Here, on Lake St. George, wild ducks and all kinds of water fowl seem as numerous as butterflies on a warm summer’s day. Some of our fellow travellers amuse themselves by shooting the wild ducks, and a hybrid young darkie, who seems as much at home in the water as out of it, dives down head foremost, and fishes them out, and seems to enjoy the fun of it. There was one couple on board who attracted general attention by their frank and unreserved appreciation of each others’ charms. They were not young, they were not beautiful; they were a kind of attenuated edition of the renowned Mr. Pickwick and Mrs. Wardle. _He_ wore glasses, and the tender passion filtered through a pair of green spectacles loses somewhat of its romance. They were evidently veterans in the art of amorous warfare; he sat with his arm round her waist, and carried on his wooing through the medium of a bottle of champagne; they drank out of one glass, and worked slowly to the bottom of it, and then called for more. Some kinds of clay will bear a great deal of soaking. While we are still steaming along this beautiful river, past widening valleys, through thickets of dense shrubberies interlaced with gigantic vines, night closes in and shuts the wild picturesque scenery from our view. All wise people retire to the saloon, where somebody makes a feeble attempt to get up a concert; but as there are no singers and no audience to speak of the idea is abandoned and everybody goes to bed. To make an entire exploration of the St. John’s river involves about eight hundred miles of travel, which, however, is never wearisome, as the scenery shifts and changes at every turn, and the boat is a most comfortable floating home; any one who is not well satisfied with the arrangement and accommodation must be very hard to please. As we are nearing our journey’s end we meet another party of sportsmen returning from an excursion up the Indian river. On board their boat they have about one hundred gigantic turtles, the weight of each one being legibly marked on its back; they were conveying them to Jacksonville, to be shipped thence to the northern markets. We had intended to leave the boat at Enterprise and spend a few days there rambling about the country and familiarising ourselves with the scenery of the surrounding neighbourhood. However, we were doomed to disappointment, for on arriving there we find the place deserted, the hotel closed, and no prospect of entertainment until October, when it will reopen for the season.