412 Letter from Audubon. 



mostly overflowed, and all unfit for cultivation. That growth, 

 which in any other country is called underwood, scarcely exists ; 

 the land being covered with low palmitoes, or very low, thickly 

 branched dwarf oaks, almost impenetrable to man. The climate 

 is of a most unsettled nature, at least at this season. The ther- 

 mometer has made leaps from 30 to 89 degrees in 24 hours : 

 cold, warm, sandy, muddy, watery — all these varieties may be 

 felt and seen in one day's travelling. 



I am extremely disappointed in this portion of the Floridas, 

 and would not advise any one to visit it, because he may have 

 read the flowery accounts of preceding travellers. The climate 

 is much more unsteady than in Louisiana, in the same latitude, 

 or any where along the Mexican gulf to the Sabine river, which 

 is our boundary line. Game and fish, it is true, are abundant ; 

 but the body of valuable tillable land is too small to enable the 

 peninsula ever to become a rich state. 



I have seen nothing deserving your attention in a geological 

 point of view, except quarries of stones which are a concrete 

 of shells, excellent for building, and laying immediately under 

 the surface of the sand, which every where seems to predomi- 

 nate. This concrete is curious in itself, and my friend, Bulow, 

 who is now erecting some very extensive buildings for a sugar 

 house, has given me specimens, which I will forward to you, 

 showing the different grades or ages of their formation. The 

 fragments are cut out of the quarries with the common wood 

 axe, and fashioned with the same instrument for buildings. 

 You, of course, will readily make out, that the water found in 

 the neighbourhood of all concretes, is hard or calcareous, being 

 filtered through a kind of natural shell lime. 



I have done but little, I am sorry to say, in my way. Birds 

 are certainly not abundant here at this season ; and I can readily 

 account for this deficiency in the land birds : it is for the want 

 of mast — mast, so abundant in almost every portion of our coun- 

 try. But the water birds, notwithstanding all the fishes in every 

 river, creek, or even puddle, that I have seen, arc scarce beyond 

 belief It is true, a man may see hundreds of pelicans, and 

 thousands of herons ; but take these from the list, and water 

 birds will be found very rare. I will see what spring will do, 

 and then write more fully on this my ever devoted subject. 



If I did not bcUeve the day to be gone by, when it was ne- 



