Across the Floridian barrens to the sea,-a long night and a longer day of steam-travel over light powdery soil, the tint of hour-glass sand, whose dust filters like a ruddy fog through the joints of the double-windows and tightly-fitting doors of the sleeping-car; furious travel through wildernesses of yellow pine, whose naked and mastlike stems forever twinklingly intercross before one's tired eyes with the rapidity of lightning. The smoke of the engine descends to mingle with the low hanging cloud of ruddy dust; the sun, which rose in advance of us, is now behind us, but there is yet no variation in the monotony of the woods. Sometimes the train halts at a rustic station,--buildings of painted pine relieved against the endless background of living trees; the smoke floats off slowly through the heavy afternoon; the red dust settles lazily; and one rushes to the platform to snatch a breath of purer air, and to peer expectantly westward. Still nothing;--only the colonnades of pine filing away eternally to right and left, and the lurid road stretching endlessly backward and onward with its two streaks of iron light converging toward either horizon,--and the voice of a bird in some green hiding-place, breaking the hot stillness with plaintive triple cry of 'Sweet!--sweet!--sweet!'--repeated over and over again at drowsy intervals. Never a variation in the frondescence, never a flower; the melancholy of the land has begun to weigh upon you like a pain. Our city minds, our city eyes, accustomed to the relief of contrast, are tormented by creations of such perpetual sameness, of such enormous monotony, of such never-varying beauty as Nature devises in her own solitudes. These shadowy infinitudes do not seem formed for the gaze of the nineteenth century; their boundless uniformity rather inspires dreams of those coniferous growths which burdened the land in ages preceding the apparition of man,--when there were yet neither blossoms nor perfumes, neither saccharine secretions nor succulent fruits,--ere even the hum of honey-loving insects was heard, or the beauty of butterflies had been formed, or the nations of the ants had yet begun to toil,--and all the earth was green. Then a scream of steam, a mighty jolt; and the thunder-rattle recommences, and the train again begins to rock in mad storms of dust and smoke, and the red sun ignites a stupendous conflagration behind the pillars of the pines. At last, under the moon, there is another shriek of steam; the wheels slacken, rumble jerkingly, then roll slowly and silently, as if muffled, with occasional squeak, and pause with a final shock; while through hastily opened windows and doors, a strong cool air dashes in,--the breath of the great St. Johns River, sweetened by mingling with the mightier breath of the sea, and bearing with it scent of orange flowers and odors of magnolia. And in the purple night, under the palpitation of stars, Jacksonville opens all her electric eyes. _May_ 4, 188-