but you never saw palmetto roots; and what
curious things they are! huge, hard, yellowish-brown stems, as thick as my
arm, or thicker, extending and ramifying under the ground in masses that
seem hardly justified or accounted for by the elegant, light, spiky fans
of dusky green foliage with which they fill the under part of the woods
here. They look very tropical and picturesque, but both in shape and
colour suggest something metallic rather than vegetable, the bronze green
hue and lance-like form of their foliage has an arid hard character that
makes one think they could be manufactured quite as well as cultivated. At
first I was extremely delighted with the novelty of their appearance; but
now I feel thirsty when I look at them, and the same with their kinsfolk
the yuccas and their intimate friends, if not relations, the prickly
pears, with all of which once strange growth I have grown, contemptuously
familiar now.

Did it ever occur to you what a strange affinity there is between the
texture and colour of the wild vegetables of these sandy southern soils,
and the texture and colour of shells? The prickly pear, and especially the
round little cactus plants all covered with hairy spikes, are curiously
suggestive of a family of round spiked shells, with which you, as well as
myself, are, doubtless, familiar; and though the splendid flame colour of
some cactus blossoms never suggests any nature but that of flowers, I have
seen some of a peculiar shade of yellow pink, that resembles the mingled
tint on the inside of some elaborately coloured shell, and the pale white
and rose flowers of another kind have the colouring and almost texture of
shell, much rather than of any vegetable substance.

To-day I walked out without Jack, and in spite of the terror of snakes
with which he has contrived slightly to inoculate me, I did make a short
exploring journey into the woods. I wished to avoid a ploughed field, to
the edge of which my wanderings had brought me; but my dash into the
woodland, though unpunished by an encounter with snakes, brought me only
into a marsh as full of land-crabs as an ant-hill is of ants, and from
which I had to retreat ingloriously, finding my way home at last by the
beach.

I have had, as usual, a tribe of visitors and petitioners ever since I
came home. I will give you an account of those cases which had anything
beyond the average of interest in their details. One poor woman, named
Molly, came to beg