ilderness, all that is left of us, and but little indeed that
is.

"The _Astoria_, is but a wretched tub, and we crawl along at the rate
of four or five miles per hour, halting here and there to avoid the
wrecks of the war, panting for breath, longing, 'as the heart panteth
for the water-brook,' to see once more the shores of our beloved New
England. Never will this excruciating sail be forgotten. All day--all
night, for long, long, weary hours, the wretched little steamer
groaned and screamed its melancholy way over the yellow, nasty
Roanoke.

"Hour after hour we sat gazing at the tall cypress-trees and the long
trailing mosses, looking like the pale sickly shrouds enveloping a
dead and ruined world. Here and there we saw huge nests of the
size and shape of a barrel, and near, on the ruined branch of a
lightning-struck tree, perched on its topmost bough, the great bald
eagle of the South, keeping his sleepless watch and ward, while the
wife-bird tended the household gods below. Deadly moccasins and
huge turtles lay listless in the sun, and hundreds of bushels of
blackberries were wasting their sweetness on the desert air. Now and
then there came to us like an inspiration from heaven the ecstatic
music of the mockingbird, carrying shame and despair to the breasts of
all the other warblers of the aerial choir.

"Nothing could be more inspiring than the notes of this charming
singer, as we listened to them here amid these melancholy swamps
exhaling the sickly miasma beneath this blighting sun, with not a
breath of air to lift the blood red banners of the trumpet creepers,
or to cool the fevered brow. Melancholy waitings are heard from the
swamps, and the waves in parting, look like fields of fire. The winds
come to us, but with them no refreshing, for they came over mile after
mile of suffocating, reeking lagoons, stifling with the hot breath of
the miasma.

"Every now and then the Rip Van Winkle machinery breaks down, and for
hours we are motionless, listening per force to the terrific cursing
and pounding in the Vulcanic realms below. At length the sun, not like
the rosy-fingered Aurora, daughter of the dawn, but like a huge red
monster intent on devouring the world, shoots at us his blighting,
withering lances of scorching heat. We touch once more at Plymouth,
which greets us with its usual entertainment of murderous fleas,
death-dealing watermelons and chain-lightning whiskey. Our ten minute
touch here lengthene