152 ON THE ST. AUGUSTINE ROAD. 
more beautiful still, with a profusion of 
fragrant white honeysuckle. On the road- 
side, between the wheel-track and the gulch, 
grew brilliant Mexican poppies, with Ve- 
nus’s looking-glass, yellow oxalis, and beds 
of blackberry vines. The woods of which 
my informant had spoken lay a little beyond 
the railway, on the right hand of the road, 
just as it began another ascent. I entered 
them at once, and after a semicircular turn 
through the pleasant paths, amid live-oaks, 
water-oaks, red oaks, chestnut oaks, mag- 
nolias, beeches, hickories, hornbeams, sweet 
gums, sweet bays, and long-leaved and 
short-leaved pines, came out into the road 
again a quarter of a mile farther up 
the hill. They were the fairest of woods 
to stroll in, it seemed to me, with paths 
enough, and not too many, and good 
enough, but not too good; that is to say, 
they were footpaths, not roads, though 
afterwards, on a Sunday afternoon, I met 
two young fellows riding through them on 
bicycles. The wood was delightful, also, 
after my two months in eastern Florida, for 
lying on a slope, and for having an under- 
growth of loose shrubbery instead of a 
