and their ridiculous outcries, kept us amused whenever there was nothing
else to absorb our attention. The prairie lands through which the river
meanders proved to be surprisingly dry and passable (the water being
unusually low, the boy said), with many cattle pastured upon them. Here
we found the savanna sparrows; here, too, the meadow larks were singing.

It was a hard pull across the rough lake against the wind (a dangerous
sheet of water for flat-bottomed rowboats, I was told afterward), but
the boy was equal to it, protesting that he didn't feel tired a bit, now
we had got the "purples;" and if he did not catch the fever from
drinking some quarts of river water (a big bottle of coffee having
proved to be only a drop in the bucket), against my urgent remonstrances
and his own judgment, I am sure he looks back upon the labor as on the
whole well spent. He was going North in the spring, he told me. May joy
be with him wherever he is!

The next morning I took the steamer down the river to Blue Spring, a
distance of some thirty miles, on my way back to New Smyrna, to a place
where there were accessible woods, a beach, and, not least, a daily sea
breeze. The river in that part of its course is comfortably narrow,--a
great advantage,--winding through cypress swamps, hammock woods,
stretches of prairie, and in one place a pine barren; an interesting and
in many ways beautiful country, but so unwholesome looking as to lose
much of its attractiveness. Three or four large alligators lay sunning
themselves in the most obliging manner upon the banks, here one and
there one, to the vociferous delight of the passengers, who ran from one
side of the deck to the other, as the captain shouted and pointed. One,
he told us, was thirteen feet long, the largest in the river. Each
appeared to have its own well-worn sunning-spot, and all, I believe,
kept their places, as if the passing of the big steamer--almost too big