"Take the St. Augustine road,"
said the man to whom I had spoken; and he pointed out its beginning
nearly opposite the state capitol. After breakfast I followed his
advice, with results so pleasing that I found myself turning that corner
again and again as long as I remained in Tallahassee.
The road goes abruptly downhill to the railway track, first between deep
red gulches, and then between rows of negro cabins, each with its garden
of rosebushes, now (early April) in full bloom. The deep sides of the
gulches were draped with pendent lantana branches full of purple
flowers, or, more beautiful still, with a profusion of fragrant white
honeysuckle. On the roadside, between the wheel-track and the gulch,
grew brilliant Mexican poppies, with Venus's looking-glass, yellow
oxalis, and beds of blackberry vines. The woods of which my informant
had spoken lay a little beyond the railway, on the right hand of the
road, just as it began another ascent. I entered them at once, and after
a semicircular turn through the pleasant paths, amid live-oaks,
water-oaks, red oaks, chestnut oaks, magnolias, beeches, hickories,
hornbeams, sweet gums, sweet bays, and long-leaved and short-leaved
pines, came out into the road again a quarter of a mile farther up the
hill. They were the fairest of woods to stroll in, it seemed to me, with
paths enough, and not too many, and good enough, but not too good; that
is to say, they were footpaths, not roads, though afterwards, on a
Sunday afternoon, I met two young fellows riding through them on
bicycles.
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