296 NATURAL HISTORY OF NORTH AMERICA, 



excessively proud. At the lower end of this street is the 

 College, a desolate looking place. 



Dr. Holbrook, a resident here, has a number of live snakes ; 

 among them is the most lovely rattle-snake I ever saw, he 

 rattles so prettily! He has one pretty little species, about the 

 size of the English snake ; also a great water-snake, a garter- 

 snake, &c. &c. This gentleman, and a Mr. Trenholm, have 

 shown us great kindness and attention. We spent this even- 

 ing with Dr. Bachman, a relation of Audubon's ; he has been 

 showing us some drawings of butterflies from Florida, quite 

 tropical in their forms ; some of them I do not at all know by 

 sight. I quite long to get farther south, but we are afraid of 

 the Indians as yet. I have great hopes of success in Florida, 

 where I mean to work hard. 



" Hope springs exulting in the human breast ; 

 Man never is, but always to be, blest." 



Dr. Bachman has recently published a paper, describing the 

 hares of this country ; he has six species, also the shrews, of 

 which he has figured some new species. Mr. Cooper has 

 lately published a paper on the mice, which is also partly by 

 Dr. Bachman. The doctor informs me that he believes fifteen 

 of Audubon's new species of birds are only young, or in diffe- 

 rent stages of plumage ; he also says that he considers Bona- 

 parte's Sylvia Palmai'um is the young of S. petechia. 



Chapter VII. « 



I 



[Savannali ; St. Augustine ; Jacksonville.] ■» 



Jaclsonville, December 15, 1837. — We took the steam-boat 

 to this place. We had a grand run to Savannah, which we 

 reached at five o'clock in the evening : we saw little of the low 

 sandy shores of South Carolina, and found scarcely any thing 

 of interest, until we got into the mouth of the Savannah River. 

 Here the tall palmettoes on the flat islands, and the rice- j 

 .swamps, with their stacks of rice, and the threshing-floors in 

 the open air, where the negroes were at work, and the dense 

 flocks of Bob-o-links, in myriads thicker than the leaves in 

 Vallombrosa, or the pigeons described by Audubon, and the 



