26 ISLES OF SUMMER. 



to see the recently raised frame for one new house, as evidencing 

 the fact that enterprise is here awakening, though very slowly, 

 from its long sleep. We rode a mile over a sandy road through 

 a thicket of palmettoes and wild vines and bushes, beyond the 

 "city," to its famous Amelia Beach, which is one of the finest 

 ocean beaches we have seen. For eighteen or twenty miles the 

 white beach of a uniform character extended, the dip being so 

 gentle that a wide belt was left between the sand hills and low- 

 Avater mark, which tlie incoming ocean tides had pounded and 

 compacted until but little impression was made upon it by the 

 hoofs of our horses. The shoals near the shore caused the waves 

 to break into stretches of white spray crests, and gave a pleasing 

 variety to the ocean view. The gentle waves, as they approached, 

 rolled u]) as they reached the shore, and adorned the extreme 

 edge with a beautiful white border of foam in an unbroken line 

 of many miles. The mildness and softness of the air, and the 

 pleasing and soothing murmur of the water, so gently rolling 

 in upon the white sand beach, almost as far as the eye could see, 

 caused us to prolong our stay to the very last minute of our 

 allotted time. The hard, smooth beach of Fernandina, with its 

 unobstructed ocean view on the one side, and sand hills on the 

 other, as we saw it then, will ever occupy a sunny sj)ot in our 

 memory. 



It was eleven o'clock at night when we reached the Windsor 

 Hotel, at Jacksonville upon the St. John's river, thankful that 

 thus far our ocean trip in midwinter had been so extremely pleas- 

 ant, and that nothing had occurred to give us a moment's uneasi- 

 ness. It is true, the same kind Providence would have been over 

 us had we made our journey by land, but some j^ersons who came 

 that way, seemed more inclined to the opinion that in the con- 

 struction and operation of southern railroads some evil genius 

 had been permitted to have things pretty much his own way. 



