In the morning we sally forth on a tour of inspection through the
streets of Jacksonville. The roads are so heavy with deep sand, that
driving is attended with much dust and discomfort. A lumbering vehicle
passes us on the road and we are enveloped in a cloud of fine white
sand, and grope our way with closed eyes until it has had time to settle
itself. No one, unless disposed to self-martyrdom, will think of
entering a vehicle except under direst necessity; but there are
delightful little street cars, running on an iron tramway, which take
you the entire round of the city, past all the hotels, the stores and
principal thoroughfares, and bring you back to the starting-place for
five cents. Walking is here a most delightful exercise; the side-walks
everywhere are laid with light springy planks on which it is a pleasure
to tread. We stroll on in a kind of go-as-you-please, walking-made-easy
fashion, as though we never wanted to stop. The streets are all wide,
and beautifully shaded with vigorous young water-oaks, whose luxuriant
green foliage is a contrast to the pines and palmettoes we have lately
been passing through. So rich and so dense is their wealth of leaves,
so extensive their branches, that in places they reach above our heads
across a roadway seventy-two feet wide, and we walk on under an arching
roof of green; so rapid is their growth in these latitudes that some
were pointed out to me which had attained to ten feet circumference in
forty-two years. Some grow strong and lusty in the clinging clasp of the
mistletoe, and are only saved from being smothered in its tender
embraces by the pruning-knife, which cuts down and strews the ground
with all such pleasant parasites as would otherwise sap the strength and
destroy the life of the strong young oaks. Whichever way we turn we look
through long vistas of green.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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