“All right, captain!  I will step below and look at your papers, if you please.  A handsome vessel, upon my word!”

“We are just going to breakfast, major:  you will join us, I hope?”

This the major did, and being a Yankee of fluent speech, we soon learned all about him—­how he had served in a Massachusetts regiment, and had been the first secretary of state under the new constitution of Florida.  This has an imposing sound, but when we learn that almost all the better class of whites were mere unreconstructed rebels, leaving only a few poor whites, some carpet-baggers from the North and the negroes from whom to select the State officers, the position ceases to seem exalted.  During breakfast he told us all about New Smyrna and its people, which was not much, since there are only five or six houses there.  The conjecture of Captain Morris about the pilot was correct:  he was of a good old rebel family, every man of whom of suitable age had been in the Confederate service.

Major Allen went to visit the Victoria, and on his return we both got under way and beat up the river about two miles, anchoring in three fathoms water under the bluff on which stands the collector’s house.  About noon a boat from each yacht started for the hotel.  The river here expands into a bay of a mile in width, containing several islands, some of them wooded, and some low and grassy.  The main channel of the Hillsboro’ River comes in from the south, half a mile wide, with ten or twelve feet of water.  On the west side the bay is a low island with a creek between it and the mainland.  On this mainland is a shell bluff, twelve feet high, on which stands the hotel—­a long two-story building, with a piazza in front and out-buildings behind.  In the front yard are young orange, olive and fig trees, with two splendid oleanders fifteen feet high, one on each side the door.  Another tropical plant, seen at the North in greenhouses, but here growing ten feet high in the open air, is the American aloe or century-plant.  This house will accommodate twenty-five boarders, but it was not full at the time; so we obtained rooms.  It is one of the most comfortable places in Florida, with a well-kept table, provided with fish, oysters, turtle and game.  New Smyrna is about thirty miles from Enterprise, on the St. John’s River:  to this place there are three or four steamers weekly from Jacksonville.

A hunting-party was organized to go the next day to Turnbull’s Swamp, which lies a few miles west of Loud’s, and contains deer, turkeys and ducks, with bears and panthers for those who desire that kind of game.  The party consisted of Captain Morris and Roberts of our yacht; Colonel Vincent and two of the Englishmen from the Victoria, with Weldon the pilot, and a tall Ohio hunter named Halliday, who lived in the woods near Loud’s.  He took three fox-hounds, and Morris brought his deer-hounds ashore.  They took with them a mule and cart, with a tent and blankets, intending to stay in the swamp over night.  Captain Herbert and I preferred to go a-fishing, and we hired a man to get bait and take us to the ground in his boat.  Doctor White went off by himself to shoot birds for his collection.