Florida is, in a great degree, a dark and sterile wilderness, yet with spots of beauty and of loveliness, with charms that cannot be forgotten. Her swamps and everglades, the dens of alligators, and lurking places of the desperate savage, gloom the thoughts of the wary traveller, whose mind is cheered and lit to admiration, when in the solitary pine woods, where he hears nought but the echoing notes of the _sand-hill cranes_, or the howling wolf, he suddenly breaks out into the open savannahs, teeming with their myriads of wild flowers, and palmettos (+plate+ 147); or where the winding path through which he is wending his lonely way, suddenly brings him out upon the beach, where the rolling sea has thrown up her thousands of hills and mounds of sand as white as the drifted snow, over which her green waves are lashing, and sliding back again to her deep green and agitated bosom (+plate+ 148). This sketch was made on _Santa Rosa Island_, within a few miles of Pensacola, of a favourite spot for _tea_ (and other convivial) _parties_, which are often held there. The hills of sand are as _purely white as snow_, and fifty or sixty feet in height, and supporting on their tops, and in their sides, clusters of magnolia bushes—of myrtle—of palmetto and heather, all of which are evergreens, forming the most vivid contrast with the snow-white sand in which they are growing. On the beach a family of Seminole Indians are encamped, catching and drying red fish, their chief article of food. I have traversed the snow-white shores of Pensacola’s beautiful bay, and I said to myself, “Is it possible that Nature has done so much in vain—or will the wisdom of man lead him to add to such works the embellishments of art, and thus convert to his own use and enjoyment the greatest luxuries of life?” As a travelling stranger through the place, I said “yes: it must be so.” Nature has here formed the finest harbour in the world; and the dashing waves of the ocean have thrown around its shores the purest barriers of sand, as white as the drifted snow. Unlike all other Southern ports, it is surrounded by living fountains of the purest water, and its shores continually fanned by the refreshing breathings of the sea. To a Northern man, the winters in this place appear like a continual spring time; and the intensity of a summer’s sun is cooled into comfort and luxury by the ever-cheering sea breeze.