This was a day of gushing sunshine and myriads of butterflies. They flew from the mainland, not as spies but in battalions--a never-ending procession miles broad. You could fancy you heard in the throbbing stillness the movement of the fairy-like wings--a faint, unending hum. From the odorous jungle they came, flitting in gay inconsequence, steering a course of "slanting indeterminates," yet full of the power and the passion of the moment. They flitted between the idle boom and the deck, and up the gleaming sky in all the sizes that distance grades between nearness and infinity. There were Islands near at hand and some afar off. What instinct guided them--for butterflies are short-sighted creatures--I know not. If wind had come, as we who lolled lazily in the boat longed, the myriad host of resplendent creatures would have been scattered and millions beaten down into the sea, above which they flew with such airy levity. What instinct guided the frail, unreflective creatures across miles of ocean to the Islands of the Blest among butterflies. In their variety, too, they were entertaining. In great number was the pretty frailty, whose wings are compact of transparencies and purple blotches. In this full, fierce light the purple is black and the transparencies all steel-like glitter. They came across in shoals. There was neither beginning nor end. All the sky glittered with winged mosaics. Then came the great green and gold and black creature, accompanied sometimes by his less gaily decorated mate, ponderous of flight; and, anon, that insect of regal blue, that can flit as idly as any of the order, and yet dart in and out of the jungle and over the tree-tops, with swallow-like swiftness. Rarely in the throng came that scarlet and black, which makes the gaudy, flaunting hibiscus envious of its colour; but the little yellow "wanderers," ever busy and active, came low over the water, weary with the long journey, and sometimes ready to rest--shifty flecks of gold--on the white sail. There was no end to the flight. The air was too full. One wearied of the ceaseless panorama of the gay bejewelled insects. They were the possessors of the prime of that glorious morning. Beautiful and frail, and inconsequent as they were, you envied them. They flitted on without guide or leader, venturing the dangers of water and air, flying up in the full blaze of the sun--eager, joyous, unconcerned. In the boat we were compelled to loll about between heaven and the cool coral groves, and compare enforced inactivity with the blithesome freedom of the weakest butterfly. Occasionally a turtle would bob up from its pastures below, and catching sight of the sail, with a bubbling gulp, disappear, the white splash creating concentric rings of ripples. But the breeze came not, and the disorderly procession of butterflies, miles broad, passed on. "Some flew light as a laugh of glee; Some flew soft as a low, long sigh, All to the haven where each would be."