THE IKLAXD PASSAGE. 11 



unearthly noises, any soul-curdling shrieks, he can 

 turn to sleep again with the comfortable assurance 

 "that it is only a Limpkin." 



To the sportsman it is needless to say that Florida, 

 when properly investigated, is a Paradise. Birds 

 and fish and game are only too plentiful, till it has 

 become a land of shameful slaughter. The brute 

 with a gun slays the less brutish animal for the mere 

 pleasure of murder when he cannot get, much less 

 use, what he kills, till on most of the pleasure 

 steamers shooting has been prohibited ; while the 

 idiot with the rod fills his boat with splendid fish 

 that rot in the hot sun and have to be thrown back, 

 putrefying, into the water from which his undisci- 

 plined passion hauled them. Sportsman should not 

 come to this land of promise and performance unless 

 they can control their instincts, for fear that they 

 should degenerate into mere killers. In truth, the 

 excess of abundance takes away the keener zest of 

 sport, which is largely due to the difficulties that 

 surround success. But for the ordinary inhabitant 

 of the rugged North, the quaintness of this border 

 land of the equator has an immense charm, while to 

 the invalid the pure, dry, warm air of both winter 

 and summer brings balm and health. The feeble 

 and sickly, especially the consumptive, should seek 

 Florida, for to them it offers the fabled springs of 

 perennial youth, which Ponce de Leon sought more 

 coarsely in vain. To the seeker after amusement, 

 to the man and woman of leisure, who wish to im- 

 prove as well as enjoy themselves, it is a very wonder- 



