Civilization has commenced making its mark on the Ocklawaha, and the march of improvement, which never tires in its efforts, is leaving its foot-prints here. These new developments are visible from the various landings which the steamer makes, as it advances through the rapid current. In order to effect a landing, the bow of the craft is run against the shore, when the command is given by the Captain, with as much authority as though a ship from England had arrived on foreign shores, "Make fast!" This order is executed by putting a hawser an inch in circumference around a stake driven in the ground. Here are two cords of wood waiting to be loaded, called in cracker vernacular "light-wood," filled with turpentine, from which the article of commerce is manufactured. The vender of this commodity is on shore, waiting for an opportunity to dispose of his pile when "the charcoal sketches" commence "wooding-up." Nearly all the passengers improve the time by taking a walk on shore to see the country while the hands on board are working. A countryman is trying to sell a bear-skin to some of the crowd. These Floridians always ask more than they can get, to see what visitors will stand. The sun has set, and we are now entering upon a night of darkness, in a wilderness of leaves and blooms, on the water, near thickets where the hungry wolf lurks for his prey, and the bear growls from his covert of security; where the wild deer nips the grass and feasts from herbage green, frequenting haunts where the hounds lose their trail, and the foot of the civilized hunter has never trod. A bright blaze, made from light-wood knots, is placed in a frame on the bow of our craft, and, like the "pillar of fire" which preceded the Israelites through the wilderness, is our guide. Here, encircled by trees whose long limbs overlap each other so thickly that only a glimmer of dawn is seen through the small openings, our flame-lit craft winds up the serpentine stream, and our night-fires send out a glare which illumines the darkness far as the eye can see, while on the boughs above our heads in silence sits the owl, with only an occasional "Who!" to let us know vitality is not entirely extinct in these wilds. [Illustration: WHO!] The queer, dusky-looking figures, moving about with their pine torches, flashing through the darkness, and yelling at each other in cases of emergency, when our boat appears trying to climb a tree, remind us of the historic plutonian regions. As we glide along, our pathway is marked by volumes of pyrotechnic showers more numerous and brilliant than can be conceived, which burst from the smoke-stacks, and fall on the water before they are extinguished. Phantom-like we move, while weird forms retire before us, but still clinging to our boat as the connecting-link between civilized and savage life, a thoughtless move from it in any direction being a dangerous and hazardous experiment.