sent the same simultaneous
conditions of zenith and perigee.

The weather was magnificent; notwithstanding the approach of winter the
sun shone brightly and bathed in its radiance that earth which three of
its inhabitants were about to leave for a new world.

How many people slept badly during the night that preceded the
ardently-longed-for day! How many breasts were oppressed with the heavy
burden of waiting! All hearts beat with anxiety except only the heart of
Michel Ardan. This impassible person went and came in his usual
business-like way, but nothing in him denoted any unusual preoccupation.
His sleep had been peaceful--it was the sleep of Turenne upon a
gun-carriage the night before the battle.

From early dawn an innumerable crowd covered the prairie, which extended
as far as the eye could reach round Stony Hill. Every quarter of an hour
the railroad of Tampa brought fresh sightseers. According to the _Tampa
Town Observer_, five millions of spectators were that day upon Floridian
soil.

The greater part of this crowd had been living in tents round the
inclosure, and laid the foundations of a town which has since been
called "Ardan's Town." The ground bristled with huts, cabins, and tents,
and these ephemeral habitations sheltered a population numerous enough
to rival the largest cities of Europe.

Every nation upon earth was represented; every language was spoken at
the same time. It was like the confusion of tongues at the Tower of
Babel. There the different classes of American society mixed in absolute
equality. Bankers, cultivators, sailors, agents, merchants,
cotton-planters, and magistrates elbowed each other with primitive ease.
The creoles of Louisiana fraternised with the farmers of Indiana; the
gentlemen of Kentucky and Tennessee, the elegant and haughty Virginians,
joked with the half-savage trappers of the Lakes and the butchers of
Cincinnati. They appeared in broad-brimmed white beavers and Panamas,
blue cotton trousers, from the Opelousa manufactories, draped in elegant
blouses of ecru cloth, in boots of brilliant colours, and extravagant
shirt-frills; upon shirt-fronts, cuffs, cravats, on their ten fingers,
even in their ears, an assortment of rings, pins, diamonds, chains,
buckles, and trinkets, the cost of which equalled the bad taste. Wife,
children, servants, in no less rich dress, accompanied, followed,
preceded, and surrounded their husbands, fathers, and masters, who
resembled the patr