258 THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 



of epistles which passing events had dictated, but which I neglected to transmit at 

 the proper season. In my headlong transit through the Southern tribes of Indians I 

 have " popped out" of the woods upon this glowing land, and I cannot forego the 

 pleasure of letting you into a few of the secrets of this delightful place. 



" Flos, floris" &c, everybody knows the meaning of; and Florida, in Spanish, is 

 a country of flowers. Perdido is perdition, and Rio Perdido, River of Perdition. Look- 

 ing down its perpendicular banks into its black water, its depth would seem to be 

 endless, and the doom of the uuwary to be gloomy in the extreme. Step not acci- 

 dentally or Willfully over its fatal brink, and nature's opposite extreme is spread about 

 you. You are literally in the land of the " cypress and myrtle," where the evergreen 

 live-oak and lofty magnolia dress the forest in a perpetual mantle of green. 



The sudden transition from the ice-bound regions of the North to this mild climate, 

 in the midst of winter, is one of peculiar pleasure. At a half-way of the distance one's 

 cloak is thrown aside, and arrived on the ever-verdant borders of Florida, the bosom 

 is opened and bared to the soft breeze from the ocean's wave and the congenial warmth 

 of a summer's sun. 



Such is the face of nature here in the rude month of February. Green peas are 

 served on the table ; other garden vegetables in great perfection, and garden flowers, 

 as well as wild, giving their full and sweetest perfume to the winds. 



I looked into the deep and bottomless Perdido, and beheld about it the thousand 

 charms which nature has spread to allure the unwary traveler to its brink. It was 

 not enough to entangle him in a web of sweets upon its borders, but nature seems to 

 have used an art to draw him to its bottom, by the voluptuous buds which blossom 

 under its black waters, and whose vivid colors are softened and enriched the deeper 

 they are seen below its surface. The sweetest of wild flowers enamel the shores and 

 spangle the dark-green tapestry which hangs over its bosom ; the stately magnolia 

 towers fearlessly over its black waters, and sheds (with the myrtle and jessamine) the 

 richest perfume over this chilling pool of death. 



How exquisitely pure and sweet are the delicate tendrils which nature has hung 

 over these scenes of melancholy and gloom ; and how strong, also, has she fixed in 

 man's breast the passion to possess and enjoy them. I could have hung by the tree 

 tops over that fatal stream, or blindly staggered over its thorny brink tu have culled 

 the sweets which are found only in its bosom ; but the poisonous fang, I was told, was 

 continually aimed at my heel, and I left the sweetened atmosphere of its dark and 

 gloomy, yet enameled shores. 



Florida is, in a great degree, a dark and sterile wilderness, yet with spots of beauty 

 and of loveliness, with charms that cannot be forgotten. Her swamps and everglades, 

 the dens of alligators and lurking places of the desperate savage, gloom the thoughts 

 of the wary traveler, whose mind is cheered and lit to admiration when, in the soli- 

 tary pine woods where he hears naught but the echoing notes of the sand-hill cranes 

 or the howling w r olf, he suddenly breaks out into the open savannahs teeming with 

 their myriads of wild flowers and palmettos (No. 349) ; or where the winding path 

 through which he is wending his lonely way suddenly brings him out upon the beach, 

 where the rolling sea has thrown up her thousands of hills and mounds of sand as 

 white as the drifted snow, over which her green waves are lashing and sliding back 

 again to her deep green and agitated bosom. 



This sketch (Plate 148) was made on Santa Eosa Island, within a few 

 miles of Pensacola, a favorite spot for tea (and other convivial) parties, 

 which are often held here. 



The hills of sand are as purely white as snow, and fifty or sixty feet in height, and 

 supporting on their tops and in their sides clusters of magnolia bushes, of myrtle, of 

 palmetto, and heather, all of which are evergreens, forming the most vivid contrast 

 with the snow-white sand in which they are growing. On the beach a family of Sem- 

 inole Indians are encamped, catching and drying redfish, their chief article of food. 



