We skirted Viola Lake, cresting the high hill, and descending to a shaded valley where the lapping waters plashed upon the roadside: then mounted another hill, among thick clustering oaks and giant pines, to where three lakes are seen spreading broadly out upon a grassy plain between high wooded slopes. And these are Ekoniah! Twenty years ago a tiny rivulet, wandering through broad prairies; eight years later a wider stream, already beginning to encroach upon the grassy borderland; now a chain of ever-broadening lakes, already drawing near to the hills which frame in the widespread plain. Famous grazing-lands these were once, the favored haunts of cattle-drovers, more famous hunting-grounds in older days, before firm prairie had given place to watery savanna. There were Indian villages upon the heights above and bloody battles in the plains below. But who shall tell the story of those days? The Indians are gone; the cattle-drovers have followed them to the far South; the new settler of twenty years ago cared nothing for antiquities or for the legends of an older time. The dead past is buried: even the sonorous old Indian name has been softened down to Etonia: be it the happy lot of this chronicler to rescue it from oblivion!
The lakes of the lately-traversed "Lake Region," frequent as they had been, were as nothing to those of Ekoniah Scrub. The road rose and fell over a succession of low hills, each ascent gained discovering a new sheet of water to right, to left or before us, deep sunk among thick-clustering trees. At rare intervals the forest would fall away on either hand, opening up a wide view of cultivated fields, sweeping grandly down in long stripes of tender green to the billowy verdure of the broad savanna, where silvery-sparkling lakes lay imbedded and great round "hummocks" of dark trees uprose like islands in the grassy sea. In the distance would be barren slopes of rich dark red and silvery gray, swelling upward to the far dim mystery of pine woods and the blue arch above.
We ate our dinner beside Lake Rosa, a circular basin of clearest water rippling and dimpling under the soft breeze. Toward evening we found the ford, which a paralytic old woman sitting in a sunny corner of a farm-house piazza had indicated to us as "right pretty." Pretty it was, indeed, as we came down to it through the most luxuriant of hummocks of transparent-foliaged sweet-gums and shining-leaved magnolias with one great creamy flower. "Right pretty" it was, too, in the old woman's meaning of the word, for Barney drew us through in safety, scarce up to his knees in the transparent water which reflected so perfectly every flower and leaf of the dense water-growth. The road beyond was cut through an arch of close-meeting trees, and farther on it skirted a broad lake, which already, in its slow, sure, upward progress, had covered the roadway and was reaching even to the fence which bounds the field above. In this field is a large mound, never investigated, although the farmer who owns the property says he has no doubt that it is the site of an Indian village, for the plough turns up in the fields around not only arrow-heads, but fragments of pottery and household utensils. It was not our good-fortune to obtain any of those relics, as they have not been preserved, and this was the only mound of any extent which we saw. Such mounds are said, however, to be not infrequent in this district, and Indian relics are found everywhere.
As we drove along the hillside we began to notice frequent basin-like depressions of greater or less size, always perfectly circular, always with the same saucer-shaped dip, always without crack or fissure, yet appearing to have been formed by a gradual receding of the substructure, reminding one of the depression in the sand of an hour-glass or of the grain in a hopper. Many of these concaves were dry; others had a little water in the bottom; all of them had trees growing here and there, quite undisturbed, whether in the water or not; and there was no one who had cared to note how long a time had elapsed since they had begun their "decline and fall." There is little doubt, however, that the future traveller will find them developed into lakes, as, indeed, we found one here and there upon the hilltops.
How many times we got lost among the lakes and "pot-holes," the fallen trees and thickets of Ekoniah Scrub, it would be tedious to relate. How many times we came down to the prairie-level, and, fearful to trust ourselves upon the treacherous, billowy green, were forced to "try back" for a new road along the hillside, it would be difficult to say. The county clerk's itinerary had ended here, and William Townsend proved to be less ubiquitous than we had been led to expect. Thus it was that night came down upon us one evening before we had reached a place of shelter—suddenly, in the thick scrub, not lingeringly, as in the long forest glades of the lake country. For an hour we pushed on, trusting now to Barney's sagacity, now to the pioneering abilities of Artist and Scribe, who marched in the van. Fireflies flitted about, their unusual brilliancy often cheating us into the fond hope that shelter was at hand. The ignes-fatui in the valley below often added to the deception, and after many disappointments we were about to spread our blankets upon the earth and prepare for a night's rest al fresco when we heard a distant cow-call. Clear and melodious as the far-off "Ranz des Vaches" it broke upon the stillness, gladdening all our hearts. How we answered it, how we hastened over logs and through thickets in the direction of answering voices and glancing lights—no ignes-fatui now—how we were met halfway by an entire family whom we had aroused, and with what astonishment we heard ourselves addressed by name,—can better be imagined than described. By the happiest of chances we had come upon the home of some people whom we had casually met upon the St. John's River only a few weeks before, and our dearest and oldest friends could not have welcomed us more cordially or have been more gladly met by us.
In the early morning we heard again, between sleeping and waking, the musical cow-call. It echoed among the hills and over the lakes: there were the tinkling of bells, the pattering of hoofs, the eager, impatient sounds of a herd of cattle glad of morning freedom. It was like a dream of Switzerland. And, hastening out, we found the dream but vivified by the intense purity of the air surcharged with ozone, the exquisite clearness of the outlines of the hills, the sparkling brightness of the lakes in the valley, the freshness of glory and beauty which overspread all like a world new made.
One of the great events of that day was a desperate fight between two chameleons in a low oak-scrub on the hilltop. The little creatures attacked each other with such fury, with such rapid changes of color from gray to green and from green to brown, with such unexpected mutations of shape from long and slender to short and squat, with such sudden dartings out and angry flamings of the transparent membrane beneath the throat, with such swift springs and flights and glancings to and fro, as were wonderful to see. It seemed as though both must succumb to the fierce scratchings and clawings; and when at last one got the entire head of his adversary in his mouth and proceeded deliberately to chew it up, we thought that the last act in the tragedy was at hand. The Small Boy made a stealthy step forward with a view to a capture, when, presto! change! two chameleons with heads intact were calmly gazing down upon us with that placid look of their kind which seemed to assure us that fighting was the last act of which they were capable.
That day, too, is memorable for the charming scenes it brought us, impossible for the pencil to reproduce with all their sweet accessories. We have found the ford at last, where the blue ribbon of the stream lies across the white sand of our road. The prairie stretches out broad and green with many circular islets of tree-mounds in the ocean-like expanse. The winding road beyond the ford leads, between cultivated fields on one side and the tree-bordered prairie on the other, up to the low horizon, where soft white thunderheads are heaped in the hazy blue. The tinkling of cow-bells comes sweetly over the sea of grass; slow wavelets sob softly in the sedges of the stream; fish glance through the water; a duck flies up on swiftly-whirring wing. A great moss-draped live-oak leans over the stream, and the perfume of the tender grapes which crown it floats toward us on the air.
Again, after we have climbed the hill to Swan Lake, and have dined beside Half-moon Pond, and have "laid our course," as the sailors say, by our map and the sun, straight through the Scrub to visit Lake Ella, we come out upon the heights above Lake Hutchinson. The dark greens of the foreground soften into deep-blue shadows in the middle distance. Lake Hutchinson sparkles, a vivid sapphire, against the distant silvery-gray of Lake Geneva, while far away the low blue hills melt, range behind range, into the pale-blue sky.
Our faces were turned homeward, but there were yet many miles of the Ekoniah country running to northward on the east of the Ridge, and