ugh which I have been
opening paths on our estate, in an island called St. Simon's, lying half
in the sea and half in the Altamaha. Such noble growth of dark-leaved,
wide-spreading oaks; such exquisite natural shrubberies of magnolia,
wild myrtle, and bay, all glittering evergreens of various tints, bound
together by trailing garlands of wild jessamine, whose yellow bells,
like tiny golden cups, exhale a perfume like that of the heliotrope and
fill the air with sweetness, and cover the woods with perfect curtains
of bloom; while underneath all this, spread the spears and fans of the
dwarf palmetto, and innumerable tufts of a little shrub whose delicate
leaves are pale green underneath and a polished dark brown above, while
close to the earth clings a perfect carpet of thick-growing green,
almost like moss, bearing clusters of little white blossoms like
enameled stars; I think it is a species of euphrasia. It is the
exceeding beauty of the whole which I wish you could see, and to which
the most exquisite arrangement of art is in no way superior. I know it
is common with the lovers of nature to undervalue art; but for all that,
there are exceedingly few scenes in nature (except those of pre-eminent
wildness and sublimity) where the genius of man, and his perception of
beauty, may not remove and supply some things with advantage. In these
wild evergreen plantations this is not the case; and all I have had to
do, in following the cattle-tracks through these lovely woods, has been
to cut the lower branches of the oaks which impede my progress on
horseback, and sever the loving links of the wild garlands of blossoms,
which had bound the shrubs together and drawn their branches into a
canopy too low to admit of my riding beneath it; and you would laugh to
see me with my peculiar slave, a young lad named Jack, of great natural
shrewdness and no little humor, who is my factotum, and follows me on
horseback with a leathern bag slung round his shoulders, containing a
small saw and hatchet, and thus, like Sir Walter and Tom Purdie, we
prosecute our labor of embellishment.

This Jack was out fishing with me the other day, and after about two
hours' silent and unsuccessful watching of our floats, he gravely
remarked, "Fishing bery good fun, when de fish him bite,"--an
observation so ludicrous under the circumstances, that we both burst out
laughing as soon as he uttered it.

ST. SIMON'S ISLAND, Sunday, Mar