Frequently I have thought that the reading of this charming book may
have been the predominating influence in the development of my taste and
temper; for it was while I was absorbed in the exquisitely pathetic
story of Robinson Crusoe that the first island I ever saw dawned upon my
enchanted vision. We had weathered Cape Sable and the Florida Keys. No
sky was ever more marvellously blue than the sea beneath us. The density
and the darkness that prevail in Northern waters had gone out of it; the
sun gilded it, the moon silvered it, and the great stars dropped their
pearl-plummets into it in the vain search for soundings.

Sea gardens were there,--floating gardens adrift in the tropic gale;
pale green gardens of berry and leaf and long meandering vine, rocking
upon the waves that lapped the shores of the Antilles, feeding the
current of the warm Gulf Stream; and, forsooth, some of them to find
their way at last into the mazes of that mysterious, mighty, menacing
sargasso sea. Strange sea-monsters, more beautiful than monstrous,
sported in the foam about our prow, and at intervals dashed it with
color like animated rainbows. From wave to wave the flying fish skimmed
like winged arrows of silver. Sometimes a land-bird was blown across the
sky--the sea-birds we had always with us,--and ever the air was spicy
and the breeze like a breath of balm.

One day a little cloud dawned upon our horizon. It was at first pale
and pearly, then pink like the hollow of a sea-shell, then misty
blue,--a darker blue, a deep blue dissolving into green, and the green
outlining itself in emerald, with many a shade of lighter or darker
green fretting its surface, throwing cliff and crest into high relief,
and hinting at misty and mysterious vales, as fair as fathomless. It
floated up like a cloud from the nether world, and was at first without