Page:Florida Trails as seen from Jacksonville to Key West and from November to April inclusive.djvu/285

 CHAPTER XIX

BUTTERFLIES OF THE INDIAN RIVER

Where the Bahamas vex the Gulf Stream so that the rich romance of its violet blue is shoaled into an indignant green that is yet more lovely, there is a grape-like bloom on both sea and sky. Standing on the islands that bar the Indian River from the full tides, you may see this bloom sweep in a purpling vapor from the sea up into a sapphire sky, which it informs with an almost ruby iridescence at times. The gentle southeast winds of mid-March have blown this bloom in from the sea and sky and spread all the landscape of the southern East Coast with it, a pale blue, smoke-*like haze in whose aroma there is yet no pungency of smoke. It is like the blue haze of Indian summer which often hangs the New England hills with a violet indistinctness out of which all dreams might well come true.

The road down Indian River winds sandily along the bluff always southward toward the sun. On your left hand you glimpse the blue river with the island a haze of deep blue on the horizon. It