Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/392

Rh elms and willows, as I went along, and high above all towered cypresses with their long, depending mosses, spreading their vast arms abroad, like patriarchs over the lower tribes of vegetation. Not a human dwelling was to be seen on these shores, not a trace of human activity. There was neither the sight nor sound of animal life, and although alligators are numerous in the Savannah river, I did not see one; not a bird sang, and all was silent and hushed, even the wind itself. It was a desolation full of fantastic beauty, and just now in the pride of its splendour. At length I saw, sitting on the naked boughs of a dead fir-tree, two large birds of prey, reminding the beholder that “death was come into the world.” Thus we sped on, in a high-pressure boat, the Oregon, with its two reeking chimneys, up the river, mile after mile, hour after hour, whilst the morning and the evening, the sun and the moon, seemed to contend which should most beautify the scene. And I sang in my soul, as the earliest colonists of Georgia had done before me, “how beautiful is creation, how glorious the Creator!” and then I thought, what a poem, what a glorious romance is this portion of the world in its natural life; what wealth, what beauty, what varied scenes it embraces in its bosom! I was now again alone with America; America revealed her mysteries to me, and made me aware of her wealth, the inheritance of future generations.

The Savannah forms the boundary between Carolina and Georgia. I had tenderly-beloved friends both in Carolina and Georgia. I loved Georgia the most, and turned towards its shore, as toward a more free, a more youthfully fresh land.

The voyage was an incessant feast for me, and I wished only to be silent and enjoy it. But in order to do that, I had to avoid, in the saloon, a throng of handsome, but