------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration: A BANANA GROVE IN FLORIDA.—The banana plant is one of the most beautiful growths that can be imagined. Its broad, luxuriant leaves are of a bright green color, changing to maroon and orange as the season advances and the fruit begins to ripen. The latter, when it reaches the delicious yellow stage of full maturity, does its part in helping to dress the field in the most beautiful livery of nature, presenting a scene of gold, green and maroon surpassing the powers of pen or pencil to depict or portray. The Spaniards, from a fancied resemblance of the transverse section to a cross, supposed the banana to have been the forbidden fruit, and that Adam saw in eating it the mystery of redemption by the cross. ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration: THE ONE-OX SHAY IN FLORIDA.] Twenty-five miles below Eden is Jupiter, the southern termination of Indian River, a little town that derives its importance from the Government light-house which stands before the inlet to warn vessels off the dangerous reefs outside. The surroundings, however, are very delightful, especially the beach, which is strewn with the prettiest ocean-shells that ever a pensive person gathered, including an occasional pearly nautilus, a perfect one of which we had the good fortune to find. Near-by is the Spouting Rock, a coquina formation that rises into a bank and which has been hollowed at the base by incessant dashing of the billows. Into this grotto the waves plunge with such force that they drive out through an opening in the top of the rock like a colossal fountain, and are scattered by the winds into a shower of rainbows. A narrow-gauge railroad runs south from Jupiter, a distance of eight miles, to Juno, its terminus on Lake Worth, where tourists take a steam launch for Palm Beach and are then in the land of the cocoanut. The voice of eloquence grows coarse when it attempts to paint the beauties of this o’er fair summer-land; a land where warm zephyrs stir the hazy air with breath of perpetual bloom, and sensuous perfumes fan the cheeks of languorous day. In this Arcadian spot of beauty, where the air is passionate as a lover, wooing and kissing the flowers, tossing and embracing the fronds of the cocoa-trees, there is a joy like retrospection; a communion with the rapturous soul of nature; a commingling with the creatures of our sweetest fancy; a balmy, delicious sense of gratification that lulls and etherealizes; that bridges the gulf between the real and the ideal; that builds substantial castles in clouds of gold, and makes everything a slave to our desires. The banks are pictures of beauty, the gardens are beds of perennial delight. Lake Worth is separated from the ocean by a strip of land less than half a mile wide, and this narrow tongue of what was once bare sand has been