Under the factitious illumination the banks, the roots, the stems, the creepers, the burdened boughs, the waving mosses, turn white as dead silver against the background of black sky; it is a Doresque landscape, abnormally fantastic and wan. Close to shore the relief is weirdly sharp; beyond, the heights of swamp forest rise dim and gray into the night, like shapes of vapor. There are no greens visible under this unearthly radiance; all is frosty-white or phantom gray; we seem to voyage not through a living forest, but through a world of ghosts. Forms grotesque as fetishes loom up on all sides; the cypresses in their tatters throng whitely to the black the night, while the woods ever display new terrors, new extravaganzas of ghastliness. As a traveler belated, who sings loudly in the darkness to give himself courage, the Osceola opens her iron throat, and shouts with all her voice of steam. And the deep forest laughs in scorn, and hurls back the shout with a thousand mockeries of echo,--a thousand phantom thunders; and the bitter triple cry of anguish follows us still over the sable flood. But the Fountain of Youth is not now far away; midnight is past; the trees lock arms overhead; and we glide through the Cypress Gates. Lulled by the monotonous throbbing of the machinery,--the systole and diastole of the steamer's heart,--I sank to sleep and dreamed; but the spectra of the woods filled all my dreams. It seemed to me that I was floating,--lying as in a canoe, and all alone,--down some dark and noiseless current,--between forests endless and vast,--under an unearthly light. White mosses drooped to sweep my face; phantoms of cypress put forth long hands to seize. Again I saw the writhing and the nodding of the palms: they elongated their bodies like serpents; they undulated quiveringly, as cobras before the snake-charmer. And all the moss-hung shapes of fear took life, and moved like living things,--slowly and monstrously, as polyps move. Then the vision changed and magnified; the river broadened Amazonianly; the forests became colossal,--preternatural,--world-shadowing at last,--meeting even over the miles of waters; and the sabals towered to the stars. And still I drifted with the mighty stream, feeling less than an insect in those ever-growing enormities; and a thin Voice like a wind came weirdly questioning: '_Ha! thou dreamer of dreams!--hast ever dreamed aught like unto this?--This is the Architecture of God!_' _May_ 6, 188-