Letter from Auduboti to the Editor. 535 



new species of ibis ; they fell not far from us upon the tangled 

 nymphae, but such was the state of the mud, that it was impossi- 

 ble to recover them. Being only a few yards distant from us, 

 and quite near enough to ascertain the extent of my loss — I 

 submitted to lose a fine pair of a new species, the which if I 

 ever fall in with it again, I shall call Tantalus fuscus. 



The chain of creeks and lakes I am now describing empties 

 itself into the St. .John's, about sixteen miles south of and above 

 Lake George. We reached the borders of WoodrufPs Lake 

 about one P. M., and being fatigued and hungry, we landed on a 

 small island of a few acres, covered with a grove of sour orange 

 trees, intermixed with a few live oaks. The oranges were in 

 great profusion on the trees — every thing about us was calm 

 and beautiful and motionless, as if it had just come from the 

 hand of the Creator. It would have been a perfect Paradise 

 for a poet, but I was not fit to be in Paradise ; the loss of my ibis 

 made me as sour as the oranges that hung about me. I felt un- 

 quiet, too, in this singular scene, as if I was almost upon the 

 verge of creation, where realities were tapering off" into nothing. 

 The general wildness, the eternal labyrinths of waters and 

 marshes, interlocked and apparently never ending ; the whole 

 surrounded by interminable swamps — all these things had a ten- 

 dency to oppress my spirits, notwithstanding some beautiful 

 flowers, rich looking fruits, a pure sky, and the ample sheets of 

 water at my feet. Here I am then in the Floridas, thought I, a 

 country that received its romantic name from the fragrant odours 

 wafted from the orange groves, to the boats of the first discove- 

 rers, and which from my childhood I have consecrated in my 

 imagination as the garden of the United States. A garden 

 where all that is not mud, mud, mud, is sand, sand, sand ; where 

 the fruit is so sour that it is not eatable, and where in place of 

 singing birds and golden fishes, you have a species of ibis that 

 you cannot get when you have shot it, and alligators, snakes and 

 scorpions. 



Mr. Bartram was the first to call this a garden, but he is to 

 be forgiven, he was an enthusiastic botanist, and rare plants, in 

 the eyes of such a man, convert a wilderness at once into a gar- 

 den. Another traveller, however, who was in the government 

 employ, has written in a manner that cannot fail to mislead those 

 who have never visited the country. He says that the Pine Bar- 



