A BEAR m DIFFICULTY. 303 



CHAPTER XX. 



A BEAR IN DIFFICULTY. 



" Snout. Bottom ! thou art changed : what do I see on thee? 

 JBot. What do you see? you see an ass's head of your own, do you?" 



Midsummer-night's Dream. 



One morning Mike and I left the fort in our canoes, 

 with Scipio and Caesar, to look for some game on the 

 islands that were scattered along the beach in the many 

 indentures of the bay to the southward of the fort. An 

 hour or two of paddling brought us where a low island 

 was fringed with the tangled roots of the black man- 

 gi'ove. This peculiar tree frequents the salt-water shores, 

 •and springs up from a multitude of roots that raise the 

 trunk of the tree from the ground. The pendent 

 branches then droop until they touch the water beneath, 

 where, clasped by oysters and other parasite shell-fish, 

 they are anchored to the earth, and, taking root, send 

 up many shoots that thus ramify and interlace like minia- 

 ture banyan trees. A large portion of the peninsula of 

 Florida is fringed by this hardy hedge of vegetation. 

 Behind a border of this kind we saw the towering 

 forms of some gumbo-limbo trees, and the oval leaves of 

 the sea-grape, and, finding an open place wherein to 



