2 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH. 



building corridors gay with flowers, or purple with clustered fruit 

 where the moss takes the place of grass, and the last year's leaves 

 fill the hollows, where the wild bird and game make their home, 

 and gambol in the unrestrained indulgence of natural instincts ! 

 To this scene add the brook filled with leaves, the open river 

 tenanted with aquatic birds, and making vistas in the woods, and, 

 lastly, the deep blue of the sea, fringed with the white of the 

 breakers, and complaining of its limits, and you will have the view 

 that is to be met in the woods of the Florida peninsula. 



' ' There simmer first unfaulds her robes, 

 And there the langest tarries," 



bringing in her train the fragrance of the earth, with the colours 

 of the sky, decking her tallest trees with flowers proportioned to 

 their grandeur. There the lakes and rivers are broad, and teem 

 with curious animal life, and the birds of the air are painted with 

 blue and crimson. There the queen lily rides the lagoon, curtained 

 with drooping moss from the live oaks, and there the earth is so 

 prolific of her fruits that there is abundance for all the crowded 

 forest. No single life is forgotten, and the minute insect that 

 feeds on the pollen of the tiger lily, lives as abundantly as the 

 alligator that takes his toll from the whole animal creation. 



Thus from year to year have the seasons come and gone ; 

 animal and vegetable life has reached its limit of years, has fallen 

 and decayed, and wealth that would have enriched a nation has 

 only formed the subsoil for another age, and none had seen the 

 wonders of that inner forest that was barred by nature and the 

 Seminole from the civilised world. 



Under such a wood, near where the Stinhatchee Eiver empties 

 into the Gulf of Mexico, at Deadman's Bay, a hunter's camp 

 was pitched years ago. Hunters and negroes were all still 

 buried in dreams, and the weary hounds lay stretched around 

 indiscriminately among the sleepers. No tent was raised, for the 

 elements required none, though a screen of boughs had been built 

 as a break-wind, and to keep the reflected heat near the fire. 

 Here and there were scattered accoutrements, or the relics of the 

 last night's meal, feathers of birds, skins of beasts, antlers of deer. 



