210 Correspondence of the Cincinnatus. [May, 



diffusing tlie fragrance of rosin with its cheerful light, (by the way, 

 we of the North have little conception of the luxury of pitch-pine 

 fuel) and in due time a wholesome breakfast. By this time the dew 

 was off, and so was I, port-folio under arm, for the flowers. I here 

 found myself in a pine barren — still the eternal pine barren — where 

 all was apparently level, yet dry and wet, hammock and swamp, in 

 frequent succession. After taking my bearings, I moved for the 

 *' Jenks Bridge" over the Ogeechee some two miles distant. But alas 

 for the flowers ! Starved, spindling herbs of a scanty soil. How- 

 ever, novelty was stamped on everything. Here a patch sprinkled 

 over with the curious sulphur yellow flowers of the Pinguicula lutea; 

 and there in company with it, a plant of similar stature and habit 

 yet totally diverse, a composite, radiate head with labiate disk-flonts 

 it can be nothing else than the Chaptalia. 



Half a mile in woods of scattered pines among the humbler shrubs 

 brought me to open fields of great extent, once cultivated, now 

 waste, abandoned ! a prospect quite too familiar in this country. A 

 green grassy sward covering the bald earth like a carpet, is nowhere 

 seen: but instead, a few scattered tufts of wire-grass (Andropogon), 

 and slender herbs — so slender! scarcely giving a green tinge to the sand 

 fields. But we must know what these slender herbs are. Sagina 

 procumbens an inch or two high, flowers a line in breadth ! What 

 a pigmy ! Sinaria Canadensis (more common here than in Canada), 

 Phaca villossa, Leptocaulis divaricatus, a nondescript Euphorbia 

 ceous plant, all purple, almost leafless, spindling, — Plantago pusilla, 

 Krigia Virginica, etc. A hundred such plants would scarcely make 

 a mouthful for a poor goat, which with half a dozen companions 

 were the only occupants seen in these wide fields — Passing a deserted 

 mansion which had the usual out houses and cabins around it, where 

 once the planter lived in luxury when these fields were new, I en- 

 tered, at length, the lake-like swamp bordering the Ogeechee, where 

 the elevated causeway passes to the Bridge. This swamp is a mile 

 in breadth, and all over it stands water from one to five feet deep 

 among innumerable trees, shrubs and vines. In this swamp appear- 

 ed at this time only one species of shrub in flower, the neat and ele- 

 gant viburnum obovatum. The most common trees were the Cypress 

 and Li((uidambar. But what most interested me was a species of 

 birch with a reddish-white paper bark, much resembling the white 

 birches of my native hills in N. H. This tree has been as yet but 

 ill defined by botanists, or quite unnoticed. But the general aspect 



