Birds were singing, rainbows glancing, in
quivering, water-laden trees; flowers were shimmering in the sunshine;
the young growth was springing up glorious from the blackness of
desolating winter fires. Such tender tones of pink and gray! such
fiery-hearted reds and browns and olive-greens! such misty vagueness in
the shadows! such brilliance in the sunlight that melted through the
openings of the woods! "All alike," indeed! No "accidents" of rock or
hill are here, but oh the grandeur of those far-sweeping curves of
undulating surface! the mystery of those endless aisles of
solemn-whispering pines! the glory of color, intense and fiery, which
breathes into every object a throbbing, living soul!
For hours we journeyed through the forest, always in the centre of a
vast circle of scattered pines, upon the outer edge of which the trees
grew dense and dark, stretching away into infinity. Our road wandered
in and out among the prostrate victims of many a summer tempest: now we
were winding around dark "bays" of sweet-gum and magnolia; now skirting
circular ponds of delicate young cypress; now crossing narrow
"branches" sunk deep in impenetrable "hummocks" of close-crowded oak
and ash and maple, thick-matted with vines and undergrowth; now pausing
to gather orchis and pitcher-plants and sun-kisses and andromeda; now
fording the broad bend of Peter's Creek where it flows, sapphire in the
sunshine, out from the moss-draped live-oaks between high banks of red
and yellow clays and soft gray sand, to lose itself in a tangle of
flowering shrubs; now losing and finding our way among the intricate
cross-roads that lead by Bradley's Creek and Darbin Savage's tramway
and the "new-blazed road" of the county clerk's itinerary.
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