CHAPTER XIX
BUTTERFLIES OF THE INDIAN RIVER
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 sea and sky.
Standing on the islands that bar the Indian River
from the full tides, you may see this bloom sweep
in a purpling vapor from the sea up into a sapphire
sky, which it informs with an almost ruby
iridescence at times. The gentle southeast winds
of mid-March have blown this bloom in from the
sea and sky and spread all the landscape of the
southern East Coast with it, a pale blue, smoke-*like
haze in whose aroma there is yet no pungency
of smoke. It is like the blue haze of Indian
summer which often hangs the New England hills
with a violet indistinctness out of which all
dreams might well come true.
The road down Indian River winds sandily along the bluff always southward toward the sun. On your left hand you glimpse the blue river with the island a haze of deep blue on the horizon. It
