Florida trails as seen from Jacksonville to Key West and from November to April inclusive

The white sands of the Florida coast seem like the pearly gates drawing reluctantly together behind the departing traveler. The winter has rolled up like a scroll behind him, en...

Almost a half century ago Harriet Beecher Stowe lived on the banks of the St. Johns River and wrought for noble ideals in her own brave, cheery way. In “Palmetto Leaves” she tel...

I had not expected to find a zebra so far north, yet he galloped by the door one torrid day showing his black and yellow stripes most tantalizingly. He was so near that the bril...

One of the sweetest of Southern trees at this time of the year is the loquat, which is not by right of birth a Southern tree at all, being transplanted from Japan. However the l...

When I left New York, I thought that I had said good-by to the smaller migrating birds for three days. My steamer’s keel was to furrow nearly a thousand miles of rough sea befor...

I have now decided that I will not live for the remainder of my days in the country between Okeechobee and the sea. I had thought it a place peculiarly fitted for the abode of m...

Ward’s heron is the Florida variety of the great blue heron, like him only more so. There is slight difference in the marking, the _Ardea wardi_ having olive instead of black le...

A swoon of heat and blue tropic haze brings holly blossom time to northern Florida in mid-April. In this haze the distant shores of the St. Johns slip away until the silver glea...

The cattle men, whose wealth is in range cattle, roaming at will, take advantage of the dry weather of winter to set the world afire. Hence a soft, blue haze all about that make...

So runs an ancient and foolish ditty. There is something about it which makes one think of pelicans as doing a little dance and thus happily singing, wing in wing, so to speak....

The old Greek myth-makers sang with poetic fervor of the golden apples of the Hesperides, which no doubt were oranges, nor do I blame them for their fervor. Apples they knew, an...

An early December bird student in northern Florida suffers from embarrassment of riches. Never elsewhere have I seen so many varieties of birds in such numbers. Never elsewhere...

In St. Augustine there is a very genial, old colored man who, in spite of his weatherworn tatters, is a philanthropist and has an eye for good dressers. His favorite stampede is...

Man has set Palm Beach as a gem in a jungle, which is itself as beautiful in its way as the nacre of the oyster in which we find the pearl. The gem is cut and polished till all...

Where the Bahamas vex the Gulf Stream so that the rich romance of its violet blue is shoaled into an indignant green that is yet more lovely, there is a grape-like bloom on both...

To be sure, March came blustering, but it blew in out of a succession of moon-flooded nights, soft and brilliant, in which the ineffable love of the heavens for the earth was so...

The Spaniards brought the grapefruit to Florida, and left it behind them. Here it has been ever since, until the last ten or fifteen years neglected and despised, but taking car...

The bobolinks, bound for South America and perpetual summer, go by a route which most birds, strange to say, shun. They pass down through Florida and over the Caribbean Sea, tou...

One of the Alice-in-Wonderland fruits of the pineapple ridge which lies to the westward of the Indian River is the papaw. I never see it but I expect to find the walrus and the...

Spring and autumn kissed yesterday in the savannas east of Lake Okeechobee, and autumn died of it. Autumn was lucky thus to be raptured out of existence, for he was but a weakli...

It was out of a moonless night that the frost came--a night whose sky was velvety black and seemed to hold no stars. Instead they had slipped moorings and on slender cables, I d...

The everglades, which on the later maps of Florida are concentrated in the southern tip of the peninsula, there hardly conceded to extend as far north as Lake Okeechobee, as a m...

Out in the wild country to the westward of the St. Lucie River the winds of dawn mass fluffy cumulous clouds along the horizon, and the morning sun tints these till it seems as...

Whoever has since discovered the North Pole, we know that Santa Claus was the original settler and, to whatever land he may come, we think of him as cheering his reindeer on ove...

transported by magic, or perchance by an Afreet or the talons of a roc, from king’s gardens to deserts, and anon back again. The dream of yesterday was of stately palms, of rich...