Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/306

Rh But when in the mornings early I wake and feel the balmy wind of Florida play through the white curtains round my bed, and hear the nightingale of America pouring forth, in its many tongues, its melodious inspirations in the trees before my window, then do I exalt the home of summer, and wonder not that Ferdinand de Soto and his young men were enchanted by it, and it seems to me almost unnatural that life here can be heavy or dark.

We remain here a couple of days in expectation of a good steamboat which will take us to Mr. C.'s plantation at Darien, whence we return to Savannah.

This plantation lies in a sandy tract, and the sand considerably incroaches upon the charms of nature and country life. There is here, however, a footpath by the river which follows a wild and woody shore, than which nothing more picturesque can be conceived, in particular the masses of trees and wild boscage, which rise like a lofty wall between the shore and the sloping cultivated land. Splendid magnolias, covered with white flowers, lift aloft among these their dark, shady crowns. The magnolia is the most magnificent tree of the Southern States. I wander here alone in the afternoons, wondering sometimes whether I shall hear, from the dense thickets, the warning signal of the rattlesnake, for this serpent gives warning before he makes an attack or approaches near. But although rattlesnakes are numerous in Florida, I have not yet happened either to see or to hear a living one. I however saw this afternoon one which the negroes had just killed on the plantation and brought to show the family. It might be about three yards long, and as thick as my arm. The head was much injured by the blows it had received, and the terrible poison-fangs were revealed. I have had the rattle with its fourteen joints given to me to take home with me to Sweden. A year ago a negro on the plantation was bitten on the leg by a rattlesnake; great