A DAY IN THE WOODS 143 



and what not crowding upon the track so closely 

 that we could almost put out our hands and touch 

 them as we passed. In the whole distance, to 

 the best of my recollection, we met neither car- 

 riage nor foot-passenger. 



We drove as we pleased, stopped as we pleased, 

 talked or kept sUence, listened to the birds, ad- 

 mired the flowers and the new leafage (there are 

 no words wherewith to intimate its freshness and 

 beauty), and withal dreamed of the time when all 

 the land about us was the scene of busy labors, 

 when sugar and rice and cotton were cultivated 

 here by hundreds of slaves, and those who owned 

 the land, as they imagined, had no thought of a 

 day when the forest should again claim all their 

 fair possessions. We drove to Mount Oswald, so 

 called, near the mouth of the Tomoka River, 

 thence over the famous old causeway, set with 

 palmettoes, to Buckhead Bluff, at which point the 

 King's road to St. Augustine is supposed (or 

 known) to have crossed the river a hundred years 

 ago. I was glad to see the river (I shall see more 

 of it, if I live a day or two longer), but the great 

 thing was the forest, with its present beauty and 

 its whisperings of past romance. 



Now it is afternoon, and I am in the same 

 woods. No lover of wild life ever drove over a 

 beautiful country road for the first time with- 



