26 ISLES OF SUMMER. 
to see the recently raised frame for one new house, as evidencing 
the fact that enterprise is here awakening, though very slowly, 
from its iong sleep. We rode a mile over a sandy road through 
a thicket of palmettoes and wild vines and bushes, beyond the 
“city,” to its famous Amelia Beach, which is one of the finest 
ocean beaches we have seen. Tor eighteen or twenty miles the 
white beach of a uniform character extended, the dip being so 
gentle that a wide belt was left between the sand hills and low- 
water mark, which the incoming ocean tides had pounded and 
compacted until but little impression was made upon it by the 
hoofs of our horses. The shoals near the shore caused the waves 
to break into stretches of white spray crests, and gave a pleasing 
variety to the ocean view. ‘The gentle waves, as they approached, 
rolled up as they reached the shore, and adorned the extreme 
edge with a beautiful white border of foam in an unbroken line 
of many miles. The mildness and softness of the air, and the 
pleasing and soothing murmur of the water, so gently rolling 
in upon the white sand beach, almost as far as the eye could see, 
caused us to prolong our stay to the very last minute of our 
allotted time. The hard, smooth beach of Fernandina, with its 
unobstructed ocean view on the one side, and sand hills on the 
other, as we saw it then, will ever occupy a sunny spot in our 
memory. 
It was eleven o’clock at night when we reached the Windsor 
Hotel, at Jacksonville upon the St. John’s river, thankful that 
thus far our ocean trip in midwinter had been so extremely pleas- 
ant, and that nothing had occurred to give us a moment’s uncasi- 
ness. It is true, the same kind Providence would have been over 
“us had we made our journey by land, but some persons who came 
that way, seemed more inclined to the opinion that in the con- 
struction and operation of southern railroads some evil genius 
had been permitted to have things pretty much his own way. 
