ALONG THE HILLSBOROUGH. 69 



light more beautiful than can be described 

 or imagined ; a light with reverence for 

 the poet of nature be it spoken a light 

 that never was except on sea or land. The 

 poet's dream was never equal to it. 



In a flat country stretches of water are 

 doubly welcome. They take the place of 

 hills, and give the eye what it craves, dis- 

 tance ; which softens angles, conceals details, 

 and heightens colors, in short, trans- 

 figures the world with its romancer's touch, 

 and blesses us with illusion. So, as I loi- 

 tered along the south road, I never tired of 

 looking across the river to the long, wooded 

 island, and over that to the line of sand-hills 

 that marked the eastern rim of the East 

 Peninsula, beyond which was the Atlantic. 

 The white crests of the hills made the 

 sharper points of the horizon line. Else- 

 where clumps of nearer pine-trees intervened, 

 while here and there a tall palmetto stood, 

 or seemed to stand, on the highest and far- 

 thest ridge looking seaward. But particu- 

 lars mattered little. The blue water, the 

 pale, changeable grayish-green of the low 

 island woods, the deeper green of the pines, 

 the u 11 11:1111:1 1 'It- hues of the sky, the sun- 



