IN THE LAND OF FLOWERS.
After these scientific investigations, my wife and I left New England
covered with snow and swept by fierce, freezing winds to find this
far-famed peninsular basking in delicious sunshine, the air full of
the exquisite perfume of orange blossoms and the songs of rejoicing
birds. It was an enchanted land, the balsamic odors from the beautiful
evergreen pine forests starred by the fragrant magnolia blossoms of
spotless white, exorcised the ulceratic demons from throat and lungs.
We feasted upon the delicious fruits and vegetables fresh from the
trees and earth, and the returning healthy appetite was refreshed by
tender venison, wild turkeys and quails from the woods, nutritious and
abundant fish and ducks from the lakes and rivers. It was a new heaven
and a new earth, full of gladness and semi-tropical luxuries.
As soon as the hospitable people learned that I represented our
beloved Uncle Sam, I was overwhelmed with free passes and free hotels,
anywhere and everywhere.
The Count De Barry, who had amassed a vast fortune as the American
representative of "Mum's Extra Dry," and who had received numerous
valuable seeds and shrubs from our generous department, took us on his
palatial steamer for hundreds of miles up the lordly St. John's River,
where we feasted our eyes upon acres of wild ducks, pelicans, cranes
and many huge, lazy alligators floating on the waves, rejoicing in the
life-giving beams of the sun.
The stately trees along the banks, old when Adam was a baby, were
covered with flowering vines of wondrous beauty and fragrance; then
vast orange groves appeared covered with blossoms, small and ripe
fruit all at the same time; numerous herds of cattle standing knee
deep in the water, leisurely browsing upon the river plants both on
the surface and under the shallow river.
We would anchor, and throwing a clasp-net which spread out on the
bottom and then closed like a purse, we pulled in excellent fish by
the hundreds; sitting on the canopied deck we shot ducks which the
negroes captured in small boats, and soon served cooked for our
delectation; pineapples and berries were brought from the shore, in
fact, it was a lotus-eater's dream of paradise, and seemed to be a
land and a river "flowing with milk and honey."
The words from Willis' confessional came floating to our minds.
"On ocean many a gladsome night,
When heaved the long and sullen sea,
With only waves and stars in sight,
We stole along by isles of balm;
We furled before the coming gale,
We slept amid the breathless calm,
We flew beneath the straining sail.
Oh, softly on these banks of haze
Her rosy face the summer lays,
Becalmed along the azure sky
The argosies of cloudland lie;
The holy silence is God's voice
We look, and listen, and rejoice."
When the night fell, and one by one, in the infinite meadows of
heaven, blossomed out the beautiful stars, the forget-me-nots of the
angels, they seemed so near that you almost expected to touch them
with the hand, and the silver moon arising, set the clouds on fire
with gladness and "left upon the level water one long track and trail
of splendor, down whose stream we sailed into the purple vapors, to
the islands of the blessed, to the kingdom of Ponemah to the land of
the hereafter."
While thus we dreamed, the balmy zephyr brings from the forecastle to
our delighted hearing, the tinkling music of the banjo and guitar, the
melody of the singing voices and dancing feet of our freedmen boat's
crew. The lines of Whittier were resurrected in our thoughts.
"Dear, the black man holds his gifts
Of music and of song,
The gold that kindly nature sifts
Among his sands of wrong,
The power to make his toiling days
And poor home comforts please;
The quaint relief of mirth that plays
With sorrow's minor keys."
For they sang among others the identical words of the poet's
expressive song,
"Ole massa on he trabbels gone,
He leaf de land behind:
De Lord's breff blow him furder on,
Like corn-shuck in de wind:
We own de hoe, we own de plow,
We own de hans dat hold,
We sell de pig, we sell de cow,
But nebber chile be sold.
De norf wind tell it to de pines,
De wild-duck to de sea,
We tink it when de church-bell ring,
We dream it in de dream,
De rice-bird mean it when he sing,
De eagle when he scream,
De yam will grow, de cotton blow,
We'll hab de rice and corn;
Nebber you fear, if nebber you hear
De driber blow his horn."
And so all too quickly passed that ideal night, without thought of
sleep, till the rising sun shot his radiant beams over the great
river, when we steamed slowly up to the long pier, and walked under
an arch of stately palms to our host's beautiful home, embowered in
orange trees and luxuriant trumpet creepers in this summer land of
perpetual bloom.
Close by the Count's residence was a lake of sulphur water, gushing
from deep down in the earth. Into this we plunged and swam until we
seemed to be born again into immortal youth, then on the broad piazza
we enjoyed a feast which would have delighted Jupiter and all his
gods, every course of which was taken from the adjoining trees,
grounds and waters.
We then inspected the great plantation, where was found growing in
profusion, everything essential to the wants of the most fastidious
of mortals, while the surrounding woods and river teemed with a great
variety of fish and game.
I roam as in a waking dream
The garden of the Hesperides,
And see the golden fruitage gleam
Amid the stately orange-trees.
Unfading green is on the hill,
The vales are decked with countless flowers,
While hums the bee, the song birds trill
Sweet music through the sunny hours.
The moss is waving in the gale
From live oak, hickory, and pine,
And draping like a bridal-veil
The beauteous yellow jessamine.
Through countless vistas in the wood
I see the windows of the morn
Ope to the world a glowing flood
Of glory when the day is born.
And when, with robes of Tyrian dye,
The evening comes when day is done,
I see around the radiant sky
A hundred sunsets blent in one.
We parted from our genial entertainer with much reluctance when the
superintendent of the railroad claimed us as his guests, and with
him, we inspected the famous orange groves along his line, resting on
Sunday at a palatial hotel where the St. John's River broadens into
the great Lake Munroe.
While at church we were much entertained by the lively, frolicsome
manoeuvres of the numerous beautiful chameleons of rapidly changing
colors, who greatly distracted the attention of the congregation from
the service by their pranks on the walls and decorations.
Directly in front of us was a sleepy, bald-headed man upon whose
shining, nodding, snoring pate several flies were resting in quiet
enjoyment of the sermon. All at once, this toothsome collection
attracted the attention of a very large bright-eyed chameleon admirer
who launched himself through the air upon said bald head in pursuit of
his dinner. With a yell of fear, the sleeper struck the animal with
his huge hand, sending the long tailed frolicsome creature heels
over head directly upon the clergyman's manuscript, and the alarmed
preacher, in turn, with a smothered imprecation and a sweeping blow,
hurled the sprawling legs and elongated tail down upon some frightened
children who screamed and tumbled over each other upon the floor in a
struggling heap.
This was too much for the pent-up risibilities of the audience who
laughed long and loud, greatly to the disturbance of the solemnity of
the occasion. The witty minister remarked that this addition to his
flock, like some church members, seemed to care more for the carnal
than the spiritual, and proceeded to the thirteenthly division of his
discourse.
From here we traveled for hundreds of miles over the flat, monotonous,
arid sands of south Florida, where green grass and fresh garden
vegetables were unknown, frequently remarking that if we owned these
localities and hades, we would give away the former and live in the
latter place. But when we retraced our steps, and reached the rich
highlands of the northern counties of Marion, Bradford, and Clay,
found the earth covered with green grass in winter, the trees
beautiful with blossoms and luscious oranges, the air fragrant with
rare flowers, and resonant with songs of birds, saw the planters
shipping thousands of crates of fruit and vegetables, and finally
arrived at the far-famed Silver Springs, it seemed as if we had found
Ponce de Leon's fountain of immortal youth.
The crystal clear waters of this wonderful spring, or more properly
called lake, gush in immense volumes seemingly from the very centre of
the earth, spreading out until wide and deep enough to float a great
navy, and are so transparent that multitudes of fishes are seen
disporting among marine plants and shells plainly discernible hundreds
of feet below.
Here we embarked on a comfortable steamer, and sailed nearly
twenty-four hours down the incomparable Ocklawaha River, through
scenes that are indescribably picturesque; under arches of gigantic
trees covered with sombrely beautiful Spanish mosses and trumpet
creeper vines, where all day long are heard the ecstatic songs of
mockingbirds, and where flutter the plumages of all the colors of the
rainbow.
[Illustration: The Indiscribably Picturesque Ocklawaha River of
Florida.]
Swiftly the golden hours fly, as we float over this marvelous river;
softly the dusky boatmen chant their love songs, the fires from their
"fatwood" cauldron on the upper deck illuminates the stately trees,
and the strains of the poet, Butterworth, come plaintively to our
mental hearing.
"We have passed funereal glooms,
Cypress caverns, haunted rooms,
Halls of gray moss starred with blooms--
Slowly, slowly, in these straits,
Drifting towards the cypress gates
Of the Ocklawaha.
"In the towers of green o'erhead
Watch the vultures for the dead,
And below the egrets red
Eye the mossy pools like fates,
In the shadowy cypress gates
Of the Ocklawaha.
"Clouds of palm crowns lie behind,
Clouds of gray moss in the wind,
Crumbling oaks with jessamines twined,
Where the ring-doves meet their mates,
Cooing in the cypress gates
Of the Ocklawaha.
"High the silver ibis flies--
Silver wings in silver skies;
In the sun the Saurian lies:
Comes the mockingbird and prates
To the boatman at the gates
Of the Ocklawaha.
"Now the broader waters gleam--
Seems my voyage upon the stream
Like a semblance of a dream,
And the dream my Soul elates;
Life flows through the cypress gates
Of the Ocklawaha.
"Ibis, thou wilt fly again,
Ring-dove, thou wilt sigh again,
Jessamines bloom in golden rain;
And a loving song-bird waits
Me beyond the cypress gates
Of the Ocklawaha."