Page:Florida Trails as seen from Jacksonville to Key West and from November to April inclusive.djvu/50

 one wonders if Columbus might not have hunted the new world by scent. Later in the year, say February or March, this perfume might well be compounded of orange blossoms, but just now, when the oranges, hereabouts at least, are waiting for the winter frosts to be over before they bloom, it is the loquat trees which take up the burden of scent. The loquat is a handsome tree, suggesting in its shape and dark green leaves the horse-chestnut. The blooms are in corymbs, and their cotton-downy, yellowish-white flowers are not so very different to the casual glance from those of the buckeye. With one of those fairy-like surprises that the South constantly gives you the tree however does not produce horse-chestnuts, but an edible, yellow, plum-like fruit, whence its other, common name of Japanese plum.

All night the loquat blooms send their rich perfume questing off shore along the banks of the St. Johns, and the big yellow stars swing so low that it is hard to tell which is the heavenly illumination and which the trawl marks of the fishermen, lanterns hung from poles where the trawls lie in wait for channel cats. In the gray of sudden dawn you find these fishermen rowing home again, black silhouettes against a black river, and I often wonder if the scent of the loquats, slipping riverward in the lee of the long