"developing"--the solid ground into marshy "parrairas," the prairies
into lakes, bright, sparkling sapphires which Nature is threading, one
by one, year by year, upon her emerald chaplet of forest borderland?
How many of them all have guessed that close at hand, hidden away amid
the shadows of the scrub-oaks, lies her laboratory, where any day they
may steal in upon her at her work and catch a world a-making?

There are three individuals who know a little more about it now than
they did a few weeks since--three, or shall we not rather say four? For
who shall say that Barney gained less from the excursion than the
Artist, the Scribe and the Small Boy who were his fellow-travellers?
That Barney became a party to the expedition in the character, so to
speak, of a lay-brother, expected to perform the servile labor of the
establishment while his superiors were worshipping at Nature's shrines,
in nowise detracted from his improvement of the bright spring holiday.
It was, indeed, upon the Small Boy who beat the mule, rather than upon
the mule that drew the wagon, that the fatigues of the expedition fell.
"He just glimpses around at me with his old eyeball," says the Small
Boy, exasperate, throwing away his broken cudgel, "and that's all the
good it does."

We knew nothing more of Ekoniah when we set out upon our journey than
that it was the old home of an Indian tribe in the long-ago days before
primeval forest had given place to the second growth of "scrub," and
that it was a region unknown to the Northern tourist. It lies to the
south-west of Magnolia, our point of departure on the St. John's River,
but at first our route lay westerly, that it might include the
lake-country of the Ridge.

"It's a pretty kentry," said a friendly "Cracker," of whom, despite the