choked by obsolete cannon-shot, now thickly covered with
incrustation of oyster shells.... Around all the gray circling of
a shark-haunted sea...

Sometimes of autumn evenings there, when the hollow of heaven
flames like the interior of a chalice, and waves and clouds are
flying in one wild rout of broken gold,--you may see the tawny
grasses all covered with something like husks,--wheat-colored
husks,--large, flat, and disposed evenly along the lee-side of
each swaying stalk, so as to present only their edges to the
wind. But, if you approach, those pale husks all break open to
display strange splendors of scarlet and seal-brown, with
arabesque mottlings in white and black: they change into
wondrous living blossoms, which detach themselves before your
eyes and rise in air, and flutter away by thousands to settle
down farther off, and turn into wheat-colored husks once more ...
a whirling flower-drift of sleepy butterflies!

Southwest, across the pass, gleams beautiful Grande Isle:
primitively a wilderness of palmetto (latanier);--then drained,
diked, and cultivated by Spanish sugar-planters; and now familiar
chiefly as a bathing-resort. Since the war the ocean reclaimed
its own;--the cane-fields have degenerated into sandy plains,
over which tramways wind to the smooth beach;--the
plantation-residences have been converted into rustic hotels, and
the negro-quarters remodelled into villages of cozy cottages for
the reception of guests. But with its imposing groves of oak,
its golden wealth of orange-trees, its odorous lanes of oleander.

its broad grazing-meadows yellow-starred with wild camomile,