350 iSLES 6^ StTMMEa. 



gods than men; the floral treasures everywhere scattered with 

 lavish hand; and the birds, unsurpassed in plumage and un- 

 equaled in song. We lingered for a while, reluctant to leave, 

 after many of the larger hotels were closed. At last our time to 

 depart came, and we made a part of the extreme rear of a great, 

 but generally intelligent and cultivated army, which, having in 

 the previous fall and winter fled from frost, was now being driven 

 and scattered by a nearly tropical sun. 



Dimpled all over with smiles, and reposing in calm and quiet 

 majesty under an atmosphere that glowed with the genial warmth 

 of May, the ocean, like a good foster mother, rocl^ed us gently 

 upon its bosom, tenderly floated us hundreds of miles homeward, 

 and at last landed us safely upon old familiar shores, that had, 

 in our absence, exchanged their robes and wrappings of ice and 

 snow for beautiful carpets of verdure of the purest and brightest 

 emerald. 



Our second visit to the Isles of Summer was less pleasant than 

 the first by reason of the heat, for the same causes which pro- 

 duced the remarkably mild winter of 1879-80 at the north, gave 

 to Florida and the Bahamas weather exceptionally warm. As 

 we had anticipated when we turned our backs upon the northern 

 March in the manner which we in our last chapter described, we 

 escaped a great deal of exceedingly disagreeable weather, for 

 winter and summer, as in other years, struggled for the mastery 

 upon the neutral domain of spring, while fortune favored both 

 sides with characteristic fickleness. But when in Florida and 

 Na,ssau, both upon land and water, the thermometer during the 

 greater part of every day stood at eighty and upwards in the 

 shade, and hot, sultry, southerly winds were more than usually 

 prevalent, we were at times led to exclaim, 0, for a cool puff of 

 northern wind, and carpets of beautiful snow; and mountains 

 lofty and snow-capped I 0, for an exchange of lazy and indolent 



