id the other, "I found it pretty hard walking at
first, but I learned after a while that the best way is to set the heel
down hard, as hard as you can; then the sand doesn't give under you so
much, and you get along more comfortably." I wonder whether she noticed,
just in front of her, a man who began forthwith to bury his boot heel at
every step?

In such a country (the soil is said to be good for orange-trees, but
they do not have to walk) roads of powdered shell are veritable
luxuries, and land agents are quite right in laying all stress upon them
as inducements to possible settlers. If the author of the Apocalypse had
been raised in Florida, we should never have had the streets of the New
Jerusalem paved with gold. His idea of heaven, would have been different
from that; more personal and home-felt, we may be certain.

The river road, then, as I have said, and am glad to say again, was
shell-paved. And well it might be; for the hammock, along the edge of
which it meandered, seemed, in some places at least, to be little more
than a pile of oyster-shells, on which soil had somehow been deposited,
and over which a forest was growing. Florida Indians have left an evil
memory. I heard a philanthropic visitor lamenting that she had talked
with many of the people about them, and had yet to hear a single word
said in their favor. Somebody might have been good enough to say that,
with all their faults, they had given to eastern Florida a few hills,
such as they are, and at present are supplying it, indirectly, with
comfortable highways. How they must have feasted, to leave such heaps of
shells behind them! They came to the coast on purpose, we may suppose.
Well, the red-men are gone, but the oyster-beds remain; and if winter
refugees continue to pour in this direction, as doubtless they will,
they too will eat a "heap" of oysters (it is easy to see how the vulgar
Southern use of that word may have originated), and in the course of
time, probably, the shores of the Halifax and the Hillsborough will be a
fine mountainous country! And then, if this ancient, nineteenth-century
prediction is remembered, the highest peak of the range will perhaps be
named in a way which the innate modesty of the prophet restrains him
from specifying with greater particularity.

Meanwhile it is long to wait, and tourists and residents alike must find
what comfort they can in the lesser hills which, thanks to the good
appetite of their predecessor