112 A NATURE WOOING. 



mouth, Ancistrodon piscivorus Hoik, whose bite is 

 reputed more poisonous than that of the diamond rat- 

 tlesnake. It may be a harmless Tropidonotus. I am 

 too far above it to determine which. 



A sign board on a tree on the crest of the cliff 

 states that "This is Buckhead Bluff, the site of the old 

 ferry of the 'King's Road,' constructed by the Eng- 

 lish 150 years ago from St. Mary's, Georgia, 400 miles 

 southward into Florida." What care I for that? 

 'Tis a bluff of stone in a land where bluffs are almost 

 unknown. 'Tis something akin to those ledges which 

 I have climbed time upon time in days of yore. 



I note the body of a butterfly lying beside me and 

 its presence begets a revery on death that death 

 which cometh to one and all in some form which 

 is as inevitable as the rising of to-morrow's sun. 

 Whether it comes to the mansion of the rich, where 

 every desire of the invalid is granted, or to the hovel 

 of the hermit, where solitude is its only companion ; 

 whether it conies in the cool shade on the mountain's 

 side, or in the burning glare of the noonday sun on a 

 desert waste, it matters little ; it can come but once. 

 Peace and forgetfulness are its accompaniments. All 

 hopes, all fears, all hatreds, all loves, all desires, all 

 passions, become forever things of the past. The step 

 is taken into the great unknown. Millions, aye, hun- 

 dreds of billions of human forms, of plant and animal 

 forms, have gone not one has e'er returned to tell 

 us of the way. All concerning it is guess work. The 



