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 traveller to its brink. ’Twas 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 colours 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 to 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 enamelled shores.