AN ULTIMATUM With the beginning of March the end of the so-called social season, south of Jupiter Light, is close at hand.

First, the great winter hotels close; then, one by one, doors and gates of villa and cottage are locked, bright awnings and lawn shades furled and laid away, blinds bolted, flags lowered.

All summer long villa and caravansary alike stand sealed and silent amid their gardens, blazing under the pale fierce splendour of an unclouded sky; tenantless, save where, beside opened doors of quarters, black recumbent figures sprawl asleep, shiny faces fairly sizzling in the rays of a vertical sun.
The row of shops facing the gardens, the white streets, quay, pier, wharf are deserted and silent.

Rarely a human being passes; the sands are abandoned except by some stray beach-comber; only at the station remains any sign of life where trains are being loaded for the North, or roll in across the long draw-bridge, steaming south to that magic port from which the white P.and O.steamers sail away into regions of eternal sunshine.
So passes Palm Beach into its long summer sleep; and the haunts of men are desolate.

But it is otherwise with the Wild.
Night and the March moon awake the winter-dormant wilderness from the white man's deadening spell.