350 : ISLES OF SUMMER. 
gods than men; the floral treasures everywhere scattered with 
lavish hand; and the birds, unsurpassed in plumage and un- 
equaled in song. We lingered for a while, reluctant to leave, 
after many of the larger hotels were closed. At last our time to 
depart came, and we made a part of the extreme rear of a great, 
but generally intelligent and cultivated army, which, having in 
the previous fall and winter fled from frost, was now being driven 
and ‘scattered by a nearly tropical sun. » 
~ Dimpled all over with smiles, and reposing in calm and quiet 
majesty under an atmosphere that glowed with the genial warmth 
of May, the ocean, like a good foster mother, rocked us gently 
upon its bosom, tenderly floated us hundreds of miles homeward, 
and at last landed us safely upon old familiar shores, that had, 
in our absence, exchanged thcir robes and wrappings of ice and 
snow for beautiful carpets of verdure of the purest and brightest 
emerald. - ; : 
* Our second visit to the Isles of Summer was less pleasant thai 
the first by reason of the heat, for the same causes which pro- 
duced the remarkably mild winter of 1879-80 at the north, gave. 
to Florida and the Bahamas weather exceptionally warm. As 
we had anticipated when we turned our backs upon the northern 
March in the manner which we in our last chapter described, we 
escaped a great deal of exceedingly disagreeable weather, for 
winter and summer, as in other years, struggled for the mastery 
upon the neutral domain-of spring, while fortune favored both 
sides with characteristic fiekleness. But when in Florida and 
Nassau, both upon land and water, the thermometer during the 
greater part of every day stood at eighty and upwards in the 
shade, and hot, sultry, southerly winds were more than usually 
prevalent, we were at times led to exclaim, O, for a cool puff of 
northern wind, and carpets of beautiful snow; and mountains 
lofty and snow-capped! O, for an exchange of lazy and indolent 
