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 unnamable hues of the sky, the sun- 
