-piece that encloses the wide, black fireplace. But beyond, through the sag- ging doorway, is the green light of the garden, and the palm-tree swinging against the low blue of the dazzling sky. Deserted and given up to Nature's careless triumph, the house has still the mystery which makes a dead body sacred : it has sheltered Love and Hope, — although the tiny shell in the wall has had more immortality than they. Some of these deserted houses in the old town, set back in neglected gardens, behind smart new buildings, are still homes in some sort, in that they can offer a slight shelter from the kindly sky to any forlorn and homeless wan- derers who, like themselves, have lost the mean- ing of living, but who still exist. Almost all hold a bed, and a bit of looking-glass stuck edeewise into a chink in the wall, thus provid- ing for the two parts of life, — consciousness of self, and a safe forgetting. The " King's Forge," near the sea-wall, has these two things, and a chair or two beside, and a tin cup and platter on a shelf. The walls 74 FLORIDA DAYS. w i t h i n w e r e blackened very ; ago by the forge . it is quenched now, although the -till stands grim and black in the centre of the room, and answers the purpose of table or shelf. The roof is heavy with years, and has bent and broken, that a finger of light, thrusting itself between the warpi ty shingles, points down into dusk of the room, and moves, as the day cross the earthen floor and up the op- ' wall. It is so distinct, this bar of stm- ie, that .1 mote can be seen, coming into it side of the clear darkness through falls, dancing across it. and vanishing THE TOWN. 75 again into the dark. The moving spot of gold touches perhaps a hammer, dropping from its broken handle, a ring in the wall where a horse has been fastened, or a blacksmith's apron hanging high upon the chimney breast. That plummet-line of Noon gives the darkened room mysterious possibilities ; it sounds the Past. It is easy to remember, or at least to imagine, in this silence, clamorous with dead sounds. One hears the hoarse wheeze of the bellows, or the champ of bits and pounding hoofs, and the blow of a brawny hand upon a steaming flank. "Dey do say," — there is a hut beside the forge, and in the open doorway a wrinkled, griz- zled negro is sitting in a broken chair, with a corn-cob pipe between his lips (it is he who plays the host with neighborly kindness for the absent owner), — " dey do say dat dey all comes back ag'in; do' I ain't seen 'em, dat 's a fac'. But an ol' lady, an ol' cullud lady, dat lib in dere all by herse'f, she say she seen 'em many and many a time. Say she seen de horses prancin', and FLORIDA DAYS. soldiers swearin' and singin' songs, and de black- smif orderin' 'em roun', — ' Sho ! Git over dar ! Whoa, now ! ' Dat 's what she say. She 's gone now herse'f — somewhar, so prob'ly she knows h.»w dey gits back. She'll be right glad to know dat, she was alius so cur'ous. And she '11 tin' out all dere is to fin' out! She used to say she like to know how dey clo's lasted, — her clo's did n't last, for sho'. She was disgraceful red ! " The man observed his own tattered sleeve with complacency. •• Well, fur me, I don't say nuffin' 'bout ghosts, one way or de oder. I don' know nuffin', — dat's a fac', — dat dere is any, or dat dere ain't If I said dere is, I'd be scar't ; and if I is n't, den dey might be 'fended. So I don't say nuffin'. Well, yes, to look roun' and how it's over wif 'em whedder dey comes back or not, do makr life seem mighty singular Yes, it do. But dere's a pow'ful lot o' uble in it, fur its si/.e ! Dere was a time when I i n't right sho' in my mind whedder it was ■ vhile, — all de trouble, just for de sake THE TOWN. 77 of eatin' and drinkin'. An' I 've had my share o' trouble, so I tell you. I loss my fust wife, and I loss my second wife (cos', dey bof died happy) ; den I loss my modder, she died shout- in' ! But a modder 's not de same as a wife, — you can't git anodder. Well, an' money come hard, an' it seem like as if you was always want- in' just a leetle more o' suthin'. Always wantin' ; — dat 's my sper'ence. De only peace o' my mind, when I come to think it over, was when I was asleep, or settin' in de sun, wif my eyes shut. Well, I thought it all over, and den I 'fleeted. I 'fleeted dat ef you had de Lawd, it was wuf while ; and ef you did n't have de Lawd, den it was 11 1 wuf while." A clean, high soul, too wide to dare to limit Infinity by a word, said something strangely like this, once. " I see," he said, — " I see that when souls reach a certain clearness of percep- tion, they accept a knowledge and motive above selfishness. A breath of will blows eternally through the universe of souls in the direction of the Right and Necessary. It is the air which all intellects inhale and exhale, and it is the FLORIDA DAYS. wind which blows the worlds into order and >lt." Here is the conclusion of the old negro, sit- ting with vacant face in the sunshine, in the ambling doorway of the "King's Forge." He mieht not recognize his own thought in the broader words; yet it is there. But if it is rth while, it is a pity to bear it in a mist of dreams ; and this flood of noon blurs a man's thought, as the opiate fragrance of incense dims the aisles of a cathedral. Although, indeed, the •ften too content with sleep even to sire a dream simply not to know, and, there- for.-, not to rare, or to sutler, — that seems to the widest thing in life. A white pigeon circles slowly through the ! blue depths above, round and round, until the eye ceases to follow it, and only sees, uely, a flash of silver coming and going, that othes like the murmur of a sontr above a Tin- rippling coo from milky-white tin • t .ous, swaying and balancing on shelf of the cote, the soft gray of their wings d with iridescent gleams; the slow swing -•-"-sj t: ;< THE TOWN. 8 I of great banana leaves against the sky ; the lazy splash of an oar beyond the hot sea-wall, — are all parts of a stupor from which one would not be aroused. Perhaps, if it were not so still in the blaze of light, if there were any sound ex- cept that distant splash and the murmur of the pigeons, it would be easier to awake, and once more wonder and desire and feel them both worth while. In the Spanish burying-ground, steeped in the white glare, one only finds a deeper and more lasting sleep ; and for the dreams, — the flood and silence of light will suffice. In this neglected spot, even memory seems dead. The gate, opening on the dusty road, is fastened by a twist of rusted wire, which leaves a dull red mark upon the lichen of the crum- bling post. The wooden crosses above the sleepers are flaked and gray in the blaze of sunshine; some of the cross-pieces have fallen, and the white " I. H. S." has faded into the weather-stained wood. A dried and withered bunch of flowers placed very long ago on the FLORIDA DAYS. wiry brown grass at the foot of such a cross »ws Love's compromise with Death. " Mine ' Love cries, and will not hear the answer, ••.Mine; and thou art mine." There is an old tomb here, covered with a square coquina slab, which marks the grave of •• Catalina." It is well that the inscription was cut deeply into the crowding shells, for the grave lies under the shadow of a yew heavy with hang- ing moss, and in a little enclosure of broken palings, which so shuts out the sun that the lichen has grown thick across her name. The slabs are broken; some flowers stand ight and sweet beside them; so tall that the bell-like clusters rest as gracious hands upon -• top <>f the tomb; and all about through the thin dry there is a little creeping plant with a white star for a blossom. Perhaps they own when "this marble covered the grave of Catalina," and have grown from summer to ummer int<> j<>y«>ns forgetfulness of the grief that planted them, ami the "surpassing worth" tiled it forth, — worth which was to make lal. "She was called thus early into THE TOWN. 85 the silent land, leaving in the heart" — the lichen is very thick here — "a record of sur- passing worth, which neither time can efface nor the changes of life obscure." How this assertion, this throwing the gauntlet into the face of Time, betrays its own hopelessness ! One hears, again, her stately name, as though sweet between the lips in one last cry for her, which has echoed even into the silent land, — Catalina ! "Set me as a seal upon thine Jicart, as a seal upon thine arm; for Love is as strong as Death." As strong as Death ! Alas, Catalina, canst thou see this forgotten tomb? There is a path from the broken gate, running straight between the graves, to a small chapel at the other end of the enclosure, where Mass has been said for the departed. Doubtless " Antonia Jose Terriande de Muir, a native of Cadiz" who was "lamented by a respectable circle of friends" was borne up this green pathway for that last moment of earthly pomp and honor, the brief rest before the altar steps ; then, out again into the blaze of sunshine, and the breathless hush of stifled tears and human wonder. 36 FLORIDA DAYS. The rim of laughing sea mocks with its un- changed expanse the promises on the coquina ilabs of endless memory and regret, and con- duces to trite reflections upon the vanity of Life. In this forsaken burying-ground, overrun by hens and dogs, and full of blossoming weeds, with broken and neglected tombs, the readiest thought, and for tin- moment altogether sincere, THE TOWN. 87 is that Love, with its hopes and promises, is only a tiresome bit of cruel humor, and that Life is nothing better. "It is not worth while!" for- getting what was to make it so, forgetting the wind which blows the worlds into order and orbit. These headstones mean nothing more than the beginning and ending of Vanity, one thinks, with the indifference of a dream. " Most of them recorded," says Addison of the inscrip- tions in Westminster Abbey, — " most of them recorded of the buried person that he was born upon one day and died upon another ; the whole history of his life being comprehended in those two circumstances." And for the moment, so it seems. One needs to leave this flooding stillness of noon, and brush the haze of golden light aside, to see again all the dear and daily things which lie between these two dates, "common to all mankind." If some fresh wind would but come up out of the violet silence of the sea, and touch his drowsy eyes and listless hands, a man might awake to see, serene and calm as a FLORIDA DAYS. great mountain which lies unchanged behind its clouds, the familiar face of Life, still smiling beneath the veil of dreams, and with her all the happy train of simple duties which she leads. NIGHT. " The heavens between their fairy fleeces pale Sowed all their mystic gulfs with fleeting stars.' '"T^HE yellow light lingers upon the fort even after the sun has dropped suddenly into the sea ; but a shadow creeps across the water, and touches the sea-weed that fringes the base of the wall, and then up and on, across the moat 9 o FLORIDA DAYS. and the portcullis. The coat-of-arms over the doorway, and the worn pulleys of the drawbridge on cither side, fade into the warm dusk; all the barbican is wrapped in shadows : yet still the parapets and the towers for the sentry, hanging airily upon the four angles of the fort, are faintly Hushed with rose, and the broad coping is warm beneath the hand. It is not so easy to dream here. There is a detail in contemplation which robs it of its opi- ate, — a detail which never comes to him who, in the flood of sunshine, leans against a garden- wall, his eyes fixed on a glittering edge of shell. In the fort, too much is suggested; one cannot remember and dream at the same time. Besides, crumpling the water until it has the sheen of a web of silk, or stroking it smooth as with an invisible wing, which leaves a faint glisten in it- gray track, the fresh wind blows the haze i if sleep away. The western sky throbs with an impalpable dust of gold when the sun has set; and the blue and cloudless day closes like the lid of a ket of jewels upon the violet rim of sea, and THE TOWN. 91 shuts out the light. The crystal dusk grows cool and fresh before the stars come out. Every- thing wakes ; and the same alert distinctness that touched the trees and bushes on Anastasia Island at dawn, cuts the shadows out of the twilight. Even the letters on the tablet beneath the coat-of-arms over the entrance can be read, although the years have blurred them until, in some lights, they can scarcely be distinguished : " Reyxaxdo ex espaxa el sex n box Fer- NANDO SEXTO Y SIEXDO GoV R Y CAP X DE ES a c d sa n aug n de la florida y sus prov a el mariscal de campo d n ' aloxzo ferx no he- rada asi concluio este castillo el ax od 1756. Dri^exdo las obras el Cap. Ixgx ro dx Pedro de Brozas y Garay." One falls to thinking of the sentry who used to stand upon the wall, just over the coat-of-arms; what dreams and hopes have shaped themselves here, above this assertion, — for it is only that now, — that the fashion of this world passeth away ! A little oval depression in the block of cement shows how long the end of a spear or the staff of a banner has rested there ; through hours of 92 FLORIDA DAYS. sunshine, and dim starlit nights, and in the fury of great storms. Always, there above the en- trance, one sentry or another, living his own life and thought, fancying both eternal, looking out over the sea, and across the orange-groves to the distant river, — loving, hoping, fearing ; and now, the sum of it all, a little depression in a crumbling slab. There is no watch now ; the fort has noth- to fear. Visitors come and go, or down in the grass-grown moat a thin white donkey wanders about, cropping hungrily at the tufted that stand in the angles of the bar- bican, or crowd like sentinels around a stone THE TOWN. 93 which may have tumbled from the ramparts. The offensive attitude of these thistles, brave in green and silver, and with pink cockades, is the only warlike thing about the peaceful fort, — unless, indeed, one should except the ants ; they use a crevice, or a widening seam between the great shell-stone blocks, for a fortress and arsenal and store-house. How very wide awake they are, these little bus- tling red and black soldiers, tugging and pull- ing at a burly dead bumble-bee, which one of their scouts has found lying in his bronze- gold armor under a clover-blossom ! There is a spider who would dispute their right to for- age so near his preserves ; but the ants per- sist. They bring the dead general (he is surely that, with his gold epaulets and the big pollen-laden top-boots) up to the crevice in the wall, and in a moment they are safe from their gray poison-swollen enemy. Doubtless they think the fort was built for them, these brave little soldiers. It answers their needs so perfectly that such a thought would not be unnatural. FLORIDA DAYS. There are men who think that the great earth, which went spinning through space when all the morning stars sang together, was made for them ! In the fading light, given up to thistles, and with the whir of swallows' wings through the dusk, the fort is so quiet it is hard to real- ize that it was ever the scene of stormy hu- man life; that there were men here once who watched this darkening expanse of blue with keen and anxious eyes. They must have crept behind the worn ramparts, to the round sentry- boxes which hang like cages over the walls, to look cut from the loop-holes in hope or fear, .1- might be the fortunes of war. And there weir those who suffered agonies of apprehen- sion in the dungeons hollowed out of the rocks below, while within sound of their misery other nun plotted and planned, with high ambition or magnificent pride. For there is something magnificent in transcendent folly; and such it ms, now that they are all dead and gone and there remains only a rusted ring in the wall, or ,i half-obliterated coal of-arms over the port- 'II IK TOWN. 95 cullis, to show that the> ever so much as existed. " Oh, but the long, long while the world shall last, Which of our com- ing and depart- ure heeds As thesev'n seas should heed a pebble cast ! " But with the pebble's flying instant, every law is as per- fectly fulfilled as with the planet roaring through empty and endless space ; and so it is, that pebbles are never done feeling their im- portance, refusing to remember that with the splash at the end they are forgotten, no matter what sparks their swift passage strikes out of the indifferent air. Here, in the fort, where much tumultuous living has been swept into the past, the blank of silence is stifling, and a curious fatalism would 96 FLORIDA DAYS. persuade a man to yield himself up to those laws which bear men and worlds into eternity a torrent carries straws upon its breast, and in so doing find much that is beautiful and gra- cious, and nothing that is hard in his instant's voyage. All this is in the air. It is inexpli- cable, and leaves one with the query whether Religions are not altogether a matter of climate, — the wonder how man) - years it would take to change a Norseman into Buddha himself. The Sergeant, parrot-like and half asleep, has many stories of this little greatness, or of that, t.. till of the fort. Yen- likely the stories have .vn with the years ; but one does not look at them too closely, — the}' belong to this luminous dusk that blurs all the angles and arches of the fort, and makes the line of sky and sea only an advancing mist. The man's thread of memory strung with legends which go very far back. He begins with Ponce de Leon,— a caballero, idy old. who has come to find the fountain <.f perpetual youth. Already old, yet incapa- e. What ! had he not been THE TOWN. 97 the friend and comrade of Christopher Colum- bus? Did he not even now feel the passion of success, which stirs the soul as wine stirs the blood? Was not the spur of wonder still in his side? He could not be old. His body might be feeble, truly; but that was merely an acci- dent of the flesh, a small matter. He was young. His soul was as strong and glad and brave as it had been fifty years ago. Old? No, no, not he ! All that he wanted was strong 7 98 FLORIDA DAYS. muscles and clear eyes, — to cease to be ham- pered by this miserable body which had played him false at the very height of life. So he would go to search for that immortal water of which every one had heard, but which, with all the foil)' of a boy, he had scorned fifty years ago. One pictures to himself, here on the ramparts, overlooking the level white beach, the pomp and glory of that morning of Palm Sunday, when Ponce de Leon set foot upon these Florida shores. The glitter of arms, the blaze of gold and scarlet, the cross flashing in the sunshine, and the solemn hymn which declared that there was yet a lieiter Country, even an heavenly, which the soul desired and with which it would -lied, — so satisfied that it could forget ith and Life itself for entrance through its j I '< ath. Yet there may have been a breath of relief when tlie hymn was over, and the search might in t"i the fountain of earthly immortality. Pon d Li on' \a<\i-<\ eyes may easily have left and glanced towards the distant trees, THE TOWN. 99 anxious to catch at once, under their blossoming shadows, the flash and ripple of the wonderful water. The flood of ineffable light, the lap and murmur of the wrinkled sea, were all the promise that his desire should be satisfied. There must have been a moment of passionate and joyous indifference to the hidden laughter of his sol- diers, whose possession of what he sought made them careless of his pathetic longing. Then came the bitterness of hope deferred. Eight weeks of search beneath the palms, of stooping to drink with trembling hand at every spring, of breathless waiting for that leap of the blood which was to stir the shrunken veins across his temples and light the old fire in his eyes; then, with disappointment tugging at his heart, to set sail again, — steadying his lips with promises that he should yet find that for which Heaven was an alternative. After Ponce de Leon, came Diego Muruelo, and then Fernandez de Cordova, who suffered many things from the hands of savage men — we are told ; and, a little later, De Ayllon ; one by one, the last — the Sergeant has heard that I0 FLORIDA DAYS. he was a very learned man — luring on board his ships, from along this flowering coast to- wards the north, one hundred and thirty na- tives ; and then turning about for home. They were to be sold ; and that meant gold with greater ease than by search in these hot sands. But to a man they were set free in mid ocean, for they died of despair and terror. A specu- lator can only meet such a turn of fortune by good-tempered impatience and greater wisdom for the next time; so, carelessly, as a player aside a useless card, they were all flung overboard, without a sail-cloth or a prayer, and De Ayllon hunted for gold in less un- tain ways. It was after this piece of treachery, that one Pamphilo de Narvaez, to whom the King had tited vast estates in this new land, came, full of zeal for his own gain and the salvation of nils. It was on the shores of the Bay of the Holy Spirit, that he issued to the Indians that Miliary manifesto in Spanish which was insure temporal and spiritual benefit — to be divided as the conqueror saw fit. This paper VI IK TOWN. ioi was prepared for all the inhabitants of the lands lying "between the River of Palms and Cape Florida " — and he summons them to Salvation in no uncertain words. " I, Pamphilo de Nar- vaez," he begins — " declare to you how God created the world " — and he goes on to say, that, although they will not be compelled to accept Christianity, yet when they shall have been informed of the truth they shall be made Christians. " If you refuse," he says, frankly, " with God's assistance, I will march against you, arms in hand. I will make war upon you by every possible means. I will obtain pos- session of your wives and children ; I will re- duce you to slavery." He further adds, that all these threatened miseries will not be caused " by His Majesty, nor myself, nor the gentlemen who accompany me, but by yourselves only ! ' There is yet another story to be told, of that sailor who climbed a tree in Panama, and saw both oceans, and prayed that he might sail a ship in the Pacific. He came here to the old town, the Sergeant declares, and left death and despair behind him, in place of the spoil he 102 FLORIDA DAYS. took away. The Sergeant is not quite sure whether this attack was before or after this same sailor had crawled out upon the cliffs of Terra del Fuego, feeling his way with strong brown hands when the fog hung so thick across great precipices that he could not see where he was. and then, at the very last cliff, lying flat on his bell\-, his chin out into infinite space, star- ing with great eyes over the edge of the world. He was a brave man, that Drake, the Sergeant admits, but he had not much sense; what was the use of risking his life in such a fashion? But it was a very long time before this — the Sergeant goes backward in his story — that Ponce de Leon made his second landing, com- ing again, to search in desperate hope where he had searched before. Memory of the gracious sky, "f the trees and flowers, of the hush of mis, tempted him to come once more; or perhaps he felt vaguely that he had been young •. and so the Fountain of Youth not revealed itself to him, but now — now he was very, very old, so old that even the for youth was dulled — why might he THE TOWN. 105 not hope to find it? Perhaps, if he had waited, — if he had been content to sit in the sun, watch- ing with drowsy eyes the ring of sea and sky, and forgotten to wonder or desire, — he might have found all things ! He might have sunk into that unspeakable content with life, which does not know. Instead, he went away again, and died "in great bitterness." The Sergeant knows all about it. The Sergeant, dozing in the shadowy sweep of the great irregular arch, or walking in a pleasant dream back and forth across the blazing white courtyard, with never a fear or wonder or desire in his soul, knows quite well that old Ponce de Leon was a fool. But what of that? It is a good story to tell, and it is not the Sergeant's business to point out its folly: for that matter, all things are foolish when one comes to look into them, — all things that people make a fuss about, at least. Wisdom is calm ; the Sergeant is very wise. He is not disturbed by any story he may have to tell. There were men left to starve in that dun- geon beyond, he says, passively; and against this wall, fretted with round holes, prisoners io6 FLORIDA DAYS. 1 used to stand to be shot. The grass grows thick now on this side of the enclosure, because, he declares, so much blood has been spilled on the thirsty ground. There is the dim outline of a cross upon the wh i t ewashed *4P* wall of a room which was once the chapel ; the Sergeant has pointed it out so often that he himself scarce- W ly sees it now. Per- haps because it is of no especial importance in his vague eyes. The bullet-holes outside, which meant the snap of ie short and brittle thread of life, interest him as much as does this shadow of human THE TOWN. 107 necessity, as eternal as the world, — this bridge- between God and man. Or perhaps it would be more exact to say, interest him as little — for the difference between them is not great enough for choice. He thinks of them both with that contented indifference to all things which is in the air. The hint upon the chapel wall of the enigma of the universe is not more profound or more enticing than the mys- tery of the old coins which he threads between his fingers by the light of the flaring lamp upon the wall. He holds them close to his faded eyes to catch a glint of gilt through the tar- nish of a hundred years, and wonders faintly from whence they came. His dim, gaunt face is in the gloom of the deep window, and his tall figure is only a clearer shadow in the dusk of the room. "This one," he says, — "this one was in the hand of the skeleton we found below there in the dungeon ; that one was washed about with the shells and pebbles on the beach ; some ship went down, maybe, long ago, and this is the only sign of it above water to-day." He rubs I0 8 FLORIDA DAYS. the coin gently between his tremulous fingers. " This one was found in a crevice in the court- yard. Perhaps some Spanish soldier dropped it, — it's a Spanish coin, — see? A lady found it. A lady in a gay frock, with a great white umbrella, walking up and down in the sunshine. * It seems strange to see the ladies in their pretty dresses here, and then think about other days. Well, a lady does n't know a soldier's life. There was a time when that court was full of . ind there was the roar of cannon from the ramparts, — those very cannon lying buried in the barbican, and green with mould now, — and there were the scream of THE TOWN. 109 bullets and the groans of dying men, and smoke so thick you could n't see the flags ! " The Sergeant liked to think of it all sometimes, and the rattling gallop of the drums, and the fierce Spanish faces. But not often. It is better to sleep in the sunshine, or watch the pomp of sea and sky at the sunset gun. It is curious how little distinct admiration, how little keen individual delight, is felt in watching these gorgeous skies when the sun sets ; or, later, in listening to the silver mys- HO FLORIDA DAYS. tery of the sea and stars. The soul slips into it all in some strange way, and knows itself only a heart-beat in the million heart-beats of the pulse of God. The stately rhythm of the waves folding along the shore is so certain in its monotony that by and by the ear becomes un- conscious of it; and there is the same uncon- msness of the stars, swinging down like censers through the darkness, each one a globe ight, so soft, so joyous, that the whole eye only light, and so is not aware of it. There is nothing in the soul but a content which knows no words and desires none. I Hit in the rose-garden, in this soft glitter of the night, the roses have lost their deep and . ing colors, and have caught instead a pale, phosphorescent light, as though each mirrored dimly its own star. Shadows suck the greenness from the leaves, and they are black, save for istening drops in the little notches along the ;e, while a< ross the bosom of each flower the folded in a silver mist. The fragrance tlie i the dark air itself; it saturates rything; it almost blurs the stars. It seems THE TOWN. Ill strange that there should be the legend of pas- sion and pain here, — lovers and gladness ; the tryst, and the heart-break afterwards ; for there is something as smothering to all emotion in this overpowering sweetness as in the fumes of ether. It is a relief to come back to the swinging water beside the sea-wall, the clear black skies sown with innumerable points of light, and the fresh wind from across the palmettos on Anastasia Island. A sting of memory pierces through the down of content, as the scent of the roses is blown away; a thought of the keen brightness of Northern skies ; a hint of the clean and almost bitter fragrance of yellow crocuses and pale, cold snowdrops, — of that fresh, penetrating sweetness of new grass, which shows its fright- ened greenness under sodden leaves, along the sheltered borders of meadows, or beside the small springs of marshy orchards ; of that sub- tle, faint, undetainable scent of the first white violets, — of all the brave, glad life that greets the north wind. I 12 FLORIDA DAYS. Oh, violet, 'T is April yet, The wind is cold, sweet maid ; For it doth blow O'er lingering drifts of snow, The ermine borders of Spring's velvet green; Oh, art thou not afraid Thus early to be seen ? THE COUNTRY. THE COUNTRY. ...*••-" figRHflSHB9hflnfi£ THE RIVER. " A league of grass, washed by a slow, broad stream That, stirred with languid pulses of the oar, Waves all its lazy lilies, and creeps on." 'T^HE yellow current of the St. John's River lies against the sky in a great curve to- wards the north ; the farther shore is so low and flat and dim, in the flooding light, that it Il6 FLORIDA DAYS. seems but a bank of mist, faintly golden in the sunshine. The sweep of the current is slow and grave, so that, apparently, there is a curious fixity and permanence about it; it is without the hurry and noise of the little running rivers of the north, and it has none of their light-hearted intimacy, which comes from the crowding nearness of their trees and meadows. Not that the great river is cruel, — it is merely great ; it has even an indif- ferent kindliness, — like the ocean or the sky, or a force in Nature. It bears a canoe as lightly and gently on its broad, smooth bosom as the most tranquil little pool might do, lying like a jewel at the feet of guarding hills; but if by some bit of carelessness, or confidence, a man trusts his life to it, it drowns him with smiling case, and without the slightest effort to save him. There is no ripple made by an out- stretched branch of tree or bush dipping into its waves like a friendly hand put out to rescue him ; nor is there any knee of rock here and there above the water to which he might cling. It is very might}- and very beautiful ; but it i-; THE COUNTRY. II 7 not loved as a brawling northern torrent is, which tumbles anxiously about among its bowl- ders, or turns a mill-wheel in a green meadow ; one does not trust it as he trusts the narrow rivers, freckled with sunshine in shallows under their leaning alders, where bare-legged children wade about, or fish with crooked pins, and empty spools for floats. True, even in these friendly and familiar streams, Death has pulled a man under the brown water once in a while ; but that was surely because, in the first place, he was careless, and afterwards did not heed the invitation of their pleasant shores, and was not quick enough to catch at the branches thrust out for his aid from kindly trees. Under a live-oak tree on the shore one puts his cheek down against the warm earth, and looks across the sweep of yellow water; on and on the eye travels, until the great waste of mul- titudinous ripples is lost in the sky beyond ; the river pervades all space, it is supreme. It is easy to realize how a river commends itself to the necessity of the soul for worship. Il8 FLORIDA DAYS. It calls forth adoration, as all things at once great and indifferent demand adoration. Very- likely this passion for a great river, which stirs almost every man, springs from some twist in the brain left by an Aryan ancestor who prayed upon the banks of his holy river, offering his wreaths of lotus and his first-fruits of corn and wine to its majestic tide. There are many live- oak trees along these shores, under which the worshipper may build an altar and propitiate the river god ; indeed, the trees are great altars themselves, hung with solemn moss, and mur- murous with wonderful chords of that wind- symphony to which all Nature is a rhythmic accompaniment. To lie in the shadow of such a tree and look across the yellow water, which is barred by streamers of gray moss, is to wor- ship without words. These live-oaks are full of companionable whispers, and they have a very comfortable and friendly look; their gnarled and twisted limbs cover a wide space, and droop almost to the ground, shutting out the glare of light with misty curtains. One could spend a day with THE COUNTRY. 119 such a tree, and know no awe, but much rever- ence. They are like certain motherly and un- intelligent women, to whom one goes in grief or despair, sure of being comforted and not too deeply understood. It is no wonder that that handful of French- men whom Jean Ribaut left behind him at the mouth of one of these southern rivers, as silent and slow-flowing as the St. John's, with just such gracious trees along its shores, should have been "well content to have been forgot- 120 FLORIDA DAYS. ten." Ribaut had brought them here, but had only waited long enough to see that a fort was built, and then he had returned to France, full of promises of what he would do for them at court, — how he would "imprint their names in the King's ears," so that their "renown should thereafter thrive unquenchably through the realms of France," — as brave men, willing to trust themselves to solitude and their enemies for the sake of planting a colony in the King's name. That said, he sailed away to find " much weariness and care," which, naturally enough, blotted promises out of his mind. But for the twenty-six sailors left in their little fort, everything was calm and peaceful ; they had no enemies to conquer, which might have kindled their ambition, and, gradually, hope of their commander's return became too blurred to make them alert and keen. Their lives were only sunshine and sleep; the fort upon the little island they had chosen was overgrown with grass; weeds sprung up about the cannon on the crumbling ramparts. Time touched the men so softly for a while, that one fancies they THE COUNTRY. 121 would have been sleeping in the sunshine yet, but for the fact of their ammunition running low, so that their provisions failed, and perforce, they woke to scan the horizon with anxious eyes for Jean Ribaut's promised sail. But far greater things had thrust their existence from his thoughts ; intrigue and civil war were more important than the lives of a few men, dream- ing under cloud shadows that chased across the smooth waste of a great river or a land- locked bay. So he did not return. One falls to thinking of the final wrench with which the garrison must have roused themselves from sleep and starvation, and of that strange ship in which a little later they floated out to sea. " They built," some one says, " a small pin- nace, though they had not a single ship-carpen- ter among them. The cordage was of palmetto, the sails their shirts and linen, and the vessel was caulked with moss." The river bore the strange craft kindly ; perhaps the vessel seemed to it — with rough logs, and twisted palms, and flowing gray moss — like a part of the landscape, some strange island which had floated from its 122 FLORIDA DAYS. moorings, and had given shelter by chance to these curious little creatures upon it; so the vast current bore it safely to the ocean. They must have grown less vague, these for- gotten sailors, as the salt wind touched their dreaming eyes, for they made every effort to control this extraordinary ship, and strangely enough, after unspeakable suffering and danger, they did indeed go nearly half-way home ; then, " else the\- had all died," an English vessel found them, and bore them back to France. But the stupefaction of these deserted men, it can hardly be called content, had fallen upon them on their island under the live-oaks — one in not imagine that it would have happened, had their fort been among the pines in the barrens. There, of necessity, they would have lived more eagerly, if less happily. I here is a keen insistence and perception of life about the pines which is aggressive and almost alarming. Tf nothing else, they confess a man to himself too plainly. They flood him with the gian- of daylight, and their sparse, severe branches are too far off for pity or inti- THE COUNTRY. 123 macy. They do not dwarf him into a satisfied dream, as the live-oaks by the river do — they only press his miserable personality in upon him. These lofty, slender trees, in endless proces- sion, are full of individuality; they are like a straggling regiment where every man counts, 124 FLORIDA DAYS. and the whole so spread out that it looks like an army. There is very little grass about their roots, and there seem to be no shadows upon the deep, hot sand in which the)- grow. At the top of each bare perpendicular shaft, the horizontal branches spread like the radii of a circle, making a cone which terminates in a naked spike. " Their forests are silent as soli- tudes," Taine says. " The whistle of the wind makes no noise ; it glides over the stiff beard of the leaves without stirring or rubbing them to- gether. One hears no sound save the whispering of the tops and the shrivelling of the little yellow- ish Iamels which fall in showers. The turf is dead, the soil naked ; you walk among pale shafts which rise like tapers. A strong odor fills the air, resembling the perfume of aromatics. They live in families," he adds, "and expel other trees from their domain." The impulse of worship is not stirred among the pines; instead, there is "Urn a curious impatience with the assertive- of the trees, and a dull fright at their endless numb< It is strange that such multitudes of trees are THE COUNTRY. 125 never thought of in a mass. It is always the individual which presents itself to the mind. Some one says of them, that they are count- able, if one had but eternity; it is, he declares, as if the observer " saw infinity," and he adds that a " noise goes about through the high pine needles which seems to formulate itself into that lovely Latin song: — ' Infinitas ! Infinitas ! Hie mundus est infinitas ! Infinitas et totus est, Nam mente nunquam absolveris : Infinitas et illius Pars quaelibet, partisque pars." To wander for a day under their scanty shade, among their endless files, the feet sinking deep into the sand, and the eyes weary with their lines and angles, is to be filled with a self-con- sciousness which produces the same irritation mentally, which dust in the eyes does physically. Their apparently endless stretch is unrelieved by any hillside or rolling prairie, and is broken only by the spongy inroad of a swamp, laced with narrow creeks which widen into rivers. 126 FLORIDA DAYS. The solitude is overpowering; the still air brines the strong balsamic fragrance in burning gusts, but there is no wind; at noon, on the barrens, even the dance of gorgeous butterflies and the clumsy booming of bumble-bees, cease ; the stillness is appalling, and is never restful. It is a relief to see any motion anywhere, — lizards slipping over a wrinkled root that buries itself in the sand like a veined and withered finger, or two buzzards sweeping upon rigid wings through the shadowless blue, in vast curves and circles. It is a relief here in the barrens when sud- THE COUNTRY. \2J denly night falls like a curtain upon the world ; darkness shuts out these appalling distances, and lifts the weight of consciousness from a man's soul. To lie between the wrinkled roots of a great tree in the soft sand, which is warm still from the flood of the sun, and look through the spread of the branches at the near and kindly stars, is to fall again into content. Per- haps it is the absence of mystery which is so soothing. The skies reveal themselves in the darkness, as they may not in the glare of day, and the starlight, like a golden vapor, blurs the endless files of the trees, so that they vanish like ghosts a stone's-throw away, and the bene- diction of darkness rests eyes which all day long have been wearied by lines and numbers. There are clearings here and there in the forest, where pines are being felled, and one may lean against a shaft which shall soon be rocking between the sky and sea, — the mast of a vessel, that will hold all the spars and cordage, as the spine gathers the nerves and muscles of a living man. There is a propriety [2 8 FLORIDA DAYS. in putting a great pine in such a position, it is so strong and so indifferent. There is a strange and interesting thing about these trees which no one has yet explained — and the pines are silent. When their forests are cut down for tim- ber, there springs up instead of the pines, clean- cut and virile, a whole undergrowth of bushy young oaks ! No one knows whence the acorns came from which they sprang; there is often not an old oak within miles, and the expanse of sand had been covered with unbroken phalanxes of pines. Sometimes in the barrens one comes across a single log-house, standing beside trees which give it neither sympathy nor shelter. True, the occupants support themselves by the turpentine which the pines supply. They cut with clean, even gashes a deep oblong in the bark, being careful not to girdle and kill their source of income; but any kindly feeling for the trees is n< 'I to be imagined. I he lives of these people who collect the turpentine, are very lonely and very vacant, but their face do not show that peace with vacancy THE COUNTRY. 129 which is iii the eyes of the men and women who live beside the creeks and rivers. On the contrary, there is a vague and restless self- consciousness which gives them a keener look, and hints at some deeper interest in life. Just what that interest may be is not apparent; possibly it is religion. It certainly is religion among the colored people, whose cabins are found in groups by the side of some scarcely distinguishable road which wanders across the barrens from one clearing to another. It is almost a pity to define the one absorbing excitement of the negro as religion, but there seems to be no other word ; and after all, gro- tesque and fierce as it is, surely it contains the essential element of all religions, — the abne- gation of self. Buddha, desiring to sink into — "nameless quiet, nameless joy, Blessed Nirvana, sinless, stirless rest, That change which changes never;" the nun in the convent, her pale cheek pressed against the cross in an agony of supplication ; 9 130 FLORIDA DAYS. the man of science, reflecting with passion- ate wonder upon illimitable space, sinking the '• string of thought into the fathomless," weigh- ing the star-dust from the hand of the Unknown, — all, surely, have the same ecstasy, the same losing of the soul in the Eternal. The method by which it is reached — this loss which is gain — we call religion; and the method differs with the individual. But the result — the absorption into some greater force, and the consequent loss of personality — is surely the same in every case. The means by which this half-civilized man, the negro in America, attains the end which, in common with the seer and saint, he desires, is gross and crude, but it is sure. He deliberately prepares for oblivion. " Getting happy," he calls it ; " getting religion," " getting the spirit of the Lord." But one must perceive that although they call themselves Christians, this savage worship of theirs is only a grotesque 1 aricature of Christianity. The words " God," "J us," 'Holy Spirit," are but tricks of ex- pression, or rather the English for deities or THE COUNTRY. 131 devils of their own. They are used with wild cries and groans that gradually produce that excitement or stupor which is happiness. Not infrequently a point is reached where these catch-words are dropped entirely, and it is only necessary to continue the low chanting moan, and consciousness of self is caught and drowned in a great blind force which cannot be under- stood, but which is not feared. It is curious to find how soon the anticipation of this condition of mind begins to show itself in negro children. This is, of course, because they observe the extraordinary expression of religion in their elders. Emotion and expres- sion are synonymous in the mind of the Afri- can, — and reserve in Religion, or Love, or Grief can hardly be imagined for him, — so the negro child takes his own conversion for granted, and the manner of it also, yet he is apt — for he is keener than his white brother of the same age — to discriminate in a droll way, sometimes, between religion and conduct. This promise of perception in him is not usu- ally fulfilled ; for mental growth ordinarily FLORIDA DAYS. ceases in the negro as childhood is left behind, whereas the white man can acquire knowledge far down the line of his years. Indeed, the highest cultivation might almost be measured by the ability still to increase. Here in the barrens, in the silence that stings and burns instead of soothes, there is a little graveyard, fenced by palings, dazzling white in the sunshine, and on the gate a darky girl is swinging to and fro, singing in low, soft gut- turals. Her attitude is full of lazy happiness ; but her little body is as lithe and alert as one of the lizards which is sunning itself on a tomb- tie that stands out clean and sharp in the glare of light. Julia's black head has the glitter and shine of a lump of coal, but her rolling eyes are soft in spite of their brightness. •• I i omes yere," she explains, '"cause my 1 it— sister she's hurried yere. Law! wa'n't she pretty? Wish 't you could 'a' seen her hair — butiful! I likes to look in yere once in awhile at these dead folks. I 'se sorry for 'cm. 'Pears likr t\ne protection to decency given by the Sacred Name, no matter how meaningless its use, the of civilization, be broken down, savage leap into the light. Yet who .ild deny that the end of it all is religion, illowing up of the individual in some- thin n ater than himself? nit "I this excitement is not obvious upon nn.rals; indeed, the minister remarked THE COUNTRY. 141 candidly, and with simple curiosity, that he had thought that " de sisters was n't so pious in dere lives after one of dese yere times, do' he could n't just say why it was; maybe dey was tired ! " And judging from the exhausted ap- pearance of both men and women after such a meeting, the reaction from spiritual intoxica- tion into positive immorality is not remarkable; but it gives the observer a curious sensation of distinguishing between religion and morals. THE WOODS AND SWAMPS. " There was no motion in the dumb, dead air, Not any song of bird or sound of rill. . . . Growths of jessamine turned Their humid arms, festooning tree to tree ; And at the root through lush green grasses burned The red anemone." \ FTER wandering for a day on the pine -*■ *- barrens, the traveller comes back into golden calm when the river is reached once more. It is peace to lie under a live-oak and slip into a pleasant dream, watching all the while the yellow flood of the St. John's. This great volume of water rolls so slowly that one does not realize how continually it is caning out and bearing away the yielding shore. It thrusts its inlets far back into the woods or swamps, so that, like the features of a living face, the river is constantly changing; the more so, because its grave, deliberate cur- THK COUNTRY. 143 rent is always building bars of sand, to which it carries seeds and roots, until after a while they glow like emeralds upon its golden shield. Then, too, the grasses and lilies grow far out upon the smooth flood ; they are anchored to the bed of the river by stems which lean along 144 FLORIDA DAYS. the flowing stream until their length is twice depth; the}- encroach continually in one di- ll or another, so that the outline of the low shore changes and blurs almost from day to day. Wide fields of grasses ripple beneath the ripples of the stream, until, here and there, the river's vast expanse looks like a Hooded meadow. The cows stand breast-deep in the yellow water, n^ this sweet river grass; they seem to be- long to the haze of sunshine and the drowsy air, they are so still, and stare into vacancy with such gentle, sleepy eyes. I '.owing in, and in, one of the curves carved by the gentle persistence of the river and vded with lily-leaves, one finds suddenly that the river itself is very far away. There is only a line of yellow to lie seen against a pale r the inlet has narrowed into a twisting It. too, is crowded with lilies, — broad, rustling haves, green and shin}-, and supported long, -Iron- stalks which spring from the mud bdow. The\- are so instinct with life, lotus-like, almost transparent stalks, so viril bold and glad, that the hand which THE COUNTRY 145 seeks to break one hesitates with a sense of crime. The dark, shining leaves rustle with ,1 silken insistence against the curving prow of the canoe, as though they would protect the sacred depths of the forest from which the creek has come to join the river. " Bonnets," these leaves are called; and looking across them to the 10 FLORIDA DAYS. re, from a canoe which lies motionless in mid-stream, they arc strangely like a crowd of sun-bonneted women, nodding and chattering, and thrilling with low, soft laughter. When each " bonnet " is decked with blossoms, the k seems carpeted with gold and green; not a glint of the still, brown water below is \ and save for the continuous and murmur- ing rustle, it would look like an expanse of meadow which invites the tired feet. How dim and shadowy must be the aisles be- tween these brave green stalks, that bear up the wonderful groined and fretted roof of spread- ing leaves. The midribs are the arches, and here and there, through some narrow crack • 'i' (luted opening, a single thread of light is ■ into the green stillness, and strikes a sudden -tar from the water. Vet, like more than <>uc cathedral, life is outside of it and »und it, rather than in it. Gnats dance above eafy roof until all the quivering air glitters 1 their delii ate wings. Flies, with wonderful "t gold and green, in helmets with purple fire, and wings of silver sheen <•- THE COUNTRY. 149 spiked with jet, buzz with sleepy importance, or walk aimlessly along the edge of a leaf, or climb with evident toil up a broad, stiff blade of rush, to swing back and forth in the sunshine on its slender tip. But the dragon-flies are most wonderful of all. The soft, still air, the checkered shadows on the water, and the shining blue heavens glitter with their unceasing dance ; it seems as though a handful of jewels had been flung up into the sunshine, and, caught in its warm embrace, would not return to the earth again. They dart and circle ; they poise, motionless, upon wings as tremulous as the light itself; their flight is a streak of pulsating fire ; the air flashes with the dust of the gems which powders the green bronze of their heads. The sunshine in the middle of the creek is alive with them, and they pierce the shadows along the edge with zigzags of light; sometimes they stop to rest upon a gray cypress knee, letting their marvellous wings rise and fall in a sparkling rhythm, as though to some unheard music from the green aisles below the arching lily-leaves. j- FLORIDA DAYS. A express knee is glorified sometimes by a ter of these sky creatures resting upon it, , that it seems to be decked with a jewelled • n or girdled by living fire. Cypress knees line the edge of the creek, row upon row, until their numbers vanish in the gray stillness of the woods. It is easy to their meaning, — these dull, living things, with n - smallest share in the beauty of flower and leaf all about them. They are the pur- and guardians of the great, grave trees 11 the roots of which they spring; they h every floating leaf, every stray twig, all the -"ft debris of the creek or swam]), until accumulation it forms a strip of earth, :i and black, to feed the trees and bushes which lift their green crowns into the sunshine, die knee- are quite covered by the rth which they have gathered, so that they - crumble and rot, and add their own the mass of death upon which the giants iddleofth k is dappled with flecks THE COUNTRY. 151 of sunshine; but along the banks, under the shadows of the leaves, it is only an occasional sunbeam which falls like an arrow through the gloom, giving a silver mystery to the still- ness and green dusk of the woods, and touch- ing a gray knee with a line of powdery light; often pale violets grow close to its shaggy side ; or sometimes a lily strikes her thread- like roots into its wet, warm heart, and rests her exquisite whiteness against its rough bark. Cypress knees are like occasional human lives, — most useful and most necessary, but not beautiful even to the kindest eyes, still less to their own. Still, what would become of pro- gress if the strong and joyous souls, nourished by sacrifice of others, should suddenly and with dismay realize the cost of their lives, and refuse such growth? These unlovely gray stumps of the swamp are never done with usefulness. They go down to the sea in ships, but it is not for them to feel the rush of spray, nor the dash through the green curve of a beckoning wave; they FLORIDA DAYS. £*tt. canm.t, like the trees which they have fed, trace great arcs against the sky as the vessel rolls and the masts strain and creak. Instead, below, in the darkness, untouched by wave or sunshine, they help to create the ship. jter lilies star the shadows all along the shore, growing in timid groups of two and three. Their whit'' chalices are so pure and frail, and have .t delicacy so exquisite, they seem but hadow cup- tilled with light; their stems are almost transparent, and if one holds the slender n shaft before the eyes, the crystal beat sap is like a pure thought in a child's ill. THE COUNTRY. 1 5, 3 Perhaps this is association, but it is curious what moral qualities attach themselves to cer- tain flowers, apart from that. Conceit in an aster is as aggressive as it is in a man under twenty; the sweet pea is at heart a wanton; the fragrant bosom of a gorgeous rose holds always a possible cruelty; one distrusts the selfishness of the morning-glory; and as for the peony — but criticism on her boldness is superficial, — no one can really doubt her good heart. A sturdy maid, Plump hands upon her hips ; White throat flung back, And laughing, scarlet lips ; Full bodice laced, And kerchief well tucked in ; Smile for each lad, (A kiss, perhaps, no sin !) Plain speech, or rough, No empty flattery. But wholesome heart, — That is our peony ! Here and there the green light — which is sunshine strained through a net of leaves ■ — ■ r ,j4 FLORIDA DAYS. strikes a gorgeous blossom, a flake of palpitating- tire or a golden disk, which seems as much out of place here in the gloom, among the lilies and the sober violets, as a cavalier among the ikers. It is necessity, perhaps, rather than history, which declares some such flowers for- eigners. There is a proud consciousness about them, a hint of the beautiful and wicked world ; a flavor of the court, in fact. One scarcely needs the tradition of De Soto and his seeds. If it had not been De Soto, it must have been some one else. Captain Romans, perhaps ; although, indeed, his mind was upon more practical seeds than posies for the women's gardens, which were to break away into the forest, or wander along the- roadside, dreaming in the dank, hot shadows or rioting in the sun. For among the "artificial produce" whi< h Romans suggests should be in- iduced into this new land, one only finds such narrn in .< r, rye, and tea. Captain Romans, by the way, is so good as •.arn his reader that "no elegance of flyle if rhetoric must be expected from a whi i mfcious that he is not fufficiently THE COUNTRY. I 55 acquainted with the language to write in fuch a manner as will pleafe a critical reader; " yet in spite of his modesty, one is startled to find how- much vigor patriotism grants his words when he comes to speak of tea, which he thinks might as well be planted in the Florida barrens, or by these shaded streams, as in that other land of flowers. "Tea" he describes as "a defpicable weed, and of late attempted to be made a dirty conduit to lead a ftream of oppreffion into thefe happy regions, ... it would not have deferved my attention, had it not fo univerfally become a neceffary of life, and were not raoft people fo infatuated as more and more to eftablifh this one article of luxury in America; our gold and filver for this dirty return being fent to Europe." He ends by calling it a " monopoly of the worft kind," and insisting that the realization of this ought to " roufe us to introduce the plant into thefe provinces, that we may trample under foot this yoke of oppreffion which begins to gall us very fore." De Soto, however, when he planned to bring his seeds from Spain, had no resentment or am- FLORIDA DAYS. bition to express, there was nothing in his mind but paternal care for his colonists. He meant that the familiar faces of the dooryard blos- soms should make this new land hold a look of So, in that long march through the wilderness, across the endless barrens, around terrible swamps, or by the silent windings of the creeks, the seeds were scattered with lavish hands, — some fur use, some for beauty, all for that homelikeness which was to make life bet- ter f>r these transplanted souls. The story would be fairer if Truth did not lay her tin r on the page that tells it, and bid the ler -p. ue De Soto his praises for bringing l-world blossoms into the new world. The • was, that only the impulse was De Soto's, the act was left to his followers. Before the lawn of that Whit-Sunday which found his :< t in the great Bay of the Holy Spirit, n lie had set sail from Spain, he i his heart to the lovely Lady Isa- a; so, naturally, it had been easy for the lover to forgel fame and fortune, as for the welfare of his colo- THE COUNTRY. I 5/ nists. To be sure, having won her, the old adventurous spirit came back, and he was off again, — for one must pursue something, — only remembering her beauty and her charm long enough to sigh a little when the stars came out and the sea was smooth, and swear he would return again; meanwhile leaving such small things as seeds, or plans for the conversion of the barbarians, to his men. He did not sigh so often, it is said, when he found, toward the North, that race of Indians whose queen was a woman, and beautiful. A man were surely ungracious to sigh when a lady loosens from her own brown throat a rope of pearls, each one gleaming like a star in a mist, and puts it about his neck. Beside, if the Lady Isabella shall one day wear the royal gift, why not, like a gallant gentleman, — if an absent husband, — bend a little lower and kiss the bronze cheek? For one must fancy that " the brave, the virtuous, the magnanimous Captain Don Fernando De Soto " swore within himself, as he looked into the languishing eyes of the dark Princess, that he would one day twist FLORIDA DAYS. these same great pearls around his lady's neck, although, perhaps, with no words about this ne under the live-oak trees by the river, or the kiss, which, it appears, carries the same meaning in the Floridas as upon the banks of the Mediterranean. ^je^-f its*? ji^.Ji?^-' That he returned the brown lady's "very gra- of love and courtesy" no one doubt; for seeing himself repentant in ad- vance, it was but natural to feel already forgiven, go joyously for many days." Those rs, however, which are to strike a balance, itone by works of supererogation for past not always dawn. So many failures THE COUNTRY. I 59 came, so much disaster, — even the pearls were burned ! De Soto still sighed, but his sighs were not like those which had melted into the music of waves and shining stars and soft winds, when the com- mander had looked back towards the land which held his mistress. Now, three years in that ter- rible wilderness-- three years of alternate hope and disappointment, of steady loss and of con- tinual toil — had brought new thoughts into his brave, high heart. Looking over that yellow flood of the Great River, — for so they called the Mississippi, — so far from that young wife upon whom his mind dwelt with painful persistency, so very far from what her thought of him may have been, he died. " The next day being the 21st of May, 1542, departed out of this life the valor- ous, virtuous, and valiant Captaine Don Fernando De Soto, Governour of Cuba and Adelantado of Florida; " whom, says the chronicler, " fortune advanced as it useth to do to others, that he might have the higher fall. He departed in such a place and at such a time, and in his sickness he had but little comfort." i6o FLORIDA DAYS. [Tie creek is full of quiet life; a sensitive person might be conscious that he was an in- truder, from the glances of calm surprise, and n annoyance, which are turned upon him as tartles this or that land or water •r. It would be well to go fyat in hand past . who may roll like a black log from bank into the water, too disdainful of human THE COUNTRY. 161 rudeness to allow himself to be looked upon. Yet before he dives he will turn a cold, small eye in the direction of the canoe, and a month afterwards the memory of that stare will make a man shudder and quite forget that the dull, dark creature may have had any interests or pleasures of his own in the proprietorship of the creek. Yet here and there an intruder does appre- ciate him ; one traveller, coming upon him silently in a little lily-crowded cove, declares him to be a " very honest and worthy saurian of good repute." And he falls to describing the house of his saurian, with a nice sense of his own smallness and his friend's greatness. He is a very Boswell for details. " It is di- vided into apartments," he says, " little subsidi- ary bays which are scolloped out by lily-pads according to the sinuous fantasies of their growth. My saurian, when he desires to sleep, may lie down anywhere ; he will find marvellous mosses for his mattress beneath him ; his sheets will be white lily-petals -, and the green disks of lily-pads will straightway embroider themselves ii FLORIDA DAYS. •thcr above him for a coverlet. While he he is being bathed. What glory to awake sweetened and refreshed by the sole careless act of sleep ! " Turtles also watch the intruder; there is a condescending curiosity in the way in which they stretch up their long, thin necks to observe him, but they easily lose countenance, and drop bashfully down into the water when he returns their stare. The snakes are the only really timid and deprecating denizens of the creek and swamp. Doubtless they have been made feel their outcast condition by their less ob- ictionable neighbors, who have watched the unfailing antipathy of men for these beautiful and often harmless creatures. In this silent of the canoe into the forest, one upon a snake lying across a cypress knee, lithe, black, shining, with alert, uplifted id and diamond eyes, half in and half out of the water, ready at the first splash of the paddle ; p m<.\ dive, swimming across the creek wonderful gleaming curves. It is strange can appreciate his beauty or feel his THE COUNTRY. 163 charm. The intense aversion which serpents arouse in almost every one, must, of course, be traditional and inherited, as it is felt for the innocent and pretty garter-snake as deeply as for the Crotalus horridus of South America, which is most hideously ugly as well as venom- ous. This terror is as old as history, and more than one trader upon human credulity has used it to win power or gold or fame. One thinks of that little sunshiny town of Abonotichus on the south shore of the Black Sea, and the beautiful youth Alexander, the Cagliostro of the second century, who had eyes like jewels, and a " sweet and limpid voice." How well he understood this fear, which has glided like a living serpent into all mythology ! One can fancy his secret mirth at the instant subjugation of the simple villagers when he proved himself the prophet of yEsculapius by displaying about his neck and body the glit- tering coils of the enormous python, on whose head he had affixed a human mask. The force of this traditional terror is seen when it is recalled that even Lucian was for a moment FLORIDA DAYS. deceived; the predisposition to be awed by a serpent was in the wise man, and in spite of his antagonism to the prophet he could not st it. It would seem that intelligence, like holiness, is not always a protection against the : the imagination ; and it is most in- teresting to observe, in connection with the unreasonable fury which is felt by men for snakes, how greatly the serpent has affected the history of the race. A man's desire to kill a snake never leaves him. Here, paddling noiselessly up the creek, sped in the wonder and beauty of the and water that he cannot even remem- the bitterness and passion of yesterday, a man will suddenly and violently fling himself Nirvana, because In- has caught sight of a In kill the pretty creature, sunning .•If on a express knee, quite harmless, at • for the moment, because entirely out i<\~ track of the traveller, he will leave Para- And he is aware, too, of a new, unwonted '. in his soul. Thai tin- snake slips into back cut and broken, with THE COUNTRY. 1 65 hours of agony before death comes, does not distress him at all; his only regret is that his paddle was split in the encounter, and the canoe has to be pushed from a mud-bank on which it has grounded. Of course, this blind rage which kills the cold and gliding outcast of the swamp has nothing to do with the passion of the sportsman. In that, there is a generous appreciation of the prey; it is the instinct which bade Walton, in putting a frog upon his hook, " use him as though he loved him," — with all the gentleness of which the circumstances admitted. The water of the creek, which winds far back into the woods, is very still, and so clear that it makes the stream a mirror. The drift of dead leaves lies black below the motionless current, so that all the reflections are pictured in a sort of luminous darkness, like a Claude Lorraine glass ; but they are marvellously distinct. Were it not for the faint lap and gurgle against the prow, and the slow splash of the paddle, one might fancy that the canoe floated in mid-air, FLORIDA PAYS. the sky above and below, and that he had begun a flight among the tree-tops. A cypress at the water's edge rises in a su- perb pillar, with a capital of circling branches which seems to hold up the K>w and dazzling sky ; but in some wonderful way the whole mag- nificent shaft is in the mirror of the creek; it appar- paral two heavens. At a little dis- it i> almost impossible to say where the bail, meets the water and the reflected THE COUNTRY. 1 67 bark begins. The canoe rolls and dips as the gazer leans upon its side and looks down into the sky and branches ; indeed a canoe so adapts itself to the motion of the occu- pant that it seems to be part of the man himself, — he feels vaguely, half fearfully, that he has no support, that he is floating in these repeated heavens, with infinite space below as well as above. A man who takes the paddle in his hands for the first time, here on the creek, achieves that very rare experience, — a new sensation. He understands the exhilaration of a bird's flight, or the buoyant rest of a fish in dim sea-depths ; he knows the wonder of the soul without a body, born into the mystery and stillness of death. This experience cannot come in a row-boat, which is too material, one might almost say too dogmatic ; a row-boat, in fact, has all the self- consciousness of civilization, for only civiliza- tion could make a man content to turn his back in the direction of his progress with the assur- ance of safety. His canoe, on the contrary, — and it will be observed that it should be a birch FLORIDA PAYS. can effaces herself as completely as though had a soul. He could tell her the secret a hopeless love without any fear that she ild intrude her own personality, and with the le certainty of being understood that he has when he whispers his sorrow to his dog, or Is upon it half aloud by the side of a run- ning stream ; or, indeed, he could tell her any of those primal distresses or perplexities which bring the soul whimpering to the heart of Na- ture. And his canoe is forbearing as well as i pathetic. This leaning far over to look n into the reflections is really carelessness •he laws of her being; but she endures all h -lights nobly. No doubt she understands the wonderful beauty of the picture in the en, as well as the man does. Th long banners of moss hanging from branches of tin- trees; and looking down • i the water, they seem to stir and wave with the unseen ripple of the creek. Above, all is ' tly still; the moss hangs like mist about It is as though Night's cloak had • upon the bare, sharp twigs as she lied THE COUNTRY 169 before the golden trumpets of the dawn. These gray banners fall so straight and long that here and there they touch the water and float a little way with it ; indeed, their slight inclination is the only indication of the current. Sometimes, while the wind has yet its morning freshness, these streamers wave and swing a little in the sparkling air, and catch and tangle, and then blow free again ; but generally they hang like i;o II. ( IRIDA DAYS. > \ filmy bars of cloud against the still, deep blue of the sky. kin? into the woods from the canoe, the tops of the trees are blurred and dim with r - moss; it seems as though they were wrapped in cobwebs; "iily their great trunks stand clear and regular in tin- morning light, with the blos- riing bushes and the dim procession of the knees about them. Even when the wind blow-, these mossy trees are soundless; : tin- silken rustle of the Northern Is, hearing, instead, only a noiseless whis- THE COl NTRY. 171 per and smothered murmur, as though feathers blew against one another. The reflections of these great folds of moss are so wonderfully clear, that at times, instead of floating through mirrored tree-tops and blue skies, the canoe seems to drift across banks of gray, still clouds ; but that is when the moss has quite covered and killed the trees upon which it hangs. For the most part, it is the fresh and living green which is mirrored in the crystal darkness of the creek. There is such wonderful crreen- ness in these forests which march beside the creeks, that their leaves have a certain vi