General Vogdes procured horses, and a party, including one of the Florida ladies, went out riding, just as the sun was going down. The roads were bad; where there was no sand, there were stumps and mud holes; and the country, wherever we rode, was flat, uninteresting and unimproved. Returning, we found the straggling little town had put on new attractions. The trees that belt all its streets had hidden the omnipresent sand; the moonlight, glimmering through the foliage, concealed all the shabbiness and doubled all the beauties of the dilapidated, but shrubbery-embowered houses; the air was delightfully balmy—more than realizing all that has been said of the Florida climate; and, in short, we kept riding about for an hour, by moonlight. Then, how to get back was the question. My companion lived in the town; surely she ought to know its dozen streets, but she didn’t. “There’s our house, just beyond that clump of trees!” We rode up, and found it wasn’t. Protracted searching ensued; then, “Oh, here it is; I know it by the piazza.” But when we rode up, it was found the moonlight and shadows had been deceptive. At last she heard a familiar voice: “Beckie, is that you?” “Laws, missus, what you doin’ out heah. Thort sure yous gwine home an hour ago.” “Beckie, I’m not lost, but I can’t see in the shade, and have just got turned around a little. Which way is our house?” “Haw, haw,” in chorus from half a dozen African females. “Laws, Missus, to think of yous a gittin’ lost in Jacksonville! Why, chile, deres de house right round de cohnah, whar it alius was!” “Right round de cohnah” we started; but somehow we didn’t get there. I’ve done a good deal of horseback riding, in a good many out-of-the-way places; on prairies where there wasn’t a landmark; in pine woods, where there were so many I couldn’t see; through the labyrinthine mazes of roads cut in the forests by the several advancing brigade trains of a great army; through unfamiliar swamps, without a road, under heavy fire, where I was compelled to rely on my pocket compass, to know how to get out from the sweep of the batteries; but I never got lost before. That sensation was reserved for enjoyment at the village of Jacksonville, and within the corporate (and sandy) limits of the same, in the State of Florida. We rode blindly around, for about two hours, till General Vodges sent out soldiers to look for us. When, at last, we cantered up in grand style, we strenuously declared that the evening was so charming we couldn’t think of coming in sooner. ----- Footnote 21: Senator Yulee was arrested, a few days after this interview (under orders forwarded before the authorities knew anything of his meeting with Mr. Chase), and was confined in Fort Pulaski, to await the process of Floridian re-organisation, in which the Government did not propose that he should share. CHAPTER XVI.