A streamlet trickled through a garland of dionæas; a multitude of day-flies buzzed all around. There were also humming-birds and butterflies which, decked in their brightest gauds, rivalled the motley flowers in splendour. In the midst of these walks and studies, I was often struck by their futility. What! Did the Revolution, which already weighed down upon me and drove me into the woods, inspire me with no graver thoughts than these? What! Was the time of my country's confusion that which I chose to occupy myself with descriptions of plants, and butterflies, and flowers? The individuality of mankind serves as a measure of the littleness of great events. How many men are indifferent to those events! To how many others do they remain unknown! The aggregate population of the globe is estimated at from eleven to twelve hundred millions; a man dies every second: thus in each minute of our existence, of our smiles, of our joys, sixty men expire, sixty families moan and weep. Life is a permanent pestilence. The chain of mourning and funerals that winds us about is never broken, grows ever longer: we ourselves form one of its links. And then tell us to magnify the importance of the catastrophes of which seven-eighths of the world will never hear speak! To pant for a fame which will spread its wings at but a few leagues from our tomb! To plunge into the ocean of a felicity of which each minute slips away between sixty graves incessantly renewed! Nam nox Nulla diem, neque noctem aurora sequuta est Quæ non audierit mixtos vagitibus ægris Ploratus, mortis comites et funeris atri. The savages of Florida tell of an island in the middle of a lake where live the most beautiful women in the world. The Muskhogulges have repeatedly attempted its conquest; but this Eden flees before the canoes, a natural image of the chimeras which retreat before our desires. The country also contained a fountain of youth: who would wish to rise from the dead? But little was wanting to make these fables assume a semblance of reality in my eyes. At a moment when we least expected it, we saw a flotilla of canoes come out of a bay, some with oars, others with sails. They landed at our island. They were two families of Creeks, of which one consisted of Seminoles, the other of Muskhogulges, including some Cherokees and Burnt-woods. I was struck with the grace of these savages, who in no respect resemble those of Canada. [Sidenote: Two fair Floridans.]