yacht: she belongs in
Montreal."

"All right, captain! I will step below and look at your papers, if you
please. A handsome vessel, upon my word!"

"We are just going to breakfast, major: you will join us, I hope?"

This the major did, and being a Yankee of fluent speech, we soon
learned all about him--how he had served in a Massachusetts regiment,
and had been the first secretary of state under the new constitution
of Florida. This has an imposing sound, but when we learn that almost
all the better class of whites were mere unreconstructed rebels,
leaving only a few poor whites, some carpet-baggers from the North
and the negroes from whom to select the State officers, the position
ceases to seem exalted. During breakfast he told us all about New
Smyrna and its people, which was not much, since there are only five
or six houses there. The conjecture of Captain Morris about the pilot
was correct: he was of a good old rebel family, every man of whom of
suitable age had been in the Confederate service.

Major Allen went to visit the Victoria, and on his return we both got
under way and beat up the river about two miles, anchoring in three
fathoms water under the bluff on which stands the collector's house.
About noon a boat from each yacht started for the hotel. The river
here expands into a bay of a mile in width, containing several
islands, some of them wooded, and some low and grassy. The main
channel of the Hillsboro' River comes in from the south, half a mile
wide, with ten or twelve feet of water. On the west side the bay is a
low island with a creek between it and the mainland. On this mainland
is a shell bluff, twelve feet high, on which stands the hotel--a long
two-story building, with a piazza in front and out-buildings behind.
In the front yard are young orange, olive and fig trees, with two
splendid oleanders fifteen feet high, one on each side the door.
Another tropical plant, seen at the North in greenhouses, but here
growing ten feet high in the open air, is the American aloe or
century-plant. This house will accommodate twenty-five boarders, but
it was not full at the time; so we obtained rooms. It is one of the
most comfortable places in Florida, with a well-kept table, provided
with fish, oysters, turtle and game. New Smyrna is about thirty miles
from Enterprise, on the St. John's River: to this place there are
three or four steamers weekly from Jacksonville.

A hunting-party was organized to go th