THE NEW CENTURY FIFTH READER. A WATER-LANE IN FLORIDA. SIDNEY LANIER. But presently we abandoned the broad and garish highway of the St. John's, and we turned off to the right into the narrow lane of the Ocklawaha, the sweetest water-lane in the world, a lane which runs for more than one hundred and fifty miles of pure delight betwixt hedgerows of oaks and cypresses, and palms and bays, and magnolias and mosses, and manifold vine-growths; a lane clean to travel along, for there is never a speck of dust in it save the blue dust and gold dust which the wind blows out of the flags and lilies; a lane which is as if a typical wood-troll had taken shape, and as if God had there turned into water and trees the recollection of some meditative ramble through the lonely seclusions of His own soul. As we advanced up the stream, our wee craft even seemed to emit her steam in more leisurely whiffs as she pushed along. Dick, the pole-man a man of marvelous fine functions when we shall presently come to the short, narrow curves-lay asleep on the guards, in great peril of rolling into the river over the three inches between his length and the edge; the people of the boat moved not, and spoke not; the white crane, the curlew, the limpkin, the heron, the water turkey, were scarcely disturbed in their quiet avocations as we passed, and quickly succeeded in persuading themselves, after each momentary excitement of our gliding by, that we were really, after all, no monster, but only some daydream of a monster. The stream, which in its broader stretches reflected the sky so perfectly that it seemed like a ribbon of heaven bound in lovely doublings along the breast of the land, now began to narrow; the blue heaven disappeared, and the green of the overleaning trees assumed its place. The lucent current lost all semblance of water. It was simply a distillation of many-shaded foliages smoothly sweeping along beneath us. It was green trees fluent. One felt that a subtle amalgamation and mutual give and take had been effected between the natures of water and leaves. A certain sense of pellucidness seemed to breathe coolly out of the woods on either side of us; and the glassy dream of a forest over which we sailed appeared to send up exhalations of balms and odors and stimulant pungencies. "Look at that snake in the water!" said a gentleman, as we sat on the deck with the engineer, just come up from his watch. The engineer smiled. "Sir, it is a water turkey," he said, gently. The water turkey is the most preposterous bird within the range of ornithology. He is not a bird; he is a neck, with such subordinate rights, members, appurtenances, and hereditaments thereunto apper taining as seem necessary to that end. He has just enough stomach to arrange nourishment for his neck, just enough wings to fly painfully along with his neck, and just big enough legs to keep his neck from dragging on the ground; and his neck is lightcolored, while the rest of him is black. When he saw us, he jumped up on a limb and stared. Then suddenly he dropped into the water, sank like a leaden ball out of sight, and made us think he was drowned, when presently the tip of his beak appeared, then the length of his neck lay along the surface of the water, and in this position, with his body submerged, he shot out his neck, drew it back, wriggled it, twisted it, and spirally poked it into the east, the west, the north, and the south, with a violence of involution and contortionary energy that made one think in the same breath of corkscrews and of lightnings. But what nonsense! All that labor and perilous asphyxiation for a beggarly sprat or a couple of inches of water snake! Some twenty miles from the mouth of the Ocklawaha, at the right-hand edge of the stream, is the handsomest residence in America. It belongs to a certain alligator of my acquaintance, a very honest and worthy saurian, of good repute. A little cove of water, dark green under the overhanging leaves, placid, pellucid, curves round at the river edge into the flags and lilies, with a curve just heartbreaking for the pure beauty of the flexure of it. This house of my saurian is divided into apartments-little subsidiary bays which are scalloped out by the lily-pads according to the sinuous fantasies. of their growth. My saurian, whenever he desires to sleep, has but to lie down anywhere; he will find marvelous mosses for his mattress beneath him; his sheets will be white lily-petals; and the green disks of the lily-pads will straightway embroider themselves together above him for his coverlet. He never quarrels with his cook; he is not the slave of a kitchen, and his one housemaid — the stream — forever sweeps his chambers clean. His conservatories there under the glass of that water are ever, and without labor, filled with the enchantments of strange under-water growths; his parks and his pleasure grounds are bigger than are any king's. Upon my saurian's house the winds have no power, the rains are only a new delight to him, and the snows he will never see. Regarding fire, as he does not employ its slavery, so he does not fear its tyranny. Thus, all the elements are the friends of my saurian's house. While he sleeps he is being bathed. What glory to awake sweetened and freshened by the sole careless act of sleep! Lastly, my saurian has unnumbered mansions, and can change his dwelling as no human householder may; it is but a fillip of his tail, and lo! he is established in another place as good as the last, ready furnished to his liking. For many miles together the Ocklawaha is a river without banks, though not less clearly defined as a stream for that reason. The swift, deep current meanders between tall lines of trees; beyond these, on each side, there is water also a thousand shallow rivulets lapsing past the bases of multitudes of trees. Along the immediate edges of the stream every tree trunk, sapling, stump, or other projecting coigne of vantage is wrapped about with a close-growing vine. At first, like an unending procession of nuns. disposed along the aisle of a church, these vine figures stand. But presently, as one journeys, this nun-imagery fades out of one's mind, and a thousand other fancies float with ever new vine-shapes into one's eyes. One sees repeated all the forms one has ever known, in grotesque juxtaposition. Look! here is a great troop of girls, with arms wreathed over their heads, dancing down into the water; there the vines hang in loops, in pavilions, in columns, in arches, in caves, in pyramids, in harps and lyres, in globular mountain-ranges, in pagodas, domes, minarets, belfries, draperies, and dragons. * * * * The edges of the stream are further defined by flowers and water-leaves. The tall, blue flags; the ineffable lilies sitting on their round lily-pads like white queens on green thrones; the tiny stars and long ribbons of the water-grasses; the pretty phalanxes of a species of "bonnet" which, from a long stem that swings off down stream along the surface, sends up a hundred little graceful stemlets, each bearing a shield-like disk and holding it aloft as the antique soldiers held their bucklers to form the testudo, or tortoise, in attacking. All these border the river in infinite varieties. * * * And then, after this day of glory, came a night of glory. Down in these deep-shaded lanes it was dark indeed as the night drew on. The stream which had been all day a baldric of beauty, sometimes blue |