168 and distinct than the broader later contests | but occupied a vast extent of country. Se-like fine old sketches to which we turn coffee left two sons; one of them was called again after a surfeit of fiery paintings ablaze Payne. Go on, General." with color. "Payne's Landing was named after King Payne, a Seminole chief-" began the General. "Seminoles-name signifying wild wanderers-were originally runaways from the Creeks of Georgia," commented the generalizer, rapidly. "In 1750 a number of them settled in Florida under a chief named Secoffee. They were never very numerous, "Payne, a Seminole chief," said the General, going back and beginning over again. "He seems to have been possessed of more wisdom than belongs usually to the Indian character, for he labored to unite all the separated bands into one tribe under one He lived here upon the Oklawaha head. (which took its name from the Oklawaha Indians, who were a darker-skinned race, descended from the Yemasees), and he was called king, the title and accompanying power descending to his son and grandson, the latter the Micanope of the Seminole war, who also lived in the Oklawaha country, northwest of Orange Lake. The Seminole war began-or rather I should say the Seminole war was caused by-" "One moment. Uncle Sam bought Florida from Spain, you know, in 1821," said the generalizer. "The Spanish settlements had never extended far from the coast, and the Indians had the whole interior to themselves. But of course the new American settlers were not going to stand that. 'Go down to the everglades and stay there, or else emigrate,' they said. Lo wouldn't; result, a row. Take it up at the treaty, General; you know all about that." The General, not quite sure now that he knew all about any thing, rallied his forces, and began again at the desired point: "The second treaty with the Indians-the first having been disregarded-was made at Payne's Landing, which we are now passing, in May, 1832. In it the Indians agreed to exchange their Florida lands for an equal amount west of the Mississippi, together with a certain sum of money, a certain number of blankets, and a fair price for their cattle. They were to remove within three years, and in the mean time a committee of their own chiefs was to explore the new country and report upon it." "They went, were absent six months, found the climate cold, no pitch-pine, and Arkansas generally a delusion and a snare," interpolated the generalizer. "The treaty, however, had been signed by fifteen undoubted Seminole cross-marks, and the United States prepared herself to execute it. Time up; not a red-skin ready; troops sent; war." While the General was transporting himself to this new starting-point, Ermine remarked: "My history consists of a series of statues and tableaux-statues of the great men, tableaux of the great events; I refuse to know more. Were there any such in the Seminole war?" The General not having arrived yet, the generalizer was happy to reply: "Yes; one tableau and two statues-the former the Dade Massacre, the latter Hallak Tustenugge and the gallant Worth.'" Simultaneously the whole twenty of us, glad to touch bottom somewhere, hastened to announce that we knew of "the gallant Worth," and I gained an additional lustre by bringing forward the item that he was the eighth commander sent out to close the war. "And he succeeded-the only one who did. But the whole business was a terrible wandering through swamps, voyaging up unknown rivers, and cutting paths into faraway hamaks after Indians who were never THE GENERAL. there, for six long years," said the generalizer, bringing the war down another four hundred pages at a jump. "Come, General, give the ladies an idea of the life-something that you saw, now." The General, however, had given up all idea of any thing that he saw. But he had a retentive memory, and after some consideration (allowed him by the generalizer's having been called off to look at a moccasin suake on the bank) he now favored us with two quotations on the subject. "My first," he said, beginning like a charade, "is as follows: Fruitless expeditions marched out and returned, and failed to find the enemy. The work of surprise and massacre still went on by invisible bands, who struck the blow and disappeared. The country was discouraged, the troops disheartened, and the Indians unmolested." A pause. "My second: Their duties were divested of all the attributes of a soldier, but they went resolutely to work with one incentive to do their duty. The officer and his command of thirty or forty men resembled more a banditti than a body of soldiers in the service of their country. He, at the head of his little band, without shoes or stockings, his pantaloons sustained by a belt, in which was thrust a brace of pistols, without vest or coat, his cap with a leathern flap behind to divert the rain from coursing down his back-in this manner he led his detachment through bog and water, day after day, dependent for food upon the contents of his haversack strapped to his back. The only stars above his head were the stars of heaven, the only stripes those on his lacerated feet, and the only sound to welcome him after his toils EUREKA LANDING. was the abuse and fault-finding of the ignorant and vindictive.'" lifted the boat around bodily--but following the accommodating ribbon, which flowed into the Oklawaha again a few miles above, having only been off making a little loop, as it were, for its own amusement. As we turned a curve I looked back. Eureka may grow into a metropolis if it likes, but I shall never think of it save as a wild forest, a ribbon of a river, a solitary shanty, and Rip Van Winkle sitting on the step gazing after us, his dog and gun beside him. "Far and few, far and few, are the lands where the jumblies live,'" quoted Ermine. "I have always wanted to go, and now here we are, in our sieve." The naturalist, not catching this exactly, asked what it was. "It belongs, Sir, to the same period of art as the classic ballad of the Owl and the Pussy Cat,' which you have probably heard," said Ermine. But the naturalist had not; and Ermine, who loved pure nonsense once in a while, and always declared that only a high order of mind could appreciate it, began gravely and repeated the whole ballad of the "Owl," followed by the "Jumblies," which, she said, was peculiarly appropriate to our case, our steamer being a sieve, our heads green, our veils blue, and the "Lakes and the Torrible Zone" just ahead of us. She closed with the last verse, as follows: We received these quotations with ap-And in twenty years they all came back, plause; and then Ermine asked for the remaining statue and the tableau. "The Dade Massacre is reserved for future use," said our generalizer, "and Hallak Tustenugge belongs to Orange Lake, which we have not yet reached. We passed Iola some time ago. All hands ready now for Eureka Landing!" Of all the wild spots on the Oklawaha there is not one so hidden away, so like nothing but itself, as Eureka Landing. No wonder they called it Eureka, after such a chase to find it. Our steamer turned out of the Oklawaha into a little thread of a stream, deep, no doubt, but only just wide enough to hold her. Through this narrow ribbon of water she slowly advanced, running ashore at curves, and poled off by the boatmen, wedged between cypresses, keeled up on logs, scraped, caught in the branches, and wrecked, as we supposed, a dozen times in that flower-bordered ditch. Yet she always managed to start on again, and, thus progressing, we came at last to a solitary little shanty with a padlocked door, and one man sitting on the step, with dog and gun, gazing at us like Rip Van Winkle when he awoke in the forest. We put ashore several boxes and bales here, but Rip never stirred; evidently they were not for him. In a moment or two we steamed away again, not turning around-for that would have been impossible, unless we had all gotten out and In twenty years or more, And every one said, "How tall they've grown, And the hills of the Chankley Bore." Far and few, far and few, are the lands where the jumblies live; Their heads are green and their veils are blue, and they went to sea in a sieve.'" The naturalist listened, at first gravely, then somewhat confused, and finally utterly bewildered, as Ermine sweetly rolled out the verses with her most delicate accentuation. "Ah, yes; very, very fine," he murmured at the close; and then retreated hastily to the upper deck, where he spent the rest of the day in the more congenial pursuit of collecting specimens from the flowers and vines as we passed, and catching flying things, or rather trying to catch them, in a little hand-net. I caught him once or twice looking dubiously over at Ermine; but he did not venture down again. The woods through which we sailed all day were wilder than a Northerner's wildest dream of tropic forests; the great trees towered above us one hundred and thirty feet high, often meeting over our heads, so that we journeyed through a mighty arbor; along shore and in the dark pools within stood the singular "knees;" vines and flowers, airplants and flitting brilliant birds, filled the intervening space. Vegetation fairly rioted, and we almost expected to see moving about some of those strange forms of life which belonged to the age when ferns were trees, and the whole land a tropic jungle. "I see faces and green dragons peeping out every where," said Iris. "It is like Doré's pictures." That night a thunder-storm struck us in a narrow stretch of river. I woke. The rain sounded on the little roof like hailstones; behind us and alongside the darkness of the forest was intense, the blackest darkness I have ever seen. But in front our faithful pitch-pine fires burned steadily, and lighted up the dark water, the wet trunks of the trees, and the pouring rain with a distinctness that only made me feel all the more strongly how strange it was, and how lost we seemed away up that wild, far-away river on our little steamer in the midnight storm. I praised the pitch-pine fires the next morning with all my heart. "The Indian's friend," said the Governor. "In their new Western homes they missed more than any thing else, so they said, their favorite 'lightwood,' the pitch-pine, an ever-ready hearth in the wilderness, burning cheerily on through storm and rain." We passed landings here and there, swamp - ways where rafts of cypress logs were waiting, towed aside to give us the channel, and at last we came to the fair waters of which we had heard. Silver Spring, beautiful enchanted pool, who can describe thee! About one hundred miles from the mouth of the Oklawaha, a silvery stream enters the river; we turn out of our chocolate-colored tide, and sail up this crystal channel, which carries us along between open savannas covered with flowers, as different as possible from the dark tangled forest where we have journeyed. This stream, or run, as it is called, has a rapid current, and, although twenty feet deep, the bottom is distinctly visible as we pass over, so clear is the water. Nine miles of this, and we come to the spring-head, a basin one hundred feet wide, fifty yards long, and forty feet deep, a fairy lakelet surrounded by tropical foliage more beautiful than any thing we had yet seen, the Magnolia grandiflora mixing with the palms and moss-draped live-oaks, wild grape-vines clambering every where, the pennons of the yellow jasmine floating from the trees, and solid banks of Cherokee roses walling up the spaces between the low myrtles, as if fortifying the spring with blossoms. The water was so transparent that we could see a pin on the bottom distinctly, and objects there were coated, fringed, and edged with brilliant rainbow tints, the smallest spray of moss taking to itself the hues of a prism, and a fragment of china, dropped in by some visitor, shining like an opal: all this is the effect of refraction. Our steamer was to lie here some hours, and now it was that the Governor came to the front again. "Cross in canoes, and lunch on the opposite shore," he said. Nobody saw any canoes, only muddy flatbottomed boats; and nobody knew how or where to get any lunch, or any body to row. But the Governor put his shoulder to the wheel, and things moved. Result: the eight of us found ourselves in two light canoes, with boys to row; a charming shady place appeared on the far side of the lake; lunch sprang up there as if by magic-delicious sandwiches, little cakes, Champagne on ice; the very flowers we wanted grew there; the very glasses out of which we drank were Bohemian (in glass, not in spirit), and like nothing but themselves. Iris had given up her little oppositions long ago; she looked at every thing through the fringes of her long eyelashes, and assented when Ermine remarked, in an under-tone, that the only thing you could do with such a man as the Governor was to sit down and admire him. While our canoe was passing the centre of the lake we seemed to be floating in mid-space, for the water was so clear that one could scarcely tell where it ended and the air began; the trees were reflected like realities; the fish swimming about were as distinct as though we had them in our hands; in short, with the prism - tinted fringes every where along the bottom, it was enchantment. The spring water bubbles up from little silver and green sand hillocks by this grave chieftain. Before the war here and there, but the main supply comes broke out he had supplied one of our garrifrom under a limestone ledge at the north-sons with fish for some time, and the sutler, eastern end. The generalizer had the statistics all ready: "Three hundred million gallons every twenty-four hours, or more than twenty times the amount consumed daily by New York city." "How it wells up into its beautiful rainbow bowl!" said Ermine, leaning over the side. "I must tell you a story connected with Silver Spring," said the generalizer. "To begin with, however, you must know that I've been studying up the Seminole wareh, General?" The General looked a little as though somebody had been stealing his thunder, but he said nothing, and George went on. "In all the histories and correspondence connected with this war there is frequent mention of a chief named Jones-Sam Jones -who for a number of years lived here at Silver Spring. Jones was apparently a person of high importance among the Seminoles, a prophet and a medicine - man. Jones is here, Jones is there, on the pages of the histories, now turning up as far north as our old friend the Suwanee River, now lurking in the Cretan labyrinth of the Cove,' now hopelessly escaped to the 'watery fastnesses of the stretching everglades;' but no one explains how he came by his name. My curiosity is roused. Certainly it is not a Seminole name. Once the title of fisherman' is added, and only stimulates my ardor. But it was only the other day, after all my searching, that by chance I learned the comic origin of the title borne CHERUBS-AN OKLAWAHA ART STUDY. being of a musical turn, and given to chanting the ballads of the day, named the solemn warrior 'Sam Jones,' in a jocular mood, after 'Sam Jones, the fisherman,' the hero of a song then in vogue in New York-a parody on 'Dunois, the young and brave.'" "It was Dunois, the young and brave, Was bound for Palestine, But first he paid his orisons Before Saint Mary's shrine- chanted Iris. "Mother used to sing it." 'It was Sam Jones, the fisherman, But first upon his almanac A solemn oath he took "And grant a streak of fishing luck"- "That I may have good sport to-night, And catch a load of clams."" Thus the chance fancy of a musical sutler bestowed a name which has become historic, and which will go gravely down in American history forever." Miss Treshington was charmed with Silver Spring, with the lunch, with every thing; she regarded the Governor with something almost like interest in her serene eyes, but finally fell back upon the undoubted Banyer, who sat comfortably eating sandwiches by her side. "What do you think of our host ?" she asked, in an under-tone. "Fine fellow," said the Duke, abstracted ly. "But I wish-I wish he had brought some olives." At this moment olives made their appearance at the other end of the table-cloth, followed by a charming little mustard-pot of the most aristocratic ugliness. "A first-rate fellow-a capital fellow, I declare," said the Duke, with enthusiasm. "Give me a man who knows how to live. What mustard! ---superb!" Miss Treshington relapsed into thought. At Silver Spring we found several houses; a stage runs back to the town of Ocala, some miles distant. Eventnally the beautiful lakelet must be a resort, and no doubt wonderful virtues will be discovered in its silver waters. We saw an express cart starting into the interior, and the generalizer, hav |