med gunboat, the John Adams, should
arrive,--she being unaccountably delayed.

We waited twenty-four hours for her, at the sultry mouth of that glassy
river, watching the great pelicans which floated lazily on its tide, or
sometimes shooting one, to admire the great pouch, into which one of the
soldiers could insert his foot, as into a boot. "He hold one quart,"
said the admiring experimentalist. "Hi! boy," retorted another quickly,
"neber you bring dat quart measure in _my_ peck o' corn." The protest
came very promptly, and was certainly fair; for the strange receptacle
would have held nearly a gallon.

We went on shore, too, and were shown a rather pathetic little garden,
which the naval officers had laid out, indulging a dream of vegetables.
They lingered over the little microscopic sprouts, pointing them out
tenderly, as if they were cradled babies. I have often noticed this
touching weakness, in gentlemen of that profession, on lonely stations.

We wandered among the bluffs, too, in the little deserted hamlet once
called "Pilot Town." The ever-shifting sand had in some cases almost
buried the small houses, and had swept around others a circular drift,
at a few yards' distance, overtopping their eaves, and leaving each the
untouched citadel of this natural redoubt. There was also a dismantled
lighthouse, an object which always seems the most dreary symbol of the
barbarism of war, when one considers the national beneficence which
reared and kindled it. Despite the service rendered by this once
brilliant light, there were many wrecks which had been strown upon the
beach, victims of the most formidable of the Southern river-bars. As I
stood with my foot on the half-buried ribs of one of these vessels,--so
distinctly traced that one might almost fancy them human,--the old
pilot, my companion, told me the story of the wreck. The vessel had
formerly been in the Cuba trade; and her owner, an American merchant
residing in Havana, had christened her for his young daughter. I asked
the name, and was startled to recognize that of a favorite young cousin
of mine, beside the bones of whose representative I was thus strangely
standing, upon this lonely shore.

It was well to have something to relieve the anxiety naturally felt at
the delay of the John Adams,--anxiety both for her safety and for the
success of our enterprise. The Rebels had repeatedly threatened to burn
the whole of Jacksonville, in case of another attack, as t