10 THE IKLAHB PASSAGE. 



is a, land of dreams, a strange country full of sur- 

 prises, an intangible sort of a j^lace, where at first 

 nothing is believed to be real and where finally eyery- 

 thing is considered to be possible. When the visitor 

 first arrives he cannot be convinced that the cows 

 feed under water ; before he leaves he is walling to 

 concede that alligators may live on chestnuts. The 

 animals and birds are as queer and unnatural as the 

 herbage, or as a climate which furnishes strawber- 

 ries, green peas, shad, and roses at Christmas. 

 There is the Limpkin, the pursuit of which reminds 

 one of hunting the Snark. You are in continual 

 terror of catching the Boojum. It is a bird about 

 the size of a fish-hawk, but it roars like a lion and 

 screeches like a wild-cat, although it occasionally 

 whistles like a canary. It has a bill like that of 

 a curlew, adapted to probing in the sand, and yet it 

 sits on trees as though it were a woodpecker. It is 

 conversational and talks to you in a friendly way 

 during daytime, but at night it harrows up your 

 soul and makes your blood run cold with the fearful 

 noises it utters. If you hear any charming note or 

 awful sound, any pretty song or terrifying scream, 

 and ask a native Floridian, with pleased or trem- 

 bling tongue, '*What is that?" he will calmly an- 

 swer, "That? that is a Limpkin." There are no 

 dangerous animals in Florida, only a few of Eve's 

 old enemies, and the sportsman is safer in the woods 

 at night under the moss-covered trees and on his 

 moss-constructed mattress than in his bed in the 

 family mansion on Fifth avenue. If he hears any 



