If all railroads were thus
furnished they might be recommended as among the best of routes for
walking naturalists, since they go straight through the wild country.
This one carried me by turns through woodland and cultivated field,
upland and swamp, pine land and hammock; and, happily, my expectations
of the ivory-bill were not lively enough to quicken my steps or render
me heedless of things along the way.
Here I was equally surprised and delighted by the sight of yellow
jessamine still in flower more than a month after I had seen the end of
its brief season, only a hundred miles further south. So great,
apparently, is the difference between the peninsula and this Tallahassee
hill-country, which by its physical geography seems rather to be a part
of Georgia than of Florida. Here, too, the pink azalea was at its
prettiest, and the flowering dogwood, also, true queen of the woods in
Florida as in Massachusetts. The fringe-bush, likewise, stood here and
there in solitary state, and thorn-bushes flourished in bewildering
variety.
Nearer the track were the omnipresent blackberry vines, some patches of
which are especially remembered for their bright rosy flowers.
Out of the dense vegetation of a swamp came the cries of Florida
gallinules, and then, of a sudden, I caught, or seemed to catch, the
sweet _kurwee_ whistle of a Carolina rail. Instinctively I turned my ear
for its repetition, and by so doing admitted to myself that I was not
certain of what I had heard, although the sora's call is familiar, and
the bird was reasonably near.
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