27th. Major H. Whiting, U.S.A., writes from St. Augustine, Florida: “I have been favored with your letter of a month since, it having, I dare say, made all due diligence the post office arrangements admit. But the time shows the sort of intercourse I am doomed to have with my Detroit friends. I consider that the country ought to feel under obligations to one who serves her at such a sacrifice. Indeed, she can make us no adequate return, but to allow me to return—the only return I ask. When, however, that favor will be granted is past my guessing. You ask when the war will terminate? You could not puzzle any of us more than by putting such a question. We are more at our wit’s end than the war’s end. And yet I do not see that anything has been left undone, that might have been done. The army has moved steadily toward its objects. But those objects are like a mirage, they are always nearly the same distance off. What can we do in such a case?
“The army for the last few weeks has been operating in a country that is more than half under water. It has often been difficult to find a spot dry enough for an encampment. If the troops do not all come out web-footed, it is because water can’t make a duck’s leg.
“I am on the lookout for specimens. I have one small alligator’s bones, and have laid in for those of a larger one, an old settler, no doubt going back to Bartram’s days. Alligators here have suffered more than the Indians in this war. I should judge that several hundreds have been killed from the boats as they pass up and down. They all have a bed just in the bank of the river, where they sleep in the sun, and the temptation is too great for any rifle, and they generally wake up a little too late. Mineral specimens here are not various. I have collected a few in order to show my friends, who can draw inferences from them. Shells have had a principal hand in the formation of this peninsula. They form the ninety-ninth part of the rock in this quarter. It is a most convenient formation, being worked almost as easily as clay, and yet it makes substantial walls. Frost, I presume, would play the deuce with it. But that is a thing not much known here. I have not yet had the pleasure to fix my northern eye on a piece of ice this winter, though there has been a cream thickness of it once or twice. A pitcher frozen over here makes more noise than the river frozen over at Detroit. The frogs have piped here all winter—happy dogs. I have been out at all times and in all places, and I don’t think my nose has been blue but once since I have been here—I have not been blue myself once. I have not yet been to Ponce de Leon’s spring. But there are some springs here of a wondrous look. They are so transparent that the fish can scarce believe themselves there in their own element. The Mackinack waters are almost turbid to them. They have a most sulphurous odour, and might renew a man’s youth, but it must be at the expense of all sweet smells. I would rather keep on than go back on such conditions.