e weeks previous, while at Pilatka, Colonel
---- had politely offered me a sergeant and nine men to visit the place,
but shortly after reaching it they complained of the musquitoes and rode
back to the camp, leaving me with the guide and Gen. W---- to finish the
survey. I now found a young physician who was waiting an escort for Tampa
Bay, and we went out alone; and after studying trails for a long time, and
taking directions by the compass, we came in sight of the hammock when
some miles distant, and entering by a winding road that was arched over so
as to be almost dark as night, we emerged, after a quarter of a mile, in a
little round spot in the wilderness, which for quiet beauty was beyond any
thing I had ever before seen. There were some forty acres in the circle,
and yet it looked not unlike a dollar in a tumbler, so high and dense was
the forest. The magnolias, a hundred feet in air, were in full blossom,
their white tops making an unbroken wreath over the area, while the lower
branches of the live-oaks were loaded with the long moss, hanging like
curtains, motionless in the bright light, and not a single bird on the
tree-tops to break the perfect charm of the place. Beautiful, very
beautiful! but how strangely still! A squirrel chattering, or the rat-tat
of a woodpecker, would have been something; but there was not a single
voice out; not so much as the hum of a musquito, though it was the hottest
of summer days.

Why didn't the oaks speak, or the magnolias? If they had, shaken their
white heads, and raising their trailing garments, had all burst out in
some grand anthem, I should only have thought it quite in character; and
if personally addressed, it would have seemed entirely a matter of course.
I should have replied civilly, begged pardon for intruding in so informal
a manner, and backed out as soon as possible; and perhaps the click of a
rifle would have produced the same effect. We rode around the little gem,
and found the charred timbers where the house stood, and a few orange
trees that the Indians had left; but the cool spring was so hid in the
high grass, that we were forced back with parched lips to the flat water
at Pilatka, which place we reached in time for a late dinner; and just as
the evening set in I took passage again for Picolata.

All the boats running on the river were in the government service, and
ours at this time was loaded fore and aft with a company of dragoons,
bound to Black Creek.