out the river. Sometimes they
sat upon stakes in a patriotic, spread-eagle (American eagle) attitude,
as if drying their wings,--a curious sight till one became accustomed to
it. Snakebirds and buzzards resort to the same device, but I cannot
recall ever seeing any Northern bird thus engaged. From the south bridge
I one morning saw, to my great satisfaction, a couple of white pelicans,
the only ones that I found in Florida, though I was assured that within
twenty years they had been common along the Halifax and Hillsborough
rivers. My birds were flying up the river at a good height. The brown
pelicans, on the other hand, made their daily pilgrimages just above the
level of the water, as has been already described, and were never over
the river, but off the beach.

All in all, there are few pleasanter walks in Florida, I believe, than
the beach-round at Daytona, out by one bridge and back by the other. An
old hotel-keeper--a rural Yankee, if one could tell anything by his look
and speech--said to me in a burst of confidence, "Yes, we've got a
climate, and that's about all we have got,--climate and sand." I could
not entirely agree with him. For myself, I found not only fine days, but
fine prospects. But there was no denying the sand.

ALONG THE HILLSBOROUGH.

Wherever a walker lives, he finds sooner or later one favorite road. So
it was with me at New Smyrna, where I lived for three weeks. I had gone
there for the sake of the river, and my first impulse was to take the
road that runs southerly along its bank. At the time I thought it the
most beautiful road I had found in Florida, nor have I seen any great
cause since to alter that opinion. With many pleasant windings
(beautiful roads are never straight, nor unnecessarily wide, which is
perhaps the reason why our rural authorities devote themselves so madly
to the work of straightening and widening),--with many pleasant
windings, I say,

"The grace of God made manifest in curves,"

it follows the edge of the hammock, having the river on one side, and
the forest on the other. It was afternoon when I first saw it. Then it
is shaded from the sun, while the river and its opposite bank have on
them a light more beautiful than can be described or imagined; a
light--with reverence for the poet of nature be it spoken--a light that
never was _except_ on sea or land. The poet's dream was never equal to
it.

In a flat country stretches of water are doubly welcome