content. At the tops of three or four stakes, which stood above the
water at wide intervals,--and at long distances from the shore,--sat
commonly as many cormorants, here, as everywhere, with plenty of idle
time upon their hands. On the other side of the city were orange groves,
large, well kept, thrifty looking; the fruit still on the trees (March
20, or thereabouts), or lying in heaps underneath, ready for the boxes.
One man's house, I remember, was surrounded by a fence overrun with
Cherokee rosebushes, a full quarter of a mile of white blossoms.

My best botanical stroll was along one of the railroads (Sanford is a
"railway centre," so called), through a dreary sand waste. Here I picked
a goodly number of novelties, including what looked like a beautiful
pink chicory, only the plant itself was much prettier (_Lygodesmia_); a
very curious sensitive-leaved plant (_Schrankia_), densely beset
throughout with curved prickles, and bearing globes of tiny pink-purple
flowers; a calopogon, quite as pretty as our Northern _pulchellus_; a
clematis (_Baldwinii_), which looked more like a bluebell than a
clematis till I commenced pulling it to pieces; and a great profusion of
one of the smaller papaws, or custard-apples, a low shrub, just then
full of large, odd-shaped, creamy-white, heavy-scented blossoms. I was
carrying a sprig of it in my hand when I met a negro. "What is this?" I
asked. "I dunno, sir." "Isn't it papaw?" "No, sir, that ain't papaw;"
and then, as if he had just remembered something, he added, "That's dog
banana."

Oftener than anywhere else I resorted to the shore of the lake,--to the
one small part of it, that is to say, which was at the same time easily
reached and comparatively unfrequented. There--going one day farther
than usual--I found myself in the borderland of a cypress swamp. On one
side was the lake, but between me and it were cypress-trees; and on the