Camping among the Tombs 



flies, all kinds of happy insects, seem to be in 

 a perfect fever of joy and sportive gladness. 

 The whole place seems like a center of life. The 

 dead do not reign there alone. 



Bonaventure to me is one of the most impres 

 sive assemblages of animal and plant creatures 

 I ever met. I was fresh from the Western 

 prairies, the garden-like openings of Wisconsin, 

 the beech and maple and oak woods of Indiana 

 and Kentucky, the dark mysterious Savannah 

 cypress forests; but never since I was allowed 

 to walk the woods have I found so impressive 

 a company of trees as the tillandsia-draped 

 oaks of Bonaventure. 



I gazed awe-stricken as one new-arrived 

 from another world. Bonaventure is called a 

 graveyard, a town of the dead, but the few 

 graves are powerless in such a depth of life. 

 The rippling of living waters, the song of birds, 

 the joyous confidence of flowers, the calm, un- 

 disturbable grandeur of the oaks, mark this 

 place of graves as one of the Lord s most fa 

 vored abodes of life and light. 

 [69] 



