ween the noble avenues
of live-oaks which were planted around the mansion. But these oaks--never
saw finer trees--certainly I never saw so many majestic and venerable
trees together. I looked far down the immense arches that overshadowed the
broad passages, as high as the nave of a Gothic cathedral, apparently as
old, and stretching to a greater distance. The huge boughs were clothed
with gray moss, yards in length, which clung to them like mist, or hung in
still festoons on every side, and gave them the appearance of the vault of
a vast vapory cavern. The cawing of the crow and the scream of the jay,
however, reminded us that we were in the forest. Of the mansion there are
no remains; but in the thicket of magnolias and other trees, among
rosebushes and creeping plants, we found a burial-place with monuments of
some persons to whom the seat had belonged.

Savannah is more healthy of late years than it formerly was. An
arrangement has been made with the owners of the plantations in the
immediate vicinity by which the culture of rice has been abandoned, and
the lands are no longer allowed to be overflowed within a mile from the
city. The place has since become much less subject to fevers than in
former years.

I left, with a feeling of regret, the agreeable society of Savannah. The
steamboat took us to St. Mary's, through passages between the sea-islands
and the main-land, similar to those by which we had arrived at Savannah.
In the course of the day, we passed a channel in which we saw several huge
alligators basking on the bank. The grim creatures slid slowly into the
water at our approach. We passed St. Mary's in the night, and in the
morning we were in the main ocean, approaching the St. John's, where we
saw a row of pelicans standing, like creatures who had nothing to do, on
the sand. We entered the majestic river, the vast current of which is
dark with the infusion of the swamp turf, from which it is drained. We
passed Jacksonville, a little town of great activity, which has sprung up
on the sandy bank within two or three years. Beyond, we swept by the mouth
of the Black Creek, the water of which, probably from the color of the mud
which forms the bed of its channel, has to the eye an ebony blackness, and
reflects objects with all the distinctness of the kind of looking-glass
called a black mirror. A few hours brought us to Picolata, lately a
military station, but now a place with only two houses.

Letter X