of this bureau.  These keepers live along a coast of some thousands of miles in extent on the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and the Gulf of Mexico, many of them in isolated positions, but honesty, economy, and intelligent skill are everywhere apparent; and these men work like an army of veterans.  I have intruded upon their privacy at all hours, but have never found one of them open to criticism.  There is no shirking of the onerous duties of their position.  Too much praise cannot be given to these light-keepers in their lonely towers, or to the intelligent heads which direct and govern their important work.

As I was leaving the light-house, a young woman approached me, and introducing herself as a visitor to the keeper’s family, said she had a favor to ask.  Would it be too much trouble for the stranger, after he reached New York, to inquire the price of a switch of human hair of just the shade of her own flaxen locks, and write her about it!  Of course such an appeal could not be disregarded; but I confess that as I gazed upon the boundless sea, and along the uninhabited strand, and into the unsettled forests, I wondered where the men or women were to be found to appreciate the imported New York switch.  Would it not “waste its sweetness on the desert air” in the unpeopled wilderness?

The boisterous weather kept us on the beach until Friday, when we launched our boats and rowed along the coast three miles to a point opposite a lagoon which was separated from the sea by a narrow strip of land.  While pulling along the beach, great black-fish, some of them weighing at least one thousand pounds, came up out of the sea and divided into four companies.  The first ranged itself upon our right, the second upon our left, the third, forming a school, proceeded in advance, while the fourth brought up the rear.  Unlike the frisky porpoises, these big fellows convoyed us in the most dignified manner, heaving their dark, shining, scaleless bodies half out of the water as they surged along within a few feet of our boats.

When we arrived at our point of disembarkation, and turned shoreward to run through the surf, our strange companions seemed loath to leave us, but rolled about in the offing, making their peculiar nasal sounds, and spouting, like whales, jets of spray into the air.  A landing was accomplished without shipping much water, and we immediately hauled the boats across the beach, about three or four hundred feet, into a narrow lagoon, the western branch of St. Vincent’s Sound.

Indian Pass was two miles east of our portage.  It is an inlet of the sea, through which small vessels pass into St. Vincent’s Sound, en route for the town of Apalachicola.  Heavy seas were, however, breaking upon its bar at that time, and it would have been a dangerous experiment to have entered it in our small boats.  Emerging from the lagoon, the broad areas of St. Vincent’s Sound and Apalachicola Bay met our gaze, while beyond them were spread the waters of St. George’s Sound.