of the party, and consequently we sailed northward as fast as wind and
sometimes oars would take us.

Only one cause for delay seemed tolerable to the Paying Teller. This
was to stop at every post-office. We had received but one mail while in
camp, which had been brought in a sail-boat from an office twenty miles
away. But the Paying Teller had given and written the most intricate
and complex directions for the retention or forwarding of his mail to
every postmaster in the country we had passed through, and these
directions, as we afterward found, had so puzzled and unsettled the
minds of these postmasters that for several weeks his letters had been
moving like shuttlecocks up and down the St. John's and Indian
rivers--never stopping anywhere, never being delivered, but crossing
and recrossing each other as if they were imbued with their owner's
desire to go, go, go. Some of the post-offices where we stopped were
lonely little buildings with no other habitation near. These we usually
found shut up, being opened only on mail-days, and in such cases
nothing could be done but to slip a protesting postal into the little
slit in the wall apparently intended for letters. Whether these postals
were eaten by rats or read by the P.M.'s, we never discovered. Wherever
an office was found open, we left behind us an irate postmaster
breathing all sorts of contemplated vengeance upon the disturbers of
his peace. We heard of letters that had been sent north and sent south,
but there never were any at the particular place where we happened to
be, and I suppose that the accumulated mail of the Paying Teller may
for several years drop gradually upon him through the meshes of the
Dead-Letter Office.

There were a great many points of interest which we had passed on our
downward trip, the boatman assuring us that, with the wind we had, and