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PALMETTO-LEAVES
BY
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.


ILLUSTRATED.


BOSTON:
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY,
(LATE TICKNOR & FIELDS, AND FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO.)
1873.




Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873,
BY JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO.,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.
Boston:
Stereo!y6ed and Printed by Rand, A very, &v Co.




CONTENTS.


NOBODY'S DOG..
A FLOWERY JANUARY IN FLORIDA
THE WRONG SIDE OF THE TAPESTRY
A LETTER TO THE GIRLS
A WATER-COACH, AND A RIDE IN IT
PICNICKING UP JULINGTON 
MAGNOLIA
YELLOW JESSAMINES 
"FLORIDA FOR INVALIDS"
SWAMPS AND ORANGE-TREES
LETTER-WRITING.
MAGNOLIA WEEK
BUYING LAND IN FLORIDA.
OUR EXPERIENCE IN CROPS.
MAY IN FLORIDA..
ST. AUGUSTINE
OUR NEIGHBOR OVER THE WAY 
THE GRAND TOUR UP RIVER
OLD CUDJO AND THE ANGEL
THE LABORERS OF THE SOUTH


PAGE.
16
26
40
53
*.....      69.   87
97.  6
137
148....   I861..  r....   196
205
225
247
267.279




MAP OF THE ST. JOHN RIVER, FLORIDA.




'    "\;,'  -.
/^^BK-fc^^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


NOBODY'S DOG.


ES, here he comes again! Look at
fc    ~him! Whose dog is he? We are
sitting around the little deck-house
of the Savannah steamer, in that languid state
of endurance which befalls voyagers, when,
though the sky is clear, and the heavens blue,
and the sea calm as a looking-glass, there is
yet that gentle, treacherous, sliding rise and fall,
denominated a ground-swell.
Reader, do you remember it? Of all deceit



2


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


ful demons of the deep, this same smooth, slippery, cheating ground-swell is the most diabolic.
Because, you see, he is a mean imp, an underhanded, unfair, swindling scamp, who takes from
you all the glory of endurance. Fair to the eye,
plausible as possible, he says to you, "What's
the matter? What can you ask brighter than
this sky, smoother than this sea, more glossy
and calm than these rippling waves? How fortunate that you have such an exceptionally
smooth voyage!"
And yet look around the circle of pale faces
fixed in that grim expression of endurance, the
hands belonging to them resolutely clasping
lemons, - those looks of unutterable, repressed
disgust and endurance. Are these people seasick? Oh, no! of course not. "Of course,"
says the slippery, plausible demon, " these people can't be sick in this delightful weather, and
with this delightful, smooth sea! "




NOBODY'S DOG.


3


But here comes the dog, now slowly drooping from one to another, - the most woe-begone
and dejected of all possible dogs. Not a badlooking dog, either; not without signs about him
of good dog blood.
We say one to another, as we languidly review
his points, " His hair is fine and curly: he has
what might be a fine tail, were it not drooping in
such abject dejection and discouragement. Evidently this is a dog that has seen better days,a dog that has belonged to somebody, and taken
kindly to petting."  His long nose, and great
limpid, half-human eyes, have a suggestion of
shepherd-dog blood about them.
He comes and seats himself opposite, and
gazes at you with a pitiful, wistful, intense gaze,
as much as to say, "Oh! do you know where
HE is? and how came I here? - poor, miserable
dog that I am!" He walks in a feeble, discouraged way to the wheel-house; and sniffs at the




4


PA LMETTO-LEA VES.


salt water that spatters there; gives one lick,
and stops, and comes and sits quietly down
again: it's "no go."
" Poor fellow! he's thirsty," says one; and the
Professor, albeit not the most nimble of men,
climbs carefully down the cabin-stairs for a tumbler of water, brings it up, and places it before
him. Eagerly he laps it all up; and then, with
the confiding glance of a dog not unused to
kindness, looks as if he would like more.
Another of the party fills his tumbler, and he
drinks that.
"Why, poor fellow, see how thirsty he was!"
"I wonder whose dog he is?" "Somebody ought
to see to this dog!" are comments passing
round among the ladies, who begin throwing
him bits of biscuit, which he snaps up eagerly.
"He's hungry too. Only see how hungry he
is! Nobody feeds this dog. Whom does he
belong to?"




NOBODY'S DOG.


5


One of the ship's stewards, passing, throws in
a remark, "That dog's seasick: that's what's the
matter with him. It won't do to feed that dog;
it won't: it'll make terrible work."
Evidently some stray dog, that has come
aboard the steamer by accident, - looking for a
lost master, perhaps; and now here he is alone
and forlorn. Nobody's dog!
One of the company, a gentle, fair-haired
young girl, begins stroking his rough, dusty hair,
which though fine, and capable of a gloss if
well kept, now is full of sticks and straws. An
unseemly patch of tar disfigures his coat on one
side, which seems to worry him: for he bites at
it now and then aimlessly; then looks up with a
hopeless, appealing glance, as much as to say, " I
know I am looking like a fright; but I can't help
it. Where is HE? and where am I? and what
does it all mean?"
But the caresses of the fair-haired lady inspire




6


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


him with a new idea. He will be "nobody's
dog" no longer: he will choose a mistress.
From that moment he is like a shadow to the
fair-haired lady: he follows her steps everywhere, mournful, patient, with drooping tail and
bowed head, as a dog not sure of his position,
but humbly determined to have a mistress if
dogged faith and persistency can compass it.
She walks the deck; and tick, tick, pitapat, go
the four little paws after her.  She stops:
he stops, and looks wistful. Whenever and
wherever she sits down, he goes and sits at her
feet, and looks up at her with eyes of unutterable
entreaty.
The stewards passing through the deck-house
give him now and then a professional kick; and
he sneaks out of one door only to walk quietly
round a corner and in at the other, and place
himself at her feet. Her party laugh, and rally
her on her attractions. She now and then pats




NOBODY'S DOG.


7


and caresses and pities him, and gives him
morsels of biscuit out of her stores. Evidently
she belongs to the band of dog-lovers. In the
tedious dulness of the three-days' voyage the dog
becomes a topic, and his devotion to the fairhaired lady an engrossment.
We call for his name. The stewards call him
"Jack:" but he seems to run about as well for
one name as another; and it is proposed to call
him "Barnes," from the name of the boat we
are on. The suggestion drops, from want of
energy in our very demoralized company to
carry it. Not that we are seasick, one of us:
oh, no! Grimly upright, always at table, and
eating our three meals a day, who dares intimate
that we are sick? Perish the thought! It is
only a dizzy, headachy dulness, with an utter
disgust for every thing in general, that creeps
over us; and Jack's mournful face reflects but
too truly our own internal troubles.




8


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


But at last here we are at Savannah and the
Scriven House; and the obliging waiters rush
out and take us in and do for us with the most
exhaustive attention. Here let us remark on'the differences in hotels.  In some you are
waited on sourly, in some grudgingly, in some
carelessly, in some with insolent negligence.
At the Scriven House you are received like
long-expected friends. Every thing is at your
hand, and the head waiter arranges all as benignantly as if he were really delighted to make
you comfortable. So we had a golden time at
the Scriven House, where there is every thing
to make the wayfarer enjoy himself
Poor Jack was overlooked in the bustle of the
steamer and the last agonies of getting landed.
We supposed we had lost sight of him forever.
But lo! when the fair-haired lady was crossing
the hall to her room, a dog, desperate and dusty,
fought his way through the ranks of waiters to
get to her.




NOBODY'S DOG.


9


"It isn't our dog; put him out gently; don't
hurt him," said the young lady's father.
But Jack was desperate, and fought for his
mistress, and bit the waiter that ejected him, and
of course got kicked with emphasis into the
street.
The next morning, one of our party, looking
out of the window, saw Jack watching slyly outside of the hotel. Evidently he was waiting for
an opportunity to cast himself at the feet of his
chosen protectress.
" If I can only see her, all will yet be right,"
he says to himself.
We left Savannah in the cars that afternoon;
and the last we heard of Jack, he had been seen
following the carriage of his elected mistress in
a drive to Bonaventure.
What was the end of the poor dog's romance
we have never heard. Whether he is now blessed
in being somebody's dog, - petted, cared for,




IO0


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


caressed, - or whether he roves the world desolate-hearted as "nobody's dog," with no rights
to life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness, we have
no means of knowing.
But the measureless depth of dumb sorrow,
want, woe, entreaty, that there are in a wandering dog's eyes, is something that always speaks
much to us, - dogs in particular which seem to
leave their own kind to join themselves to man,
and only feel their own being complete when
they have formed a human friendship. It seems
like the ancient legends of those incomplete
natures, a little below humanity, that needed a
human intimacy to develop tlem. How much
dogs suffer mentally is a thing they have no
words to say; but there is no sorrow deeper than
that in the eyes of a homeless, friendless, masterless dog. We rejoice, therefore, to learn that
one portion of the twenty thousand dollars
which the ladies of Boston have raised for " Our




NOBODY'S DOG.


II


Dumb Animals " is about to be used in keeping
a home for stray dogs.
Let no one sneer at this. If, among the "five
sparrows sold for two farthings," not one is forgotten by our Father, certainly it becomes us
not to forget the poor dumb companions of our
mortal journey, capable, with us, of love and its
sorrows, of faithfulnesss and devotion. There is,
we are told, a dog who haunts the station at
Revere, daily looking for the return of a master
he last saw there, and who, alas! will never
return. There are, many times and oft, dogs
strayed from families, accustomed to kindness
and petting, who have lost all they love, and have
none to care for them. To give such a refuge,
till they find old masters or new, seems only a
part of Christian civilization.
The more Christ's spirit prevails, the more we
feel for all that can feel and suffer. The poor
brute struggles and suffers with us, companion




12


PA LMETTO-LEA VES.


of our mysterious travel in this lower world; and
who has told us that he may not make a step
upward in the beyond? For our own part, we
like that part of the poor Indian's faith, -
"That thinks, admitted to yon equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company."
So much for poor Jack. Now for Savannah.
It is the prettiest of Southern cities, laid out in
squares, planted with fine trees, and with a series
of little parks intersecting each street, so that
one can walk on fine walks under trees quite
through the city, down to a larger park at the
end of all. Here there is a fountain whose
charming sculpture reminds one of those in the
south of France.   A  belt of ever-blooming
violets encircles it; and a well-kept garden of
flowers, shut in by an evergreen hedge, surrounds
the whole. It is like a little bit of Paris, and
strikes one refreshingly who has left New York
two days before in a whirling snow-storm.




NOBODY'S DOG.


I3


The thing that every stranger in Savannah
goes to see, as a matter of course, is Bonaventure.
This is an ancient and picturesque estate,
some miles from the city, which has for years
been used as a cemetery.
How shall we give a person who has never
seen live-oaks or gray moss an idea of it?
Solemn avenues of these gigantic trees, with
their narrow evergreen leaves, their gnarled,
contorted branches feathered with ferns and
parasitic plants, and draped with long swaying
draperies of this gray, fairy-like moss, impress
one singularly. The effect is solemn and unearthly; and the distant tomb's, urns, and obelisks
gleaming here and there among the shadows
make it more impressive.
Beneath the trees, large clumps of palmetto,
with their waving green fans, give a tropical
suggestion to the scene; while yellow jessamine




14


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


wreathe and clamber from tree to tree, or weave
mats of yellow blossoms along the ground. It
seems a labyrinth of fairy grottoes, and is in
its whole impression something so unique, that
no one should on any account miss of seeing it.
Savannah is so pleasant a city, and the hotels
there are so well kept, that many find it far
enough south for all their purposes, and spend
the winter there. But we are bound farther
towards the equator, and so here we ponder the
question of our onward journey.
A railroad with Pullman sleeping-cars takes
one in one night from Savannah to Jacksonville,
Fla.; then there is a steamboat that takes one
round by the open sea, and up through the
mouth of the St. John's River, to Jacksonville.
Any one who has come to see scenery should
choose this route.  The entrance of the St.
John's from'the ocean is one of the most singular and impressive passages of scenery that we




NOBODY'S DOG.               I5
ever passed through: in fine weather the sight
is magnificent.
Besides this, a smaller boat takes passengers
to Jacksonville by what is called the inside passage,- a circuitous course through the network
of islands that lines the shore. This course also
offers a great deal of curious interest to one new
to Southern scenery, and has attractions for
those who dread the sea.   By any of these
courses Florida may be gained in a few hours
or days, more or less, from Savannah.




A FLOWERY JANUARY IN FLORIDA.
MANDARIN, FLA., Jan. 24, I872.
7~I~~E  ES, it is done. The winter is over and.B~j/:   past, and " the time of the singing of
birds is come." They are at it beak
and claw, -the red-birds, and the cat-birds, and
the chattering jays, and the twittering sparrows,
busy and funny and bright. Down in the
swamp-land fronting our cottage, four calla-lily
buds are just unfolding themselves; and in the
little garden-plat at one side stand rose-geraniums
and camellias, white and pink, just unfolding.




A FLOWERY JANUARY.


I7


Right opposite to the window, through which the
morning sun is pouring, stands a stately orangetree, thirty feet high, with spreading, graceful top,
and varnished green leaves, full of golden fruit.
These are the veritable golden apples of the
Hesperides, - the apples that Atalanta threw in
the famous race; and they are good enough to
be run after. The things that fill the New-York
market, called by courtesy "oranges," - pithy,
wilted, and sour, -have not even a suggestion
of what those golden balls are that weigh down
the great glossy green branches of yonder tree.
At the tree's foot, Aunt Katy does her weekly
washing in the open air the winter through.
We have been putting our tape-measure about
it, and find it forty-three inches in girth; and for
shapely beauty it has no equal. It gives one a
sort of heart-thrill of possession to say of such
beauty, "It is mine." No wonder the Scripture
says, " He that is so impoverished that he hath




PALME TTO-LEA VES.


no oblation chooseth a tree that will not rot."
The orange-tree is, in our view, the best worthy
to represent the tree of life of any that grows
on our earth. It is the fairest, the noblest, the
most generous, it is the most upspringing and
abundant, of all trees which the Lord God
caused to grow eastward in Eden. Its wood is
white and hard and tough, fit to sustain the
immense weight of its fruitage. Real good ripe
oranges are very heavy; and the generosity of
the tree inclines it to fruit in clusters. We
counted, the other day, a cluster of eighteen,
hanging low, and weighing down the limb.
But this large orange-tree, and many larger
than this, which are parts of one orchard, are
comparatively recent growths. In 1835, every
one of them was killed even with the ground.
Then they started up with the genuine pluck of
a true-born orange-tree, which never says die,
and began to grow again. Nobody pruned them,




A FLOWERY JANUARY.


I9


or helped them, or cared much about, them any
way; and you can see trees that have grown up
in four, five, and six trunks,-just as the suckers
sprung up from the roots. Then, when they had
made some progress,,came the orange-insect, and
nearly killed them down again. The owners of
the land, discouraged, broke down the fences,
and moved off; and for a while the land was
left an open common, where wild cattle browsed,
and rubbed themselves on the trees. But still,
in spite of all, they have held on their way
rejoicing, till now they are the beautiful creatures they are. Truly we may call them trees
of the Lord, full of sap and greenness; full of
lessons of perseverance to us who get frosted
down and cut off, time and time again, in our
lives. Let us hope in the Lord, and be up and
at it again.
It is certainly quite necessary to have some
such example before our eyes in struggling to




20


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


found a colony here. We had such a hard time
getting our church and schoolhouse! -for in
these primitive regions one building must do for
both.  There were infinite negotiations and
cases to go through before a site could be
bought with a clear title; and the Freedman's
Bureau would put us up a building where school
could be taught on week-days, and worship held
on Sundays: but at last it was done; and a
neat, pleasant little place it was.
We had a little Mason and Hamlin missionary organ, which we used to carry over on Sundays, and a cloth, which converted the master's
desk of week-days into the minister's pulpit;
and as we had minister, organist, and choir all
in our own family, we were sure of them at all
events; and finally a good congregation was
being gathered.  On week-days a school for
whites and blacks was taught, until the mismanagement of the school-fund had used up the




A FLOWERY JANUARY.


21


sum devoted to common schools, and left us
without a teacher for'a year.  But this fall
our friend Mr. D., who had accepted the situation of county overseer of schools, had just
completed arrangements to open again both
the white and the black schools, when, lo! in
one night our poor little schoolhouse was
burned to the ground, with our Mason and
Hamlin organ in it. Latterly it had been found
inconvenient to carry it backward and forward;
and so it had been left, locked in a closet, and
met a fiery doom. We do not suppose any
malicious incendiarism.  There appears evidence that some strolling loafers had gotten in
to spend the night, and probably been careless
of their fire. The southern pine is inflammable
as so much pitch, and will almost light with the
scratch of a match. Well, all we had to do was
to imitate the pluck of the orange-trees, which
we immediately did.  Our neighborhood had




22


PALME TTO-LEA VES.


increased by three or four families; and a meeting was immediately held, and each one pledged
himself to raise a certain sum. We feel the
want of it more for the schoolhouse than even
for the church. We go on with our Sunday
services at each other's houses; but alas for
the poor children, black and white, growing up
so fast, who have been kept out of school now a
year, and who are losing these best months for
study! To see people who are willing and
anxious to be taught growing up in ignorance
is the sorest sight that can afflict one; and we
count the days until we shall have our church
and schoolhouse again. But, meanwhile, Mandarin presents to our eyes a marvellously improved aspect. Two or three large, handsome
houses are built up in our immediate neighborhood. Your old collaborator of "The Christian
Union" has a most fascinating place a short distance from us, commanding a noble sweep of




A FLOWERY JANUARY.


23


view up and down the river. On our right hand,
two gentlemen from Newark have taken each a
lot; and the gables of the house of one of them
overlook the orange-trees bravely from the river.
This southern pine, unpainted, makes a rich,
soft color for a-house. Being merely oiled, it
turns a soft golden brown, which harmonizes
charmingly with the landscape.
How cold is it here? We ask ourselves, a
dozen times a day, "What season is it?" We
say, "This spring," "This summer," and speak
of our Northern life as "last winter." There
are cold nights, and, occasionally, white frosts:
but the degree of cold may be judged from the
fact that the Calla Ethiopica goes on budding
and blossoming out of doors; that La Marque
roses have not lost their leaves, and have long,
young shoots on them; and that our handmaiden, a pretty, young mulattress, occasionally
brings to us a whole dish of roses and buds




24


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


which her devoted has brought her from some
back cottage in the pine-woods. We have als6
eaten the last fresh tomatoes from the old vines
since we came; but a pretty severe frost has
nipped them, as well as cut off a promising lot
of young peas just coming into pod. But the
pea-vines will still grow along, and we shall
have others soon.
We eat radishes out of the ground, and lettuce, now and then, a little nipped by the frost;
and we get long sprays of yellow jessamine, just
beginning to blossom in the woods.
Yes, it is spring; though still it is cold
enough to make our good bright fire a rallyingpoint to the family. It is good to keep fire in a
country where it is considered a great point to
get rid of wood. One piles and heaps up with a
genial cheer when one thinks, " The more you
burn, the better." It only costs what you pay
for cutting and hauling. We begin to find our




A FLOWYERY 7ANUARY.            25
usual number of letters, wanting to know all
this, that, and the other, about Florida.  All
in good time, friends. Come down here once,
and use your own eyes, and you will know more
than we can teach you. Till when, adieu.




THE WRONG SIDE OF THE TAPESTRY.


CLOT is not to be denied that full half of the
tourists and travellers that come to
Florida return intensely disappointed,
and even disgusted. Why? Evidently because
Florida, like a piece of embroidery, has two sides
to it, -one side all tag-rag and thrums, without
order or position; and the other side showing
flowers and arabesques and brilliant coloring.
Both these sides exist. Both are undeniable, undisputed facts, not only in the case of Florida, but
of every place and thing under the sun. There
26




THE WRONG SIDE.


27


is a right side and a wrong side to every
thing.
Now, tourists and travellers generally come
with their heads full of certain romantic ideas
of waving palms, orange-groves, flowers, and
fruit, all bursting forth in tropical abundance;
and, in consequence, they go through Florida
with disappointment at every step. If the banks
of the St. John's were covered with orangegroves, if they blossomed every month in the
year, if they were always loaded with fruit, if
pine-apples and bananas grew wild, if the flowers
hung in festoons from tree to tree, if the ground
were enamelled with them all winter long, so that
you saw nothing else, then they would begin to
be satisfied.
But, in point of fact, they find, in approaching
Florida, a dead sandy level, with patches behind them of rough coarse grass, and tall pinetrees, whose tops are so far in the air that they




28


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


seem to cast no shade, and a little scrubby underbrush.  The few houses to be seen along the
railroad are the forlornest of huts. The cattle
that stray about are thin and poverty-stricken,
and look as if they were in the last tottering
stages of starvation.
Then, again, winter, in a semi-tropical region,
has a peculiar desolate untidiness, from the fact
that there is none of that clearing of the trees
and shrubs which the sharp frosts of the
northern regions occasion.  Here the leaves,
many of them, though they have lost their
beauty, spent their strength, and run their
course, do not fall thoroughly and cleanly, but
hang on in ragged patches, waiting to be
pushed off by the swelling buds of next year.
In New England, Nature is an up-and-down,
smart, decisive house-mother, that has her times
and seasons, and brings up her ends of life with
a positive jerk. She will have no shilly-shally,




THE WRONG SIDE.


29


When her time comes, she clears off the gardens
and forests thoroughly and once for all, and they
are clean. Then she freezes the ground solid as
iron; and then she covers all up with a nice
pure winding-sheet of snow, and seals matters
up as a good housewife does her jelly tumblers
under white-paper covers. There you are fast
and cleanly. If you have not got ready for it,
so much the worse for you! If your tender
roots are not taken up, your cellar banked, your
doors listed, she can't help it: it's your own
lookout, not hers.
But Nature down here is an easy, demoralized,
indulgent old grandmother, who has no particular time for any thing, and does every thing
when she happens to feel like it. "Is it winter,
or isn't it?" is the question that is likely often to
occur in the settling month of December, when
everybody up North has put away summer
clothes, and put all their establishments under
winter-orders.




30


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


Consequently, on arriving in mid-winter time,.the first thing that strikes the eye is the ragged,
untidy look of the foliage and shrubbery.
About one-third of the trees are deciduous, and
stand entirely bare of leaves. The rest are
evergreen, which by this time, having come
through the fierce heats of summer, have acquired a seared and dusky hue, different from
the vivid brightness of early. spring.  In the
garden you see all the half-and-half proceedings
which mark the indefinite boundaries of the
season. The rose-bushes have lost about half
their green leaves. Some varieties, however, in
this climate, seem to be partly evergreen. The
La Marque and the crimson rose, sometimes called Louis Philippe, seem to keep their
last year's foliage till spring pushes it off with
new leaves.
Once in a while, however, Nature, like a
grandmother in a fret, comes down on you with




THE WXRONG SIDE.


31


a most unexpected snub. You have a cold spell,
-an actual frost.  During the five years in
which we have made this our winter residence,
there have twice been frosts severe enough to
spoil the orange-crop, though not materially
injuring the trees.
This present winter has been generally a
colder one than usual; but there have been no
hurtful frosts. But one great cause of disgust and provocation of tourists in Florida is
the occurrence of these "cold snaps."  It is
really amusing to see how people accustomed to
the tight freezes, the drifting snow wreaths, the
stinging rain, hail, and snow, of the Northern
winter, will take on when the thermometer goes
down to 30~ or 32~, and a white frost is seen out
of doors. They are perfectly outraged. "Such
weather! If this is your Florida winter, deliver
me! " All the while they could walk out any
day into the woods, as we have done, and gather




32


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


eight or ten varieties of flowers blooming in the
open air, and eat radishes and lettuce and peas
grown in the garden.
Well, it is to be confessed that the cold of
warm climates always has a peculiarly aggravating effect on the mind. A warm region is just
like some people who get such a character for
good temper, that they never can indulge themselves even in an earnest. disclaimer without
everybody crying out upon them, "What puts
you in such a passion?" &c. So Nature, if she
generally sets up for amiability during the winter months, cannot be allowed a little tiff now
and then, a white frost, a cold rain-storm, without being considered a monster,
It is to be confessed that the chill of warm
climates, when they are chilly, is peculiar; and
travellers should prepare for it, not only in mind,
but in wardrobe, by carrying a plenty of warm
clothing, and, above all, an inestimable India



THE WRONG SIDE.


33


rubber bottle, which they can fill with hot water
to dissipate the chill at night. An experience
of four winters leads us to keep on about the
usual winter clothing until March or April. The
first day after our arrival, to be sure, we put
away all our furs as things of the past; but we
keep abundance of warm shawls, and, above all,
wear the usual flannels till late in the spring.
Invalids seeking a home here should be particularly careful to secure rooms in which there
can be a fire. It is quite as necessary as at the
North; and, with this comfort, the cold spells, few
in number as they are, can be easily passed by.
Our great feature in the Northern landscape,
which one never fails to miss and regret here, is
the grass.  The nakedness of the land is an
expression that often comes over one.   The
peculiar sandy soil is very difficult to arrange in
any tidy fashion.  You cannot make beds or
alleys of it: it all runs together like a place




34


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


where hens have been scratching; and consequently it is the most difficult thing in the
world to have ornamental grounds.
At the North, the process of making a new
place appear neat and inviting is very rapid.
One season of grass-seed, and the thing is done.
Here, however, it is the most difficult thing in
the world to get turf of any sort to growing.
The Bermuda grass, and a certain coarse, broadleafed turf, are the only kind that can stand the
summer heat; and these never have the beauty
of well-ordered Northern grass.
Now,. we have spent anxious hours and much
labor over a little plot in our back-yard, which
we seeded with white clover, and which, for a
time, was green and lovely to behold; but, alas!
the -Scripture was too strikingly verified:
"When the sun shineth on it with a burning
heat, it withereth the grass, and the grace of
the fashion of it perisheth."




THE WRONG SIDE.


35


The fact is, that people cannot come to heartily
like Florida till they accept certain deficiencies
as the necessary shadow to certain excellences.
If you want to live in an orange-orchard, you
must give up wanting to live surrounded by
green grass. When we get to the new heaven
and the new earth, then we shall have it all right.
There we shall have a climate at once cool and
bracing, yet hot enough to mature oranges and
pine-apples. Our trees of life shall bear twelve
manner of fruit, and yield. a new one every
month. Out of juicy meadows green as emerald,
enamelled with every kind of flower, shall grow
our golden orange-trees, blossoming and fruiting
together as now they do. There shall be no
mosquitoes, or gnats, or black-flies, or snakes;
and, best of all, there shall be no fretful people.
Everybody shall be like a well-tuned instrument,
all sounding in accord, and never a semitone out
of the way.




36


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


Meanwhile, we caution everybody coming to
Florida, Don't hope for too much. Because you
hear that roses and callas blossom in the open
air all winter, and flowers abound in the woods,
don't expect to find an eternal summer. Prepare
yourself to see a great deal that looks rough
and desolate and coarse; prepare yourself for
some chilly days and nights; and, whatever else
you neglect to bring with you, bring the resolution, strong and solid, always to make the best
of things.
For ourselves, we are getting reconciled to a
sort of tumble-down, wild, picnicky kind of life,
- this general happy-go-luckiness which Florida
inculcates. If we painted her, we should not
represent her as a neat, trim damsel, with
starched linen cuffs and collar: she would be
a brunette, dark but comely, with gorgeous
tissues, a general disarray and dazzle, and with
a sort of jolly untidiness, free, easy, and joyous.




THE WRONG SIDE.


37


The great charm, after all, of this life, is its
outdoorness. To be able to spend your winter
out of doors, even though some days be cold;
to be able to sit with windows open; to hear
birds daily; to eat fruit from trees, and pick
flowers from hedges, all winter long, - is about
the whole of the story. This you can do; and
this is why Florida is life and health to the
invalid.
We get every year quantities of letters
from persons of small fortunes, asking our
advice whether they had better move to Florida.
For our part, we never advise people to move
anywhere. As a general rule, it is the person
who feels the inconveniences of a present position, so as to want to move, who will feel the inconvenience of a future one.  Florida has a
lovely winter; but it has also, three formidable
summer months, July, August, and September,
when the heat is excessive, and the liabilities of




38


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


new settlers to sickness so great, that we should
never wish to take the responsibility of bringing
anybody here. It is true that a very comfortable number of people do live through them;
but still it is not a joke, by any means, to move
to a new country.  The first colony in New
England lost just half its members in the first
six months. The rich bottom-lands around
Cincinnati proved graves to many a family
before they were brought under cultivation.
But Florida is peculiarly adapted to the needs
of people who can afford two houses, and want a
refuge from the drain that winter makes on the
health. As people now have summer-houses at
Nahant or Rye, so they might, at a small expense, have winter-houses in Florida, and come
here and be at home. That is the great charm,
- to be at home. A house here can be simple
and inexpensive, and yet very charming.
Already, around us a pretty group of winter



THE WRONG SIDE.             39
houses is rising: and we look forward to the
time when there shall be many more; when, all
along the shore of the St. John's, cottages and
villas shall look out from the green trees.




7   -  -  - - - -  - - -   -   -  - - -  -   -  -  -  -~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~-~;:"~                             I. --- -- -
I~~~~~~~~~~
rc~;j


A LETTER TO THE GIRLS.


MANDARIN, FLA., Feb. 13, 1872.
Y  E'  ES, the girls! Let me see: who are
^0-1.    they? I mean you, Nellie, and Mary,?~~-S1^  and Emily, and Charlotte, and Gracie, and Susie, and Carry, and Kitty, and you
of every pretty name, my charming little Pussy
Willow friends! Dear souls all, I bless your
bright eyes, and fancy you about me as a sort
of inspiration to my writing. I could wish you
were every one here.  Don't you wish that
"The Arabian Nights" were true? and that
40




A LETTER TO THE GIRLS.


4I


there were really little square bits of enchanted
carpet, on which one has only to sit down
and pronounce two cabalistic words, and away
one goes through the air, sailing off on visits?
Then, girls, wouldn't we have a nice wide bit
of carpet? and wouldn't we have the whole
bright flock of you come fluttering down
together to play croquet with us under the
orange-trees this afternoon? And, while you
were waiting for your turns to come, you should
reach up and pull down a bough, and help yourselves to oranges; or you should join a party
now going out into the pine-woods to gather
yellow jessamine. To-day is mail-day; and, as
the yellow jessamine is in all its glory, the girls
here are sending little boxes of it North to their
various friends through the mail. They have
just been bringing in long wreaths and clusters
of it for me to look at, and are consulting how
to pack it. Then this afternoon, when we have




42


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


done croquet, it is proposed that we form a party
to visit Aunt Katy, who lives about two miles
away in the pine-woods, "over on Julington" as
the people here say. "On Julington " means on
a branch of the St. John's named Julington
Creek, although it is as wide as the Connecticut
River at Hartford. We put the oldest mule to
an old wagon, and walk and ride alternately;
some of us riding one way, and some the other.
The old mule, named Fly, is a worn-out,
ancient patriarch, who, having worked all his
days without seeing any particular use in it, is
now getting rather misanthropic in his old age,
and obstinately determined not to put one foot
before the other one bit faster than he is actually
forced to do. Only the most vigorous urging
can get him to step out bf a walk, although we
are told that the rogue has a very fair trot at his
command. If any of the darky tribe are behind him, he never thinks of doing any thing




A LETTER TO THE GIRLS.


43


but pricking up his ears, and trotting at a decent
pace; but, when only girls and women are to the
fore, down flop his ears, down goes his head,
and he creeps obstinately along in the aforementioned contemplative manner, looking, for all
the world, like a very rough, dilapidated old hairtrunk in a state of locomotion.
Well, I don't blame him, poor brute! Life, I
suppose, is as much a mystery to him as to the
philosophers; and he has never been able to
settle what it is all about, this fuss of being
harnessed periodically to impertinent carts, and
driven here and there, for no valuable purpose
that he can see.
Such as he is, Fly is the absolute property of
the girls and women, being past farm-work; and
though he never willingly does any thing but
walk, yet his walk is considerably faster than
that of even the most agile of us, and he is by
many degrees better than nothing. He is ad



44


PA LMETTO-LEA VES.


mitted on all hands to be a safe beast, and will
certainly never run away with any of us.
As to the choice of excursions, there are
several, - one to our neighbor Bowens to see
sugar-making, where we can watch the whole
process, from the grinding of the cane through
the various vats and boilers, till at last we see
the perfected sugar in fine, bright, straw-colored
crystals in the sugar-house. We are hospitably
treated to saucers of lovely, amber-colored sirup
just on the point of crystallization, -liquid
sugar-candy, - which, of course, we do not turn
away from. Then, again, we can go down the
banks of the river to where our neighbor Duncan has cleared up a little spot in what used
to be virgin forest, and where now a cosey little
cottage is beginning to peep through its many
windows upon the river-view. Here a bright
little baby —a real little Florida flower-has
lately opened a pair of lovely eyes, and is growing




A LETTER TO THE GIRLS.


45


daily in grace and favor. In front of this cottage,
spared from the forest, are three great stately
magnolias, such trees as you never saw. Their
leaves resemble those of the India-rubber tree, 
large, and of a glossy, varnished green. They
are evergreen, and in May are covered with
great white blossoms, something like pond-lilies,
and with very much the same odor. The trees
at the North called magnolias give no idea whatever of what these are. They are giants among
flowers; seem worthy to be trees of heaven.
Then there are all sorts of things to be got
out of the woods. There are palmetto-leaves to
be pressed and dried, and made into fans; there
is the long wire-grass, which can be sewed into
mats, baskets, and various little fancy articles,
by busy fingers. Every day brings something
to explore the woods for: not a day in winter
passes that you cannot bring home a reasonable
little nosegay of flowers. Many of the flowers




46


PA LMETTO-LEA VES.


here do not have their seasons, but seem to bloom
the year round: so that, all the time, you are sure
of finding something. The woods now are full
of bright, delicate ferns that no frosts have
touched, and that spring and grow perennially.
The book of Nature here is never shut and
clasped with ice and snow as at the North; and,
of course, we spend about half our time in the
open air.
The last sensation of our circle is our redbird. We do not approve of putting free birds
in cages; but Aunt Katy brought to one of our
party such a beautiful fellow, so brilliant a red,
with such a smart, black crest on his head, and
such a long, flashing red. tail, that we couldn't
resist the desire to keep him a little while, just
to look at him.  Aunt Katy insisted that he
wouldn't take it to heart; that he would be tame
in a few days, and eat out of our hands: in
short, she insisted that he would consider himself a fortunate bird to belong to us.




A LETTER TO THE GIRLS.


47


Aunt Katy, you must know, is a nice old lady.
We use that term with a meaning; for, though
"black as the tents of Kedar," she is a perfect lady in her manners: she was born and
brought up, and has always lived, in this
neighborhood, and knows every bird in the
forest as familiarly as if they were all her own
chickens; and she has great skill in getting them
to come to her to be caught.
Well, our red-bird was named Phcebus, of a
kind that Audubon calls a cardinal-grossbeak;
and a fine, large, roomy cage was got down for
him, which was of old tenanted by a very merry
and rackety cat-bird; and then the question
arose, "What shall we do with him?" For you
see, girls, having a soft place in our heart for all
pets, instead of drowning some of our kittens in
the fall, as reasonable people should, we were
seduced by their gambols and their prettiness to
let them all grow up together; and the result is,




48


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


that we have now in our domestic retinue four
adult cats of most formidable proportions.
" These be the generations" of our cats: first,
Liz, the mother; second, Peter, her oldest son;
third, Anna and Lucinda, her daughters. Peter
is a particularly martial, combative, obnoxious
beast, very fluffy and fussy, with great, fullmoon, yellow eyes, and a most resounding,
sonorous voice. There is an immense deal of
cat in Peter.  He is concentrated cathood, a
nugget of pure cat; and in fact we are all a
little in awe of him. He rules his mother and
sisters as if he had never heard of Susan
Anthony and Mrs. Stanton. Liz, Anna, and
Lucinda are also wonderfully-well-developed cats,
with capital stomachs. Now comes the problem: the moment the red-bird was let into his
cage, there was an instant whisk of tails, and a
glare of great yellow eyes, and a sharpening of
eye-teeth, that marked a situation.  The Scrip



A LETTER TO THE GIRLS.


49


ture tells us a time is coming when the lion shall
lie down with the lamb; but that time hasn't
come in Florida. Peter is a regular heathen,
and hasn't the remotest idea of the millennium.
He has much of the lion in him; but he never
could lie down peaceably with the lamb, unless
indeed the lamb were inside of him, when he
would sleep upon him without a twinge of conscience. Unmistakably we could see in his eyes
that he considered Phoebus as caught for his
breakfast; and he sat licking his chops inquiringly, as who should ask, "When will the cloth
be laid, and things be ready?"
Now, the party to whom the red-bird was
given is also the patron-saint, the "guide, philosopher, and friend," of the cats. It is she who
examines the plates after each meal, and treasures fragments, which she cuts up and prepares
for their repast with commendable regularity. It
is she who presides and keeps order at cat4




50


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


meals; and forasmuch as Peter, on account of
his masculine strength and rapacity, is apt to get
the better of his mother and sisters, she picks
him up, and bears him growling from the board,
when he has demolished his own portion, and js
proceeding to eat up theirs.
Imagine, now, the cares of a woman with four
cats and a bird on her mind! Phoebus had to
be carefully pinned up in a blanket the first
night; then the cage was swung by strong cords
from the roof of the veranda. The next morning, Peter was found perched on top of it, glaring
fiendishly. The cage was moved along; and
Peter scaled a pillar, and stationed himself at the
side. To be sure, he couldn't get the bird, as
the slats were too close for his paw to go
through; but poor Phoebus seemed wild with
terror. Was it for this he left his native wilds, -
to be exposed in a prison to glaring, wild-eyed
hyenas and tigers?




A LETTER TO THE GIRLS.


5I


The   cats  were  admonished,  chastised,
"scat"-ed, through all the moods and tenses;
though their patroness still serves out their
commons regularly, determined that they shall
not have the apology of empty stomachs.
Phcebus is evidently a philosopher, - a bird of
strong sense. Having found, after two or three
days' trial, that the cats can't get him; having
clusters of the most delicious rice dangling from
the roof of his cage, and fine crisp lettuce verdantly inviting through the bars, - he seems to
have accepted the situation; and, when nobody
is in the veranda, he uplifts his voice in song.
"What cheer! what cheer!" he says, together
with many little twitters and gurgles for which we
have no musical notes. Aunt Katy promises to
bring him a little wife before long; and, if that
be given him, what shall hinder him from being
happy? As April comes in, they shall build




52         PALMETTO-LEA VES.
their nest in the cage, and give us a flock of
little red-birds.
Well, girls, we are making a long letter; and
this must do for this week.




\:?-  -
A WATER-COACH, AND A RIDE IN IT.
MONDAY, Feb. 26, I872.
EAR    girls, wouldn't you like to
get into that little white yacht that
lies dancing and courtesying on the
blue waters of the St. John's this pleasant Monday morning?
It is a day of days. Spring has come down
with all her smiles and roses in one hour. The
great blue sheet of water shimmers and glitters
like so much liquid lapis lazuli; and now the


53




54


PA LMETTO-LEA VES.


word comes in from our neighbor, the owner of
the pleasure-yacht, "Wouldn't you like to go
sailing?"
Of course we should! That is exactly what
we do want. And forthwith there is a running
and a mustering of the clans, and a flapping of
broad palmetto-hats; and parties from all the
three houses file down, and present themselves
as candidates for pleasure.  A great basket of
oranges is hoisted in, and the white sails spread;
and with "Youth at the prow, and Pleasure at
the helm," away we go, the breezes blowing
manfully at our sails. The river is about five
miles from shore to shore, and we have known
it of old for a most enticing and tricksy customer. It gently wooes and seduces you; it
starts you out with all manner of zephyrs, until
you get into the very middle, two miles from
land on either side, when down goes your limp
sail, and the breeze is off on some other errand,




A WA TER-COA CI.


55


and you are left to your reflections. Not immediately did this happen to us, however; though,
when we came to the middle of the river, our
course was slow enough to give plenty of opportunity to discuss the basket of oranges. We
settle it among us that we will cross to Doctor's
Lake. This name is given to a wide bayou
which the river makes, running up into the
forest for a track of about nine miles. It is a
famous fishing and hunting region, and a favorite and chosen abode of the alligators. At the
farther end of it are said to be swamps where
they have their lairs, and lay their eggs, and
hatch out charming  young alligators.  Just
at the opening where the river puts into this
lake are the nets of the shad-fishers, who supply
the Jacksonville market with that delicious article. We are minded to go over and fill our provision-baskets before they go.
Now we near the opposite shore of the river.




56


PA LMETTO-LEA VES.


We see the great tuft of Spanish oaks which
marks the house of the old Macintosh plantation, once the palmiest in Florida.  This demesne had nine thousand acres of land, including in it the Doctor's Lake and the islands
therein, with all the store of swamps and forests
and alligators' nests, wild-orange groves, and palmetto-jungles. It was a sort of pride of territory that animated these old aboriginal planters;
for, of the whole nine thousand acres which
formed the estate, only about five hundred ever
were cleared, and subject to cultivation. One of
these days we are projecting to spend a day picnicking on this old plantation, now deserted and
decaying; and then we can tell you many curious
things in its history. But now we are coming
close alongside the shad-nets. We find no fishermen to traffic with. Discerning a rude hut on
the opposite side of the bayou, we make for that,
expecting there to find them. We hail a boy
who lies idly in a boat by the shore.




A WA TER-COA CH.


57


"Halloo, my fine fellow! Can you tell us
where the people are that tend that net?"
"Don't know," is the reply that comes over
the water.
" Can you sell us any fish?"
" Got a couple o' trout."
" Bring'em along." And away we go, rippling before the breeze; while the boy, with the
graceful deliberation which marks the movements of the native population, prepares to come
after us.
"I don't believe he understood," said one.
"Oh, yes! He's only taking his time, as they
all do down here. He'll be along in the course
of the forenoon."
At last he comes alongside, and shows a
couple of great black-looking, goggle-eyed fish,
which look more like incipient cod or haddock
than trout. Such as they are, however, we conclude a bargain for them; and away goes our boy




58


PA LMETTO-LEA VES.


with fifty cents in his pocket. What he can
want of fifty cents in a hut on the other side of
Doctor's Lake is a question. Can he trade with
alligators? But he has a boat; and we foresee
that that boat will make a voyage across to the
grocery on the opposite point, where whiskey,
pork, and flour are sold. Meanwhile we looked
at the little rude hut again.  It was Monday
morning; and a string of clothes was fluttering
on a line, and a good many little garments
among them. There is a mother, then, and a
family of children growing up. We noticed the
sheen of three or four orange-trees, probably
wild ones, about the house. Now we go rippling
up the bayou, close along by the shore. The
land is swampy, and the forests glister with the
shining, varnished leaves of the magnolias; and
we saw far within the waving green fans of the
swamp-palmetto.  The gum-trees and wateroaks were just bursting into leaf with that daz



A WA TER-COA CH.


59


zling green of early spring which is almost
metallic in brilliancy. The maples were throwing out blood-red keys,-larger'and highercolored than the maples of the North. There is
a whir of wings; and along the opposite shore
of the bayou the wild-ducks file in long platoons.
Now and then a water-turkey, with his long
neck and legs, varies the scene. There swoops
down a fish-hawk; and we see him bearing aloft
a silvery fish, wriggling and twisting in his
grasp. We were struck with the similarity of
our tastes. He was fond of shad: so were we.
He had a wriggling fish in his claws; and we
had a couple flapping and bouncing in the
basket, over which we were gloating. There
was but one point of difference. He, undoubtedly, would eat his fish raw; whereas we were
planning to have ours cut in slices, and fried
with salt pork. Otherwise the fish-hawk and we
were out on the same errand, with the same
results.




60o


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


Yet at first view, I must confess, when we
saw him rise with a wriggling fish in his claws,
he struck us as a monster. It seemed a savage
proceeding, and we pitied the struggling fish,
while ours were yet flapping in the basket.
This eating-business is far from pleasant to contemplate.  Every thing seems to be in for it.
It is "catch who catch can" through all the
animal kingdom till it comes up to man; and
he eats the whole, choosing or refusing as suits
his taste. One wonders why there was not a
superior order of beings made to eat us. Mosquitoes and black-flies get now and then a nip,
to be sure; but there is nobody provided to
make a square meal of us, as we do on a wild
turkey, for example. But speaking of eating,
and discussing fried fish and salt pork, aroused
harrowing reflections in our company.  We
found ourselves at one o'clock in the middle of
Doctor's Lake, with the dinner-shore at least five




A WA TER-COA CH.


6i


miles away; and it was agreed, nem. con., that it
was time to put about. The fish-hawk had suggested dinner-time.
And now came the beauty of the proceeding.
We drove merrily out of Doctor's Lake into the
beautiful blue middle of the St. John's: and
there the zephyrs gayly whispered, "Good-by,
friends; and, when you get ashore, let us know."
The river was like a molten looking-glass, the
sun staring steadfastly down. There is nothing
for it but to get out the oars, and pull strong and
steady; and so we do. It is the old trick of this
St John's, whereby muscular development is
promoted.  First two gentlemen row; then a
lady takes one oar, and we work our way along
to the shore; but it is full four o'clock before we
get there.
As we approach, we pass brisk little nineyear-old Daisy, who is out alone in her boat,
with her doll-carriage and doll. She has been




62


PA LMETTO-LEA VES.


rowing down to make a morning call on Bessie, and is now returning.  Off on the end of
the wharf we see the whole family watching
for our return. The Professor's white beard and
red fez cap make a striking point in the tableau.
Our little friend Bob, and even baby and mamma,
are on the point of observation. It is past four
o'clock, dinner long over; and they have all been
wondering what has got us. We walk straight
up to the house, with but one idea,- dinner.
We cease to blame the fish-hawk, being in a condition fully to enter into his feelings: a little
more, and we could eat fish as he does,-without
roasting. Doubtless he and Mrs. Fish-hawk, and
the little Fish-hawks, may have been discussing
us over their savory meal; but we find little to
say till dinner is despatched.
The last hour on board the boat had been
devoted to a course of reflections on our folly in
starting out without luncheon, and to planning a




A WA TER-COA CH.


63


more advised excursion up Julington Creek with
all the proper paraphernalia; viz., a kerosenestove for making coffee, an embankment of hamsandwiches, diversified with cakes, crackers, and
cheese. This, it is understood, is to come off
to-morrow morning.
Tuesday Morning, Feb. 27. -- Such was to
have been my programme; but, alas I this morning, though the day rose bright and clear, there
was not a breath of wind. The river has looked
all day like a sheet of glass. There is a drowsy,
hazy calm over every thing. All our windows
and doors are open; and every sound seems to be
ringingly distinct. The chatter and laughing of
the children, (God bless'em!) who are all day
long frolicking on the end of the wharf, or rowing
about in the boats; the leisurely chip, chip, of
the men who are busy in mending the steamboat
wharf; the hammer of the carpenters on the yet
unfinished part of our neighbor's house; the




64


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


scream of the jays in the orange-trees, —all
blend in a sort of dreamy indistinctness.
To-day is one of the two red-letter days of
our week, —the day of the arrival of the mail.
You who have a driblet two or three times a day
from the mail cannot conceive the interest that
gathers around these two weekly arrivals. The
whole forenoon is taken up with it. We sit on
the veranda, and watch the mail-boat far down
the river, - a mere white speck as she passes
through the wooded opening above Jacksonville.
She grows larger and larger as she comes sailing up like a great white stately swan, first on
the farther side of the river till she comes to
Reed's Landing; and then, turning her white
breast full toward Mandarin Wharf, she comes
ploughing across, freighted with all our hopes
and fears. Then follows the rush for our mail;
then the distribution: after which all depart to
their several apartments with their letters.




A WA TER-COA CH.


Then follow readings to each other, general
tidings and greetings; and when the letters are
all read twice over, and thoroughly discussed,
come the papers. Tuesday is "The Christian
Union " day, as well as the day for about a dozen
other papers; and the Professor is seen henceforward with bursting pockets, like a very large
carnation bursting its calyx. He is a walking
mass of papers.
The afternoon has been devoted to reflection,
gossiping, and various expeditions.  B. and G.
have gone boating with Mr, -; and come
home, on the edge of the evening, with the animating news that they have seen the two first
alligators of the season. That shows that warm
weather is to be expected; for your alligator is a
delicate beast, and never comes out when there
is the least danger of catching cold. Another
party have been driving "Fly" through the
woods to Julington Creek, and come back re5




66


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


porting that they have seen an owl. The Professor gives report of having seen two veritable
wild-turkeys and a blue crane, - news which
touches us all tenderly; for we have as yet had
not a turkey to our festive board. We ourselves
have been having a quiet game of croquet out
under the orange-trees, playing till we could
see the wickets no longer. So goes our day,breezy, open-aired, and full of variety. Your
world, Mr. Union, is seen in perspective, far off
and hazy, like the opposite shores of the river.
Nevertheless, this is the place to read papers
and books; for every thing that sweeps into this
quiet bay is long and quietly considered. We
shall have something anon to say as to how you
all look in the blue perspective of distance.
Meanwhile, we must tell the girls that Phoebus has wholly accommodated himself to his
situation, and wakes us, mornings, with his singing.  "What cheer! what cheer!" he says.




A WA TER-COA CH.


67


Whether he alludes to the four cats, or to his
large cage, or to his own internal determination,
like Mark Tapley, to be jolly, isn't evident.
Last week, Aunt Katy brought a mate for
him, which was christened Luna. She was a
pretty creature, smaller, less brilliant, but
gracefully shaped, and with a nice crest on her
head. We regret to say that she lived only a
few hours, being found dead in the cage in the
morning. A day or two since, great sympathy
was expressed for Phoebus, in view of the matrimonial happiness of a pair of red-birds who
came to survey our yellow jessamine with a view
to setting up housekeeping there. Would not
the view of freedom and wedded joys depress his
spirits? Not a bit of it. He is evidently cut
out for a jolly bachelor; and, as long as he has
fine chambers and a plenty of rough rice, what
cares he for family life? The heartless fellow
piped up, "What cheer! what cheer!" the very




68         PALMETTO-LEA VES.
day that he got his cage to himself. Is this peculiar? A lady at our table has stated it as a
universal fact, that, as soon as a man's wife dies,
he immediately gets a new suit of clothes.
Well, why shouldn't he?  Nothing conduces
more to cheerfulness. On the whole, we think
Phoebus is a pattern bird.
P. S. - Ask the author of " My Summer in a
Garden" if he can't condense his account of
" Calvin's" virtues into a tract, to be distributed
among our cats. Peter is such a hardened sinner, a little Calvinism might operate well on
him.




PICNICKING UP JULINGTON.
MANDARIN, FLA., Feb. 29, 1872.
HIS twenty-ninth day of February is
a day made on purpose for a fishingparty. A day that comes only once
in four years certainly ought to be good for
something; and this is as good a day for picnicking up Julington as if it had been bespoken
four years ahead. A bright sun, a blue sky, a
fresh, strong breeze upon the water, - these are
Nature's contributions.  Art contributes two
69




70


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


trim little white yachts, "The Nelly" and "The
Bessie," and three row-boats. Down we all
troop to the landing with our luncheon-baskets,
kerosene-stove, tea-kettle, and coffee-pot, baskets
of oranges, and fishing-reels.
Out flutter the sails, and away we go. No danger to-day of being left in the lurch in the middle
of the river. There is all the breeze one wants,
and a little more than the timorous love; and
we go rippling and racing through the water in
merry style. The spray flies, so that we need
our water-proofs and blankets; but the more the
merrier. We sweep gallantly first by the cottage of your whilom editor in " The Union," and
get a friendly salute; and then flutter by D —'s
cottage, and wave our handkerchiefs, and get
salutes in return. Now we round the point, and
Julington opens her wide blue arms to receive us.
We pass by Neighbor H —'s, and again wave
our handkerchiefs, and get answering salutes.




PICNICKING UP 7ULING TON.


7I


We run up to the wharf to secure another boat
and oarsman in the person of Neighbor P-,
and away we fly up Julington. A creek it is
called, but fully as wide as the Connecticut at
Hartford, and wooded to the water on either
side by these glorious Florida forests.
It is a late, backward spring for Florida; and
so these forests are behindhand with their
foliage: yet so largely do they consist of bright
polished evergreen trees, that the eye scarcely
feels the need of the deciduous foliage on which
the bright misty green of spring lies like an
uncertain vapor. There is a large admixture in
the picture of the cool tints of the gray moss,
which drapes every tree, and hangs in long
pendent streamers waving in the wind. The
shores of the creek now begin to be lined on
either side with tracts of a water-lily which the
natives call bonnets. The blossom is like that
of our yellow pond-lily; but the leaves are very




72


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


broad and beautiful as they float like green
islands on the blue waters.  Here and there,
even in the centre of the creek, are patches of
them intermingled with quantities of the waterlettuce, -a floating plant which abounds in
these tracts. Along the edges of these water-lily
patches are the favorite haunts of the fish, who
delight to find shelter among the green leaves.
So the yachts come to anchor; and the party
divides into the three row-boats, and prepares to
proceed to business.
We have some bustle in distributing our stove
and tea-kettle and lunch-baskets to the different
boats, as we are to row far up stream, and, when
we have caught our dinner, land, and cook it. I
sit in the bow, and, being good for nothing in
the fishing-line, make myself of service by
holding the French coffee-pot in my lap. The
tea-kettle being at my feet on one side, the stove
on the other, and the luncheon-basket in full




PICNICKING UP 7ULING TON.


73


view in front, I consider myself as, in a sense,
at housekeeping.  Meanwhile the fishing-reels
are produced, the lines thrown; and the professional fishermen and fisherwomen become all
absorbed in their business.  We row slowly
along the bobbing, undulating field of broad
green bonnet-leaves, and I deliver myself to
speculations on Nature. The roots of these
water-lilies, of the size of a man's arm, often lie
floating for yards on the surface, and, with their
scaly joints, look like black serpents.  The
ribbed and shining leaves, as they float out upon
the water, are very graceful. One is struck
with a general similarity in the plant and
animal growths in these regions: the element
of grotesqueness seems largely to enter into it.
Roots of plants become scaly, contorted, and lie
in convolutions like the coils of a serpent.
Such are the palmetto-shrubs, whose roots lie in
scaly folds along the ground, catching into the




74


PALME TTO-LEA VES.


earth by strong rootlets, and then rising up here
and there into tall, waving green fans, whose
graceful beauty in the depths of these forests
one is never tired of admiring. Amid this
serpent-like and convoluted jungle of scaly
roots, how natural to find the scaly alligator,
looking like an animated form of the grotesque
vegetable world around! Sluggish, unwieldy, he
seems a half-developed animal, coming up from
a plant, -perhaps a link from plant to animal.
In memory, perhaps, of a previous woodland
life, he fills his stomach with pine-knots, and bits
of board, wherever he can find one to chew. It
is his way of taking tobacco. I have been with
a hunter who dissected one of these creatures,
and seen him take from his stomach a mass of
mingled pine-knots, with bits of brick, worn
smooth, as if the digestive fluids had somewhat
corroded them. The fore leg and paw of the
alligator has a pitiful and rather shocking resem



PICNICKING UP JULINGTON.


75


blance to a black human hand; and the muscular
power is so great, that in case of the particular
alligator I speak of, even after his head was
taken off, when the incision was made into the
pectoral muscle for the purpose of skinning,
this black hand and arm rose up, and gave the
operator quite a formidable push in the chest.
We hope to see some of these creatures out;
but none appear. The infrequency of their appearance marks the lateness and backwardness
of our spring.  There! — a cry of victory is
heard from the forward boat; and Mademoiselle
Nelly is seen energetically working her elbows:
a scuffle ensues, and the captive has a free berth
on a boat, without charge for passage-ticket.
We shout like people who are getting hungry,
as in truth we are. And now Elsie starts in
our boat; and all is commotion, till a fine blue
bream, spotted with black, is landed. Next a
large black trout, with his wide yellow mouth,




76


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


comes up unwillingly from the crystal flood. We
pity them; but what are we to do? It is a
question between dinner and dinner. These fish,
out marketing on their own account, darted at
our hook, expecting to catch another fish. We
catch them; and, instead of eating, they are
eaten.
After all, the instinct of hunting and catching
something is as strong in the human breast as in
that of cat or tiger; and we all share the exultation which sends a shout from boat to boat as a
new acquisition is added to our prospective
dinner-store.
And now right in front of us looms up from
the depth of a group of pines and magnolias a
white skeleton of a tree, with gnarled arms,
bleached by years of wind and sun, swathed
with long waving folds of gray moss. On the
very tip-top of this, proudly above all possibility
of capture, a fish-hawk's nest is built. Full




PICNICKING UP YULING TON.


77


eighty feet in the air, and about the size of
a flour-barrel; built like an old marauding
baron's stronghold in the middle ages, in inaccessible fastn.esses; lined within and swathed
without with gray moss, -it is a splendid post of
observation. We can see the white head and
shoulders of the bird perched upon her nest;
and already they perceive us. The pair rise
and clap their wings, and discourse to each
other with loud, shrill cries, perhaps of indignation, that we who have houses to dwell in, and
beef and chickens to eat, should come up and
invade their fishing-grounds.
The fish-hawk —I beg his pardon, the fisheagle; for I can see that he is a bird of no mean
size and proportions —has as good a right to
think that the river and the fish were made for
him as we; and better too, because the Creator
has endowed him with wonderful eyesight, which
enables him, from the top of a tree eighty feet




78


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


high, to search the depths of the river, mark his
prey, and dive down with unerring certainty to
it. He has his charter in his eyes, his beak,
his claws; and doubtless he has a right to remonstrate, when we, who have neither eyes,
beaks, nor claws adapted to the purpose, manage
to smuggle away his dinner. Thankful are we
that no mighty hunter is aboard, and that the
atrocity of shooting a bird on her nest will not
be perpetrated here. We are a harmless company, and mean so well by them, that they
really might allow us one dinner out of their
larder.
We have rowed as far up Julington as is expedient, considering that we have to row down
again; and so we land in the immediate vicinity
of our fish-eagle's fortress, greatly to his discontent. Wild, piercing cries come to us now and
then from the heights of the eyry; but we, unmoved, proceed with our dinner-preparations.




PICNICKING UP JULINGTON.


79


Do you want to know the best way in the
world of cooking fish? Then listen.
The fish are taken to the river by one, and
simply washed of their superfluous internals,
though by no means scaled. A moment prepares them for the fire. Meanwhile a broad
hole has been dug in the smooth white sand;
and a fire of dry light wood is merrily crackling
therein. The kerosene-stove is set a-going; the
tea-kettle filled, and put on to boil; when we disperse to examine the palmetto-jungles. One
or two parties take to the boats, and skim a little
distance up stream, where was a grove of youthful palmetto-trees. The palmetto-shrub is essentially a different variety from the tree. In
moist, rich land, the shrub rears a high head, and
looks as if it were trying to become a tree; but
it never does it. The leaf, also, is essentially
different. The full-grown palm-leaf is three or
four yards long, curiously plaited and folded.




80


PALME TTO-LEA VES.


In the centre of both palmetto and palm is the
bud from whence all future leaves spring, rising
like a green spike.  This bud is in great
request for palmetto-hats; and all manner of
palm-work; and it was for these buds that our
boating-party was going. A venturesome boy,
by climbing a neighboring tree and jumping
into the palm, can succeed in securing this
prize, though at some risk of life and limb.
Our party returned with two palm-buds about
two yards long, and one or two of the long,
graceful leaves.
But now the fire has burned low, and the
sand-hole is thoroughly heated. "Bring me,"
says the presiding cook, "any quantity of those
great broad bonnet-leaves." And forth impetuous rush the youth; and bonnet-leaves cool and
dripping are forthcoming, wherewith we doubleline the hole in the sand. Then heads and
points, compactly folded, go in a line of fish,




PICNICKIA'G UP JULING TON.


8i


and are covered down green and comfortable
with a double blanket of dripping bonnet-leaves.
Then, with a flat board for our shovel, we rake
back first the hot sand, and then the coals and
brands yet remaining of the fire. Watches are
looked at; and it is agreed by old hands experienced in clam-bakes that half an hour shall be
given to complete our dinner.
Meanwhile the steaming tea-kettle calls for
coffee, and the French coffee-pot receives its
fragrant store; while the fish-hawk, from his high
tower of observation, interjects plaintive notes
of remonstrance. I fancy him some hoarse old
moralist, gifted with uncomfortable keen-sightedness, forever shrieking down protests on the
ways of the thoughtless children of men.
What are we doing to those good fish of his,
which he could prepare for the table in much
shorter order? An old hunter who has sometimes explored the ground under the fish-hawk's
6




82


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


nest says that bushels of fish-bones may be
found there, neatly picked, testifying to the
excellent appetite which prevails in those cloudregions, and to the efficiency of the plan of eating fish au naturel.
We wander abroad, and find great blue and
white violets and swamp-azaleas along the river's
brink; and we take advantage of the not very
dense shade of a long-leaved pine to set out the
contents of our luncheon-baskets.  Ham-sandwiches, hard-boiled eggs, cakes in tempting
variety, jellies and fruits, make their appearance
in a -miscellaneous sort of way. And now
comes the great operation of getting out our
fish. Without shovel, other than a bit of inflammable pine-board, the thing presents evident difficulties: but it must be done; and
done it is.
A platter is improvised of two large palmettoleaves. The fire is raked off, and the fish emerge




PICNICKING UP 7ULINGTON.


83


from their baking-place, somewhat the worse as
to external appearance; but we bear them off to
the feast. In the trial process we find that the
whole external part of the fish —scales, skin, and
fins-comes off, leaving the meat white and
pure, and deliciously juicy. A bit well salted and
peppered is forthwith transferred to each plate;
and all agree that never fish was better and
sweeter. Then coffee is served round; and we
feast, and are merry. When the meal is over, we
arrange our table for the benefit of the fishhawks. The fragments of fish yet remaining,
bits of bread and cake and cheese, are all systematically arranged for him to take his luncheon
after we are gone. Mr. Bergh himself could not
ask more exemplary conduct.
For now the westering sun warns us that it is
time to be spreading our sails homeward; and,
well pleased all, we disperse ourselves into our
respective boats, to fish again as we pass the




84.


PA LMETTO-LEA VES.


lily-pads on the shore. The sport engages every
one on board except myself, who, sitting in
the end of the boat, have leisure to observe the
wonderful beauty of the sky, the shadows of the
forests-belts in the water, and the glorious trees.
One magnolia I saw that deserved to be
called an archangel among the sons of the forest. Full a hundred feet high it stood, with a
trunk rising straight, round, and branchless for
full fifty feet, and crowned with a glorious head
of rich, dark, shining leaves. When its lilyblossoms awake, what a glory will it become,
all alone out there in the silent forest, with only
God to see!
No: let us believe, with Milton, that
" Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth
Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep;"
and the great magnolia-trees may spring and
flower for them.




PICNICKI'NG UP 7ULING TON.


85


The fishing luck still continues; and the prospects for a breakfast to-morrow morning are
bright. One great fellow, however, makes off
with hook, spoon, and all; and we see him floundering among the lily-pads with it in his mouth,
vastly dissatisfied with his acquisition.  Like
many a poor fellow in the world's fishing, he has
snapped at a fine bait, and got a sharp hook for
his pains.
Now we come back to the yachts, and the
fishing is over. The sun is just going down as
we raise our white sails and away for the broad
shining expanse of the St. John's. In a moment
the singers of our party break forth into song
and glee; and catches roll over the water from
one yacht to the other-as we race along neck
and neck.
The evening wind rises fresh and fair, and we
sweep down the beautiful coast. Great bars of
opal and rose-color lie across the western sky:




86         PALMETTO-LEA VES.
the blue waves turn rosy, and ripple and sparkle
with the evening light, as we fly along. On the
distant wharf we see all the stay-at-homes
watching for us as we come to land after the
most successful picnic that heart could conceive.
Each fisherwoman has her fish to exhibit, and
her exploits to recount; and there is a plentiful
fish-breakfast in each of the houses.
So goes the 29th of February on the St.
John's.




MAGNOLIA.
MANDARIN, FLA., March 6, 1872.
H AGNOLIA is a name suggestive of
beauty; and, for once, the name does
not belie the fact. The boardinghouse there is about the pleasantest winter
resort in Florida. We have been passing a day
and night there as guest of some friends, and
find a company of about seventy people enjoying themselves after the usual fashions of summer watering-places. The house is situated on a
S7




88


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


little eminence, and commands a fine sweep of
view both up and down the river. In the usual
fashion of Southern life, it is surrounded with
wide verandas, where the guests pass most of
their time, - the ladies chatting, and working
embroidery; the gentlemen reading newspapers,
and smoking.
The amusements are boating and fishing
parties of longer or shorter duration, rides and
walks along the shore, or croquet on a fine,
shady croquet-ground in a live-oak grove back
of the house.
We tried them all. First we went in a rowboat about a couple of miles up a little creek.
The shore on either side was ruffled with the
green bonnet-leaves, with here and there a
golden blossom.  The forest-trees, which were
large and lofty, were almost entirely of the
deciduous kind, which was just bursting into
leaf; and the effect -was very curious and




MAGNOLIA.


89


peculiar. One has often remarked what a misty
effect the first buddings of foliage have. Here
there was a mist of many colors, - rose-colored,
pink, crimson, yellow, and vivid green, the hues
of the young leaves, or of the different tags and
keys of the different species of trees. Here and
there a wild plum, sheeted in brilliant white,
varied the tableau. We rowed up to shore, drew
down a branch, and filled the laps of the ladies
with spraps of white flowers.  The sun beat
down upon us with the power of August; and,
had it not been for the fresh breeze that blew up
from the creek, we should have found it very
oppressive. We returned just in time to rest for
dinner. The dining-hall is spacious and cheerful; and the company are seated at small tables,
forming social groups and parties. The fare was
about the same as would be found in a first-class
boarding-house at the North.  The house is
furnished throughout in a very agreeable style;




90


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


and an invalid could nowhere in Florida have
more comforts. It is more than full, and constantly obliged to turn away applicants; and we
understand that families are now waiting at
Green Cove for places to be vacated here. We
are told that it is in contemplation, another
season, to put up several cottages, to be rented
to families who will board at the hotel. At
present there is connected with the establishment one house and a cottage, where some of
the guests have their rooms; and, as the weather
is so generally mild, even invalids find no objection to walking to their meals.
The house is a respectable, good-sized, oldfashioned structure; and, being away from the
main building, is preferred by some who feel the
need of more entire quiet. Sitting on the front
steps in the warm afternoon sunshine, and looking across to the distant, hazy shores, miles
away, one could fancy one's self in Italy, -an




MAGNOLIA.


91


illusion which the great clumps of aloes, and the
tall green yuccas, and the gold-fruited orangetrees, help to carry out. Groups of ladies were
seated here and there under trees, reading,
working, and chatting. We were called off by
the making-up of a croquet-party.
The croquet-ground is under the shade of a
fine grove of live-oaks, which, with their swaying drapery of white moss, form a graceful shade
and shelter. We shared the honor of gaining a
victory or two under the banner of a doctor of
divinity, accustomed, we believe, to winning
laurels on quite other fields in the good city of
New York. It has been our general experience,
however, that a man good for any thing else is
commonly a good croquet-player. We would
notify your editor-in-chief, that, if ever he plays
a game against Dr. C —, he will find a foeman
worthy of his steel.
In the evening the whole company gathered




92


PALME TTO-LEA VES.


in the parlors, made cheerful by blazing woodfires. There were song-singing and piano-playing, charades and games, to pass the time
withal; and all bore testimony to the very
sociable and agreeable manner in which life
moved on in their circle.
Magnolia is about three-quarters of a mile
from Green-Cove Springs, where are two or
three large, well-kept boarding-houses.  There
is a' very pleasant, shady walk through the
woods from one place to the other; and the mail
comes every day to Green Cove, and is sent for,
from the Magnolia House, in a daily morning
carriage. It is one of the amusements of the
guests to ride over, on these occasions, for a
little morning gossip and shopping, as Magnolia,
being quite sequestered, does not present the
opportunity to chaffer even for a stick of candy.
Of course, fair ones that have been accustomed
to the periodical excitement of a shopping-tour




MAGNOLIA.


93


would sink into atrophy without an opportunity
to spend something. What they can buy at
Green Cove is a matter of indifference. It is
the burning of money in idle purses that injures
the nervous system.
There are no orange-groves on this side of
the river. The orange-trees about the house are
entirely of the wild kind; and, for merely ornamental purposes, no tree more beautiful could be
devised. Its vivid green, the deep gold-color of
its clusters of fruit, and the exuberance with
which it blossoms, all go to recommend it.
Formerly there were extensive orange-groves,
with thousands of bearing trees, on this side of
the river. The frost of 1835 kfiled the trees,
and they have never been reset. Oranges are
not, therefore, either cheap or plenty at Magnolia or Green Cove.   Nothing shows more
strikingly the want of enterprise that has characterized this country than this.  Seedling




94


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


oranges planted the very next day after the great
frost would have been in bearing ten years after,
and would, ere now, have yielded barrels and
barrels of fruit; and the trees would have grown
and taken care of themselves. One would have
thought so very simple and easy a measure
would have been adopted.
At eleven o'clock the next morning we took
steamer for Mandarin, and went skimming along
the shores, watching the white-blossoming plumtrees amid the green of the forest. We stopped
at Hibernia, a pleasant boarding-house on an
island called Fleming's, after a rich Col. Fleming who formerly had a handsome plantation
there. There is a fine, attractive-looking country-house, embowered in trees and with shaded
verandas, where about forty boarders are yearly
accommodated. We have heard this resort very
highly praised as a quiet spot, where the accommodations are homelike and comfortable. It is




MA GNOLIA.


95


kept by the widow of the former proprietor; and
we are told that guests who once go there
return year after year. There is something certainly very peaceful and attractive about its surroundings.
But now our boat is once more drawing up to
the wharf at Mandarin; and we must defer much
that we have to say till next week. Phoebus, we
are happy to say to our girl correspondents, is
bright and happy, and in excellent voice. All
day long, at intervals, we can hear him from the
back veranda, shouting, "What cheer! what
cheer!" or   sometimes  abbreviating  it as
"Cheer, cheer, cheer!"
Since we have been writing, one of those
characteristic changes have come up to which
this latitude is subject. The sun was shining,
the river blue, the windows open, and the family
reading, writing, and working on the veranda,
when suddenly comes a frown of Nature, - a




96


PA LMETTO-LEA VES.


black scowl in the horizon.' Up flies the wind;
the waves are all white-caps; the blinds bang;
the windows rattle; every one runs to shut every
thing; and for a few moments it blows as if it
would take house and all away. Down drop
oranges in a golden shower; here, there, and
everywhere the lightning flashes; thunder
cracks and rattles and rolls; and the big torrents
of rain come pouring down: but, in the backporch, Phoebus between each clap persists in
shouting, " What cheer! what cheer!" Like a
woman in a passion, Nature ends all this with a
burst of tears; and it is raining now, tenderly
and plaintively as if bemoaning itself.
Well, we wouldn't have missed the sight if we
had been asked; and we have picked up a
bushel of oranges that otherwise somebody must
have climbed the trees for.
Meanwhile the mail is closing. Good-by!




YELLOW JESSAMINES.


MANDARIN, FLA., March 14, 1872.
HEY talk about Florida being the
land of flowers: I'm sure I don't
see where the flowers are."
The speaker was a trim young lady, with
pretty, high-heeled boots, attired in'all those
charming mysteries behind and before, and up
and down, that make the daughter of Eve look
like some bright, strange, tropical bird. She
had come to see Florida; that is, to take board
7                     97




98


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


at the St. James. She had provided herself
with half a dozen different palmetto-hats, an
orange-wood cane tipped with an alligator's
tooth, together with an assortment of cranes'
wings and pink curlews' feathers, and talked of
Florida with the assured air of a connoisseur.
She had been on the boat up to Enterprise; she
had crossed at Tekoi over to St. Augustine, and
come back to the St. James; and was now prepared to speak as one having authority: and she
was sure she did not see why it was called a
land of flowers. She hadn't seen any.
"But, my dear creature, have you ever been
where they grow? Have you walked in the
woods?"
"Walked in the woods? Gracious me! Of
course not! Who could walk in sand half up to
one's ankles? I tried once; and the sand got
into my boots, and soiled my stockings: besides,
I'm afraid of snakes."




YELLO W JESSAMlINES.


99


"Then, my dear, you will never be a judge on
the question whether Florida is or is not a l.and
of flowers. Whoever would judge on that question must make up her mind to good long
tramps in the woods; must wear stout boots,
with India-rubbers, or, better still, high Indiarubber boots. So equipped, and with eyes open
to see what is to be seen, you will be prepared
to explore those wild glades and mysterious
shadows where Nature's beauties, marvels, and
mysteries are wrought. The Venus of these
woods is only unveiled in their deepest solitudes."
For ourselves, we claim to have experience in
this matter of flowers; having always observed
them in all lands. We were impressed more by
the flowers of Italy than by any thing else
there; yes, more than by the picture-galleries,
the statues, the old ruins. The sight of the
green lawns of the Pamfili Doria, all bubbling




I00


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


up in little rainbow-tinted anemones; the cool
dells where we picked great blue-and-white
violets; the damp, mossy shadows in the Quirinal gardens, where cyclamen grow in crimson
clouds amid a crush of precious old marbles and
antiques; the lovely flowers, unnamed of botany,
but which we should call a sort of glorified blueand-white daisies, that we gathered in the shadowy dells near Castle Gandolpho, - these have
a freshness in our memory that will last when
the memory of all the "stun images" of the
Vatican has passed away.
In our mind's eye we have compared Florida
with Italy often, and asked if it can equal it.
The flowers here are not the same, it is true.
The blue violets are not fragrant. We do not
find the many-colored anemones, nor the cyclamen. Both can be planted out here, and will
grow readily; but they are not wild flowers,
not indigenous.




YELLOW 7ESSAMINES.


IOI


"Well, then, are there others to compensate?" We should say so.
The yellow jessamine itself, in its wild grace,
with its violet-scented breath, its profuse abundance, is more than a substitute for the anemones of Italy.
If you will venture to walk a little way in the
sand beyond our back-gate, we will show you a
flower-show this morning such as Chiswick or
the Crystal Palace cannot equal.
About a quarter of a mile we walk: and then
we turn in to what is called here an oak-hammock; which is, being interpreted, a grove of
live-oak-trees, with an underbrush of cedar,
holly, and various flowering-shrubs. An effort
has been made to clear up this hammock. The
larger trees have some of them been cut down,
but not removed. The work of clearing was
abandoned; and, the place being left to Nature,
she proceeded to improve and beautify it after a




I02


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


fashion of her own.   The yellow jessamine,
which before grew under the shadow of the
trees, now, exultant in the sunshine which was
let in upon it, has made a triumphant and
abounding growth, such as we never saw anywhere else. It is the very. Ariel of flowers,the tricksy sprite, full of life and grace and
sweetness; and it seems to take a capricious
pleasure in rambling everywhere, and masquerading in the foliage of every kind of tree. Now
its yellow bells twinkle down like stars from the
prickly foliage of the holly, where it has
taken full possession, turning the solemn old
evergreen into a blossoming garland. Now,
sure enough, looking up full sixty feet into yonder water-oak, we see it peeping down at us in
long festoons, mingling with the swaying, crapy
streamers of the gray moss. Yonder a little
live-oak-tree has been so completely possessed
and beflowered, that it shows a head of blossoms




YELLOW JESSAMINES.


I03


as round as an apple-tree in May. You look
below, and jessamine is trailing all over the
ground, weaving and matting, with its golden
buds and open bells peeping up at you from the
huckleberry-bushes and sedge-grass.
Here is a tree overthrown, and raising its
gaunt, knotted branches in air, veiled with soft
mossy drapery. The jessamine springs upon it
for a trellis: it weaves over and under and
around; it throws off long sprays and streamers
with two golden buds at the axil of every green
leaf, and fluttering out against the blue of the
sky. Its multiform sprays twist and knot and
tie themselves in wonderful intricacies; and still
where every green leaf starts is a yellow flowerbud. The beauty of these buds is peculiar.
They have little sculptured grooves; and the
whole looks as if it might have been carved of
fairy chrysolite for a lady's ear-drop. Our little
brown chambermaid wears them dangling in her




104


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


ears; and a very pretty picture she makes with
them. Coal-black Frank looks admiringly after
her as she trips by with them shaking and
twinkling to his confusion, as he forgets for a
moment to saw wood, and looks longingly after
her. No use, Frank. "Trust her not: she is
fooling thee." Her smiles are all for lighter-colored beaux. But still she wears yellow jessamine in her crapy hair, and orders Frank to
bring her wreaths and sprays of it whenever she
wants it; and Frank obeys. That's female
sovereignty, the world over!
In this same hammock are certain tall, graceful shrubs, belonging, as we fancy, to the
high-huckleberry tribe, but which the Floridians call sparkleberry. It is the most beautiful
white ornamental shrub we have ever seen.
Imagine a shrub with vivid green foliage, hanging profusely with wreaths of lilies-of-the-valley,
and you have as near as possible an idea of the




YELLOW 7ESSAMINES.


Io5


sparkleberry. It is only in bud now, being a
little later than the jessamine, and coming into
its glory when the jessamine is passing away.
The regular employment now of every afternoon is to go out in the mule-cart with old Fly
into the woods, flower-hunting.
It is as lovely an afternoon-work as heart
could wish; the sky is so blue, the air so
balmy, and at every step there is something new
to admire. The coming-out of the first leaves
and tags and blossom-keys of the deciduous
trees has a vividness and brilliancy peculiar to
these regions. The oak-hammock we have been
describing as the haunt of yellow jessamine is
as picturesque and beautiful a tree-study as an
artist could desire. There are tall, dark cedars,
in which the gray films of the long moss have a
peculiarly light and airy appearance. There is
the majestic dome of the long-leaved Southern
pine, rising high over all the other trees, as in




Io6


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


Italy the stone-pine. Its leaves are from twelve
to eighteen inches long; and the swaying of
such pines makes a susurrus worth listening
to. The water-oak is throwing out its bright
young leaves of a gold-tinted green; and the
live-oak, whose leaves are falling now, is bursting into little velvety tags, premonitory of new
foliage. Four species of oaks we notice. The
live-oak, the water-oak, and a species of scrubtree which they call the olive-leaved oak, are
all evergreens, and have narrow, smooth leaves.
Then there are what are familiarly called blackjacks,-a deciduous oak, which bears a large,
sharply-cut, indented leaf, of a character resembling our Northern ones. Besides these, the
prickly-ash, with its curiously knobbed and
pointed branches, and its graceful, feathery
leaves, forms a feature in the scene. Underneath, great clumps of prickly-pear are throwing
out their queer buds, to be, in turn, followed by
bright yellow blossoms.




YELLOW JESSAMINES.


I07


To an uninstructed eye, the pine-woods in
which we ride look like a flat, monotonous
scene. The pines rise seventy, eighty, and a
hundred feet in the air, so that their tops are far
above, and cast no shade. This is a consideration of value, however, for a winter's ride; for
one enjoys the calm sunshine. Even in days
when high winds are prevailing along the riverfront, the depth of these pine-woods is calm,
sunny, and still; and one can always have a
pleasant walk there. When the hotter months
come on, the live-oaks and water-oaks have
thick, new foliage, and the black-jacks and hickory and sweet-gum trees throw out their shade
to shelter the traveller. Every mile or two, our
path is traversed by a brook on its way to the
St. John's. The natives here call a brook a
"branch;" and a branch is no small circumstance, since all the finest trees and shrubbery
grow upon its banks. You can look through




io8


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


the high, open pillars of the pine-trees, and
watch the course of a branch half a mile from
you by the gorgeous vegetation of the trees
which line its shores.
We jog along in our mule-cart, admiring every
thing as we go. We are constantly exclaiming
at something, and tempted to get out to gather
flowers.  Here and there through the long
wire-grass come perfect gushes of blue and
white violets. The blue violets are large, and,
of necessity, are obliged to put forth very long
stems to get above the coarse, matted grass.
The white are very fragrant, and perfectly
whiten the ground in some moist places.
There is a large, fragrant kind, very scarce and
rare, but of which we have secured several
roots. We are going this afternoon to the
"second branch" after azaleas. We stop at a
little distance, when its wall of glossy verdure
rises up before us. There is no accomplishment




YELLOW 7ESSAMINES.


og09


of a mule in which Fly is better versed than
stopping and standing still. We fancy that we
hear him, in his inner consciousness, making a
merit of it, as we all do of our pet virtues. He
is none of your frisky fellows, always wanting to
be going, and endangering everybody that wants
to get in or out with prances and curvets, - not
he! He is a beast that may be trusted to stand
for any length of time without an attempt at
motion. Catch him running away! So we
leave Fly, and determine to explore the branch.
The short palmettoes here are grown to the
height of fifteen feet. Their roots look like
great scaly serpents, which, after knotting and
convoluting a while, suddenly raise their crests
high in air, and burst forth into a graceful crest
of waving green fans. These waving clumps of
fan-like leaves are the first and peculiar feature
of the foliage. Along the shore here, clumps
of pale pink azaleas grow high up, and fill the




IIO


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


air with sweetness.  It is for azaleas we are
come; and so we tread our way cautiously, —
cautiously, because we have heard tales of the
moccasin-snake - fearful gnome! -said to infest
damp places, and banks of rivers. In all our
Floridian rambles, we never yet have got sight
of this creature; though we have explored all
the moist places, and sedgy, swampy dells,
where azaleas and blue iris and white lilies
grow. But the tradition that such things are
inspires a wholesome care never to set a foot
down without looking exactly where it goes.
"The branch," we find, is lighted up in many
places by the white, showy blossoms of the dogwood, of which, also, we gather great store. We
pile in flowers - azalea and dogwood - till our
wagon is full, and then proceed with a trowel to
take up many nameless beauties.
There is one which grows on a high, slender
stalk, resembling in its form a primrose, that has




YELLOW 7ESSAMINES.


III


the purest and intensest yellow that we ever
saw in a flower. There is a purple variety of
the same species, that grows in the same neighborhoods. We have made a bed of these woodland beauties at the roots of our great oak, so
that they may finish their growth, and seed, if
possible, under our own eye.
By the by, we take this occasion to tell the
lady who writes to beg of us to send her some
seeds or roots of Florida plants or flowers, that
we have put her letter on file, and perhaps, some
day, may find something to send her. Any one
who loves flowers touches a kindred spot in our
heart. The difficulty with all these flowers and
roots sent North is, that they need the heat of
this climate to bring them to perfection. Still
there is no saying what a real plant-lover may
do in coaxing along exotics. The "run" we
have been exploring has, we are told, in the season of them, beautiful blue wisteria climbing




112


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


from branch to branch. It does not come till
after the yellow jessamine is gone. The coralhoneysuckle and a species of trumpet-creeper
also grow here, and, in a little time, will be in
full flower. One of our party called us into the
run, and bade us admire a beautiful shrub, some
fifteen feet high, whose curious, sharply-cut,
deep-green leaves were shining with that glossy
polish which gives such brilliance. Its leaves
were of waxen thickness, its habit of growth
peculiarly graceful; and our colored handmaiden, who knows the habits of every plant in our
vicinity, tells us that it bears a white, sweet
blossom, some weeks later. We mentally resolve
to appropriate this fair Daphne of the woods on
the first opportunity when hands can be spared
to take it up and transport it.
But now the sun falls west, and we plod
homeward.   If you want to see a new and
peculiar beauty, watch a golden sunset through




YELLOW JESSAMINES.


113


a grove draperied with gray moss. The swaying, filmy bands turn golden and rose-colored;
and the long, swaying avenues are like a scene
in fairyland. We come home, and disembark
our treasures. Our house looks like a perfect
flower-show. Every available vase and jar is
full, -dogwood, azaleas, blue iris, wreaths of
yellow jessamine, blue and white violets, and
the golden unknown, which we christen primroses. The daily sorting of the vases is no
small charge:. but there is a hand to that department which never neglects; and so we breathe
their air and refresh our eyes with their beauty
daily.
Your cold Northern snow-storms hold back
our spring. The orange-buds appear, but hang
back. They are three weeks later than usual.
Our letters tell us frightful stories of thermometers no end of the way below zero. When you
have a snow-storm, we have a cold rain: so you
8




I 4


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


must keep bright lookout on your ways up
there, or we shall get no orange-blossoms.
We have received several letters containing
questions about Florida. It is our intention to
devote our next paper to answering these. We
are perfectly ready to answer any number of
inquiries, so long as we can lump them all
together, and answer them through "The Christian Union."
One class of letters, however, we cannot too
thankfully remember. Those who have read our
papers with so much of sympathy as to send in
contributions to our church here have done us
great good. We have now a sum contributed
with which we hope soon to replace our loss.
And now, as the mail is closing, we must close.
P. S. - We wish you could see a gigantic bouquet that Mr. S — has just brought in from
the hummock. A little shrub-oak, about five




YELL 0W   ESSAMINVES.        115
feet high, whose spreading top is all a golden
mass of bloom with yellow jessamine, he has cut
down, and borne home in triumph.
What an adornment would this be for one of
the gigantic Japanese vases that figure in NewYork drawing-rooms! What would such a bouquet sell for?




I.,. -b \
e r
gei,                re              j


~r i:'Zyr
-
;-. — -~-...~:(CC


LC — q  ~C~W
ij  g ~<e, a 2


"FLORIDA FOR INVALIDS."
jE find an aggrieved feeling in the
minds of the Floridian public in
view of a letter in "The Independent," by Dr. —, headed as above; and we have
been urgently requested to say something on the
other view of the question.
Little did we suppose when we met our good
friend at Magnolia, apparently in the height of
spirits, the life of the establishment, and head
promoter of all sorts of hilarity, that, under all
i16




"FLORIDA FOR INVALIDS."


I 17


this delightful cheerfulness, he was contending
with such dreary experiences as his article in
"The Independent " would lead one to suppose.
Really, any one who should know the doctor
only from that article might mistake him for a
wretched hypochondriac; whereas we saw him,
and heard of him by universal repute at Magnolia, as one of the cheeriest and sunniest of the
inmates, taking every thing by the smoothest
handle, and not only looking on the bright side
himself, but making everybody else do the same.
Imagine, therefore, our utter astonishment at
finding our buoyant doctor summing up his
Florida experience in such paragraphs as
these:
"From what I have observed, I should think
Florida was nine-tenths water, and the other
tenth swamp. Many are deceived by the milder
climate here; and down they come - to die.
The mildness, too, is exaggerated. Yesterday




in8


PALME TTO-LEA VES.


morning, the thermometer was at thirty-six
degrees.  Outside, our winter overcoats were
necessary; and great wood-fires roared within.
Now and then the thermometer reaches eighty
degrees at mid-day; but, that very night, you
may have frost.
"Another fact of Florida is malaria.  How
could it be otherwise? Souse Manhattan Island
two feet deep in fresh water, and wouldn't the
price of quinine rise?
"I have no objection to the term'sunny
South;' it is a pretty alliteration: but I object to
its application to Georgia and Florida in February. I wish you could have seen me last Friday
night. We were riding two hundred and sixty
miles through a swamp, -Okefinokee of the
geographies.  I was clad in full winter suit,
with heavy Russian overcoat."
But a careful comparison of the incidents in
his letter solves the mystery. The letter was




"FLORIDA FOR INVALIDS."


II9


written in an early date in the doctor's Floridian
experience, and before he had had an opportunity
of experiencing the benefit which he subsequently reaped from it.
We perceive by the reference to last Friday
night, and the ride through. Okefinokee Swamp,
that the doctor was then fresh from the North,
and undergoing that process of disenchantment which many Northern travellers experience, particularly those who come by railroad.
The most ardent friends of Florida must admit
that this railroad is by no means a prepossessing approach to the land of promise; and
the midnight cold upon' it is something likely to
be had in remembrance. When we crossed it,
however, we had a stove, which was a small imitation of Nebuchadnezzar's furnace, to keep us
in heart. Otherwise there is a great deal of
truth in our friend's allegations. As we have
elsewhere remarked, every place, like a bit of




120


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


tapestry, has its right side and its wrong side;
and both are true and real, —the wrong side
with its tags and rags, and seams and knots, and
thrums of worsted, and the right side with its
pretty picture.
It is true, as the doctor says, that some invalids do come here, expose themselves imprudently, and die. People do die in Florida, if
they use the means quite as successfully as in
New York. It is true that sometimes the thermometer stands at seventy at noon, and that the
nights are much cooler; it is true we have
sometimes severe frosts in Florida; it is true
we have malaria; it is true that there are
swamps in Florida; *and it is quite apt to be true,
that, if a man rides a hundred miles through a
swamp at night, he will feel pretty chilly.
All these are undeniable truths. We never
pretended that Florida was the kingdom of
heaven, or the land where they shall no more




"FLORIDA FOR INVALIDS."


121


say, "I am sick."  It is quite the reverse.
People this very winter have in our neighborhood had severe attacks of pneumonia; and undoubtedly many have come to Florida seeking
health, and have not found it.
Yet, on the other hand, there are now living
in Florida many old established citizens and
land-owners who came here ten, twenty, and
thirty years ago, given over in consumption,
who have here for years enjoyed a happy and
vigorous life in spite of Okefinokee Swamp and
the malaria.
Undoubtedly the country would be much better to live in if there were no swamps and no
malaria; and so, also, New England would be
better to live in if there were not six months
winter and three more months of cold weather
there. As to malaria, it is not necessary to,
souse Manhattan Island under water to get that
in and around New York. The new lands in




122


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


New York will give you chills and fever quite as
well as Florida. You can find malarial fevers
almost anywhere in the towns between New
York and New Haven; and it is notorious that
many estates in the vicinity of New York and
Philadelphia sell cheap on that very account,
because they are almost as malarious as some
Italian villas.
Florida is not quite so bad as that yet,
although it has its share of that malaria which
attends the development of land in a new country. But the malarial fevers here are of a mild
type, and easily managed; and they are generally
confined to the fall months. The situation of
Florida, surrounded by the sea, and the free
sweep of winds across it, temper the air, and
blow away malarious gases.
In regard to consumptives and all other
invalids, the influence of a Floridian climate
depends very much on the nature of the case
and the constitution of the individual.




"FLORIDA FOR INVALIDS."


I23


If persons suffer constitutionally from cold; if
they are bright and well only in hot weather; if
the winter chills and benumbs them, till, in the
spring, they are in the condition of a frost-bitten
hot-house plant,- alive, to be sure, but with
every leaf gone, -then these persons may be
quite sure that they will be the better for a winter in Florida, and better still if they can take
up their abode there.
But if, on the contrary, persons are debilitated
and wretched during hot weather, and if cool
weather braces them, and gives them vigor and
life, then such evidently have no call to Florida,
and should be booked for Minnesota, or some
other dry, cold climate. There are consumptives belonging to both these classes of constitution; and the coming of one of the wrong kind
to Florida is of no use to himself, and is sure to
bring discredit on the country. A little good
common sense and reflection will settle that
matter.




124


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


Again: there is a form of what passes for consumption, which is, after all, some modification
of liver-complaint; and, so far as we have heard
or observed, Florida is no place for these cases.
The diseases here are of the bilious type; and
those who have liver-complaint are apt to grow
worse rather than better. But there are classes
of persons on whom the climate of Florida acts
like a charm.
There are certain nervously-organized dyspeptics who require a great deal of open, out-door
life.  They are in comfortable health during
those months when they can spend half their
time in the open air. They have no particular
disease; but they have no great reserved
strength, and cannot battle with severe weather.
They cannot go out in snow or wind, or on
chilly, stormy days, without risking more harm
than they get good.  Such, in our Northern
climate, are kept close prisoners for six months.




"FLORIDA FOR INVALIDS."


125


From December to May, they are shut in to
furnace-heated houses or air-tight stoves. The
winter is one long struggle to keep themselves
up. For want of the out-door exercise which
sustains them in summer, appetite and sleep
both fail them. They have restless nights and
bad digestion, and look anxiously to the end of
winter as the only relief. For such how slowly
it drags! They watch the almanac. The sun
crosses the line; the days grow a minute longer:
spring will come by and by. But by what cruel
irony was the month of March ever called
spring? - March, which piles snow-storms and
wind-storms on backs almost broken by endurance. The long agony of March and April
is the breaking-point with many a delicate person who has borne pretty well the regular
winter.
Said one who did much work, "I bear it
pretty well through December. I don't so much




126


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


mind January. February tires me a little; but I
face it bravely. But by March I begin to say,
Well, if this don't stop pretty soon, I shall: I
can't get much farther.'"   But our heaviest
snowstorms and most savage cold are often
reserved for March; and to many an invalid it
has given the final thrust: it is the last straw
that breaks the camel's back. But after March,
in New England, comes April, utterly untrustworthy, and with no assured out-door life for a
delicate person. As to the month of May, the
poet Cowper has a lively poem ridiculing the
poets who have made the charms of May the subject of their songs. Mother Nature is represented as thus addressing them: —
"' Since you have thus combined,' she said,'My favorite nymph to slight,
Adorning May, that peevish maid,
With June's undoubted right,




"FLORIDA FOR INVALIDS."


127


The minx, cursed for your folly's sake,
Shall prove herself a shrew;
Shall make your scribbling fingers ache,
And bite your noses blue.'"
Which she generally does.
So it is not really till June that delicately-constituted persons, or persons of impaired vigor,
really feel themselves out of prison. They have
then about five months at most in which they
can live an open-air life, before the prison-doors
close on them again.
Now, the persons who would be most benefited by coming to Florida are not the desperately diseased, the confirmed consumptives, but
those of such impaired physical vigor that they
are in danger of becoming so. An ounce of
prevention here is worth many pounds of cure.
It is too often the case that the care and expense
that might have prevented disease from settling
are spent in vain after it has once fastened. Sad




128


PALME TTO-LEA VES.


it is indeed to see the wan and wasted faces, and
hear the hollow death-cough, of those who have
been brought here too late. Yet, in hundreds
of instances, yes, in thousands, where one more
severe Northern winter would have fastened
disease on the vitals, a winter in a Southern
climate has broken the spell. The climate of
Florida is also of peculiar advantage in all
diseases attended by nervous excitability. The
air is peculiarly soothing and tranquillizing: it is
the veritable lotos-eater's paradise, full of quiet
and repose. We have known cases where the
sleeplessness of years has given way, under this
balmy influence, to the most childlike habit of
slumber.
For debility, and the complaints that spring
from debility, Florida is not so good a refuge, perhaps, as some more northern point, like Aiken.
The air here is soothing, but not particularly
bracing. It builds up and strengthens, not by




"FLORIDA FOR INVALIDS."


I29


any tonic effect in itself so much as by the opportunity for constant open-air life and exercise
which it affords.
For children, the climate cannot be too much
praised. In our little neighborhood are seven
about as lively youngsters as could often be met
with; and the winter has been one long out-door
play-spell. There has not been a cough, nor a
cold, nor an ailment of any kind, and scarce an
anxiety. All day long we hear their running
and racing, - down to the boat-wharves; in the
boats,. which they manage as dexterously as
little Sandwich- Islanders; fishing; catching
crabs, or off after flowers in the woods, with no
trouble of hail, sleet, or wet feet. Truly it is a
child's Eden; and they grow and thrive accordingly.
Now as to malaria. That is a word requiring
consideration to those who expect to make
Florida a permanent home, but having no terrors
9




130


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


for those who come to spend winters merely
There is no malaria in winter; and Dr. Cmay be consoled in reflecting that frost always
destroys it: so that, when the thermometer is, as
he says, at thirty-two degrees, there is no danger,
even though one be in the same State with forty
swamps. In fact, for ourselves, we prefer a cool
winter such as this has been. An October-like
winter, when it is warm in the middle of the
day, and one can enjoy a bright fire on the
hearth morning and night, is the most favorable
to out-door exercise and to health.
But merely to come to Florida, and idle away
time at the St. James or the St. Augustine
Hotel, taking no regular exercise, and having no
employment for mind or body, is no way to improve by being here. It is because the climate
gives opportunity of open-air exercise that it is
so favorable; but, if one neglects all these opportunities, he may gain very little.




"FLORIDA FOR INVALIDS."


I3I


It cannot be too often impressed on strangers
coming here, that what cold there is will be
more keenly felt than in a Northern climate.
Persons should vary their clothing carefully to
the varying temperature, and be quite as careful
to go warmly clad as in colder States. In our
furnace-heated houses at the North we generally
wear thick woollen dresses and under-flannels,
and keep up a temperature of from seventy
to eighty.degrees. In the South we move in
a much lower temperature, and have only the
open fire upon the hearth. It is therefore important to go warmly clad, and particularly to
keep on flannels until the warm weather of April
becomes a settled thing.
In regard to the healthfulness of Florida,
some things are to be borne in mind. In a
State that has the reputation of being an inva
lid's asylum, many desperate cases necessarily
take refuge, and, of course, many die. Yet,




I32


PALME TTO-LEA VES.


notwithstanding the loss from these causes, the
census of I860 showed that the number of
deaths from pulmonary complaints is less to the
population than in any State of the Union. In
Massachusetts, the rate is one in two hundred
and fifty-four; in California, one in seven hundred and twenty-seven; in Florida, one in fourteen hundred and forty-seven.  Surgeon-Gen.
Lawson of the United-States army, in his report, asserts that "the ratio of deaths to the
number of cases of remittent fevers has been
much less among the troops serving in Florida
than in other portions of the United States. In
the middle division, the proportion is one death
to thirty-six cases of fever; in the northern,
one to fifty-two; in Texas, one to seventyeight; in California, one in a hundred and
twenty-two; while in Florida it is one in two
hundred and eighty-seven."
Such statistics as these are more reliable than




"FLORIDA FOR INVALIDS."


I33


the limited observation of any one individual.
In regard to sudden changes of climate, Florida
is certainly not in all parts ideally perfect.
There are, at times, great and sudden changes
there, but not by any means as much so as in
most other States of the Union.
Sudden changes from heat to cold are the besetting sin of this fallen world. It is the staple
subject for grumbling among the invalids who
visit Italy; and, in fact, it is probably one of the
consequences of Adam's fall, which we are not
to be rid of till we get to the land of pure delight. It may, however, comfort the hearts of
visitors to Florida to know, that, if the climate
here is not in this respect just what they would
have it, it is about the best there is going.
All this will be made quite clear to any one
who will study the tables of observations on temperature contained in " The Guide to Florida,"
where they can see an accurate account of the




134


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


range of the thermometer for five successive
years as compared with that in other States.
One thing cannot be too often reiterated to
people who come to Florida; and that is, that
they must not expect at once to leave behind
them all sickness, sorrow, pain, inconvenience
of any kind, and to enter at once on the rest of
paradise.
The happiness, after all, will have to be comparative; and the inconveniences are to be
borne by reflecting how much greater inconveniences are avoided. For instance, when we
have a three-days' damp, drizzling rain-storm
down here, we must reflect, that, at the North, it
is a driving snow-storm. When it is brisk, cold
weather here, it is an intolerable freeze there.
The shadow and reflection of all important
changes at the North travel down to us in time.
The exceptionally cold winter at the North has
put our season here back a month behind its




"FLORIDA FOR INVALIDS."


I35


usual spring-time. The storms travel downward, coming to us, generally, a little later, and
in a modified form.
We cannot better illustrate this than by two
experiences this year. Easter morning we were
waked by bird-singing; and it was a most
heavenly morning. We walked out in the calm,
dewy freshness, to gather flowers to dress our
house, -the only church we have now in which
to hold services. In the low swamp-land near
our home is a perfect field of blue iris, whose
bending leaves were all beaded with dew; and
we walked in among them, admiring the wonderful vividness of their coloring, and gathering
the choicest to fill a large vase. Then we cut
verbenas, white, scarlet, and crimson, rose-geraniums and myrtle, callas and roses; while
already on our tables were vases of yellow jessamine, gathered the night before. The blue St.
John's lay in misty bands of light and shade in




136


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


the distance; and the mocking-birds and redbirds were singing a loud Te Deum.
Now for the North. A friend in Hartford
writes, "I was awaked by the patter of snow
and sleet on the window-pane. Not a creature
could go out to church, the storm  was so
severe: even the Irish were obliged to keep
housed. With all we could do with a furnace
and morning-glory stove, we could not get the
temperature of our house above fifty-five degrees."
In the latter part of the day, we at Mandarin
had some rough, chilling winds, which were the
remains of the Northern Easter storm; but we
were wise enough to rejoice in the good we had,
instead of fretting at the shadow of evil.




SWAMPS AND ORANGE-TREES.
MARCH 25, I872.,'i +/'  FTER a cold, damp, rainy week, we
have suddenly had dropped upon us
a balmy, warm, summer day, - thermometer at eighty; and every thing out of doors
growing so fast, that you may see and hear it
grow.
The swampy belt of land in front of the
house is now bursting forth in clouds of blue
iris of every shade, from the palest and faintest
137




I38


PA LME TTO-LEA VES.


to the most vivid lapis-lazuli tint. The wildrose-bushes there are covered with buds; and
the cypress-trees are lovely with their vivid little feathers of verdure. This swamp is. one of
those crooks in our lot which occasions a neverceasing conflict of spirit. It is a glorious, bewildering impropriety. The trees and shrubs in it
grow as if they were possessed; and there is
scarcely a month in the year that it does not
flame forth in some new blossom. It is a perpetual flower-garden, where creepers run and
tangle; where Nature has raptures and frenzies
of growth, and conducts herself like a crazy,
drunken, but beautiful bacchante.  But what to
do with it is not clear. The river rises and
falls in it; and under all that tangle of foliage
lies a foul sink of the blackest mud. The
black, unsavory moccasin-snakes are said and
believed to have their lair in those jungles,
where foot of man cares not to tread.   Gi



SWAMPS AND ORANGE-TREES. 139


gantic bulrushes grow up; clumps of high
water-grasses, willows, elms, maples, cypresses,
Magnolia glauca (sweet-bay), make brave show
of foliage. Below, the blue pickerel-weed, the
St. John's lily, the blue iris, wild-roses, blossoming tufts of elder, together with strange flowers
of names unspoken, make a goodly fellowship.
The birds herd there in droves; red-birds glance
like gems through the boughs; cat-birds and
sparrows and jays babble and jargon there in
the green labyrinths made by the tangling vines.
We muse over it, meanwhile enjoying the visible
coming-on of spring in its foliage. The maples
have great red leaves, curling with their own
rapid growth; the elms feather out into graceful
plumes; and the cypress, as we said before,
most brilliant of all spring greens, puts forth its
fairy foliage. Verily it is the most gorgeous of
improprieties, this swamp; and we will let it
alone this year also, and see what will come of




140


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


it.  There are suggestions of ditching and
draining, and what not, that shall convert the
wild bacchante into a steady, orderly member of
society. We shall see.
Spring is a glory anywhere; but, as you
approach the tropics, there is a vivid brilliancy,
a burning tone, to the coloring, that is peculiar.
We are struck with the beauty of the cat-briers.
We believe they belong to the smilax family;
and the kinds that prevail here are evergreen,
and have quaintly-marked leaves. Within a day
or two, these glossy, black-green vines have
thrown out trembling red sprays shining with
newness, with long tendrils waving in the air.
The vigor of a red young shoot that seems to
spring out in an hour has something delightful
in it.
Yellow  jessamine, alas! is fading.  The
ground is strewn with pale-yellow trumpets, as
if the elves had had a concert and thrown down




SWAMPS AND ORANGE-TREES. 141


their instruments, and fled.  Now the vines
throw out young shoots half a yard long, and
infinite in number; and jessamine goes on to
possess and clothe new regions, which next
February shall be yellow with flowers.
Farewell for this year, sweet Medea of the
woods, with thy golden fleece of blossoms!
Why couldst thou not stay with us through
the year?  Emerson says quaintly, "Seventy
salads measure the life of a man." The things,
whether of flower or fruit, that we can have but
once a year, mark off our lives. A lover might
thus tell the age of his lady-love: "Seventeen
times had the jessamine blossomed since she
came into the world." The time of the bloom
of the jessamine is about two months. In the
middle of January, when we came down, it was
barely budded: the 25th of March, and it is
past.
But, not to give all our time to flowers, we




142


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


must now fulfil our promise to answer letters,
and give practical information.
A gentleman propounds to us the following
inquiry: "Apart from the danger from frosts,
what is the prospect of certainty in the orangecrop? Is it a steady one?"
We have made diligent inquiry from old, experienced cultivators, and from those who have
collected the traditions of orange-growing; and
the result seems to be, that, apart from the
danger of frost, the orange-crop is the most
steady and certain of any known fruit.
In regard to our own grove, consisting of a
hundred and fifteen trees on an acre and a half
of ground, we find that there has been an average crop matured of sixty thousand a year for
each of the five years we have had it. Two
years the crop was lost through sudden frost
coming after it was fully perfected; but these
two years are the only ones since 1835




SWAMPS AND ORANGE-TREES. I43


when a crop has been lost or damaged through
frost.
Our friend inquires with regard to the orangeinsect. This was an epidemic which prevailed
some fifteen or twenty years ago, destroying the
orange-trees as the canker-worms did the appletrees. It was a variety of the scale-bug; but
nothing has been seen of it in an epidemic form
for many years, and growers now have no apprehensions from this source.
The wonderful vital and productive power of
the orange-tree would not' be marvelled at could
one examine its roots. The ground all through
our grove is a dense mat or sponge of fine
yellow roots, which appear like a network on the
least displacing of the sand. Every ramification
has its feeder, and sucks up food for the tree
with avidity. The consequence is, that people
who have an orange-grove must be contented
with that, and not try to raise flowers; but, nev



I44


PA LIMETTO-LEA VES.


ertheless, we do try, because we can't help it.
But every fertilizer that we put upon our roses
and flower-beds is immediately rushed after by
these hungry yellow orange-roots. At the root
of our great live-oak we wanted a little pet colony
of flowers, and had muck and manure placed
there to prepare for them.  In digging there
lately, we found every particle of muck and
manure netted round with the fine, embracing
fibres from the orange-tree ten feet off.  The
consequence is, that our roses grow slowly, and
our flower-garden is not a success.
Oleanders, cape-jessamines, pomegranates, and
crape-myrtles manage, however, to stand their
ground.  Any strong, woody-fibred plant does
better than more delicate flowers; as people who
will insist upon their rights, and fight for them,
do best in the great scramble of life.
But what a bouquet of sweets is an orangetree I Merely as a flowering-tree it is worth




SWA MPS AND ORANGE-TREES. 145


having, if for nothing else. We call the time of
their budding the week of pearls. How beautiful, how almost miraculous, the leaping-forth
of these pearls to gem the green leaves! The
fragrance has a stimulating effect on our nerves,
-a sort of dreamy intoxication. The air, now,
is full of it. Under the trees the white shellpetals drift, bearing perfume.
But, not to lose our way in poetic raptures, we
return to statistics drawn from a recent conversation with our practical neighbor.  He has
three trees in his grounds, which this year have
each borne five thousand oranges. He says that
he has never failed of a steady crop from any
cause, except in the first of the two years named;
and, in that case, it is to be remembered the fruit
was perfected, and only lost by not being.gathered.
He stated that he had had reports from two
men whom he named, who had each gathered
IO0




146


PA LAMETTO-LEA VES.


ten thousand from a single tree. He appeared
to think it a credible story, though a very
remarkable yield.
The orange can be got from seed.    Our
neighbor's trees, the largest and finest in
Mandarin, are  seedlings.  Like ours, they
were frozen down in 1835, and subsequently
almost destroyed by the orange-insect; but
now they are stately, majestic trees of wonderful beauty. The orange follows the quality
of the seed, and needs no budding; and in our
region this mode of getting the trees is universally preferred. Fruit may be expected from the
seed in six years, when high cultivation is. practised. A cultivator in our neighborhood saw a
dozen trees, with an average of three hundred
oranges on each, at seven years from the seed.
Young seedling plants of three years' growth
can be bought in the nurseries on the St. John's
River.




SWAMPS AND ORANGE-TREES. 147


Our young folks have been thrown into a state
of great excitement this afternoon by the introduction among them of two live alligators. Our
friend Mr. P-    went for them to the lair of
the old alligator, which he describes as a hole in
the bank, where the eggs are laid. Hundreds of
little alligators were crawling in and out, the
parents letting them shift for themselves. They
feed upon small fish.  Our young prot/ge
snapped in a very suggestive manner at a stick
offered to him, and gave an energetic squeak.
We pointed out to the children, that, if it were
their finger or toe that was in the stick's place,
the consequences might be serious. After all,
we have small sympathy with capturing these
poor monsters. We shall have some nice tales
to tell of them anon. Meanwhile our paper
must end here.




LETTER-WRITING.
APRIL I4.
UR Palmetto correspondence increases
daily. Our mail comes only twice a,' week; and, as the result of the two
last mails, we find fifteen letters, propounding
various inquiries about Florida. Now, it would
be a most delightful thing to be on sociable
terms with all the world; and we would be glad
to reply to each one of these letters. Many of
them are sprightly and amusing: all are writ148




LE TTER- WRITING.


I49


ten in good faith, containing most natural and
rational inquiries. But, let any one attempt the
task of writing fifteen letters on one subject,
and he will soon find that it is rather more than
can be done by one who expects to do any thing
else.
Some of the inquiries, however, we may as
well dispose of in the beginning of this letter.
And first as to the little boy who has lost his
cat, and wishes to know if we cannot spare
Peter to take her place. Alas! we have a tale
of sadness to unfold.  When we began our
"Palmetto-Leaves," we were the embarrassed
possessor of four thrifty cats: now every one
of them has passed to the land of shades, and
we are absolutely catless.  Peter, we regret to
say, was killed in consequence of being mistaken for a rabbit, one moonlight night, by an
enterprising young sportsman; Annie was unfortunately drowned; and'Cindy fell victim to




I50


PALME TTO-LEA VES.


some similar hallucination of the young son-of-agun who destroyed Peter. In short, only our
old family mother-cat remained; but, as she had
a fine litter of kittens, there was hope that the
line would be continued. We established her
sumptuously in a box in the back-shed with her
nurslings; but, as cruel Fate would have it, a
marauding dog came smelling about, and a fight
ensued, in which Puss's fore-leg was broken, or,
to speak quite literally, chewed up.
Wounded and bleeding, but plucky to the last,
she drove off the dog with a "predestined
scratched face," and, taking up her kittens one
by one in her mouth, traversed a long veranda,
jumped through a window into the bed-room of
one of her mistresses, and deposited her nurslings under the bed.
All agreed that a cat of such spirit and gallantry had shown that she ought to vote by her
ability to fight, and that she was at least worthy




LETTER- WRITING.


I5 


of distinguished attention.  So the next day
the whole family sat in council on the case.
Chloroform was administered: and, while Puss
was insensible, a promising young naturalist set
and bandaged the limb; but, alas! without avail.
The weather was hot; and the sufferings of the
poor creature soon became such, that we were
thankful that we had the power, by a swift and
painless death, to put an end to them. So a,
pistol-ball sent Puss to the land where the good
cats go; and the motherless kitties found peace
under the blue waters of the St. John's. The
water-nymphs, undoubtedly, "held  up  their
pearled wrists and took them in," and doubtless
made blessed pets of them. So that is the end
of all our cats.
Phoebus rejoices now; for there is none to
molest or make him afraid. His songs increase
daily in variety. He pipes and whistles; occasionally breaks forth into a litany that sounds




152


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


like "Pray do, pray do, pray do!" then, suddenly changing the stop, he shouts, "De deevil!
de deevil! de deevil!" but, as he is otherwise a
bird of the most correct habits, it cannot be
supposed that any profanity is intended. This
morning being Sunday, he called "Beecher,
Beecher, Beecher!" very volubly.  He evidently is a progressive bird, and, for aught we
know, may yet express himself on some of the
questions of the day.
The next letter on our file wants to know the
prices of board at Green-Cove Springs, Magnolia, and Hibernia. The prices at these places
vary all the way from twelve to thirty-five dollars
per week, according to accommodations. The
higher prices are in larger hotels, and the
smaller in private boarding-houses. "The Florida Guide " says board can be obtained in Jacksonville, in private families, at from eight to ten
dollars per week.




LETTER- WRITING.


I53


There are three more letters, asking questions
about the culture of the orange; to which the
writers will find answers, so far as we can give
them, when we come to speak of the orangeorchards up the river.
A lady writes to ask if we know any way of
preserving figs.
Practically, we know nothing about the figharvest, having never been here when they were
ripe. Our friends tell us that they are not successful in preserving them in cans. They make
a delicious though rather luscious preserve done
in the ordinary way, like peaches. But we will
give our inquiring friend the benefit of a piece
of information communicated to us by an old
native Floridian, who professed to have raised
and prepared figs as fine as those in Turkey.
His receipt was as follows: " Prepare a lye from
the ashes of the grape-vine; have a kettle of
this kept boiling hot over the fire; throw in




154


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


the figs, and let them remain two minutes; skim
them out and drain them on a sieve, and afterwards dry in the sun." Such was his receipt,
which we have never tried. Probably any other
strong lye would answer as well as that from the
grape-vine.
As to those who have asked for flowers from
Florida, we wish it were in our power to grant
their requests; but these frail beauties are not
transferable. We in our colony have taxed the
resources of our postal arrangements to carry to
our friends small specimens, but with no very
encouraging results.
We have just been making the grand round,
or tour up the St. John's to Enterprise, across to
St. Augustine, and back; which is necessary to
constitute one an accomplished Floridian sightseer: and it had been our intention to devote this letter to that trip; but there is so
much to say, there are so many wonders




LETTER- WRITING.


155


and marvels to be described, that we must
give it a letter by itself. No dreamland on
earth can be more unearthly in its beauty and
glory than the St. John's in'April. Tourists, for
the most part, see it only in winter, when half
its gorgeous forests stand bare of leaves, and
go home, never dreaming what it would be like
in its resurrection-robes. So do we, in our darkness, judge the shores of the river of this mortal
life up which we sail, ofttimes disappointed and
complaining.  We are seeing all things in
winter, and not as they will be when God shall
wipe away all tears, and bring about the new
heavens and new earth, of which every spring
is a symbol and a prophecy. The flowers and
leaves of last year vanish for a season; but they
come back fresher and fairer than ever.
This bright morning we looked from the roof
of our veranda, and our neighbor's oleander-trees
were glowing like a great crimson cloud; and we




I56


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


said, "There! the oleanders have come back!"
No Northern ideas can give the glory of these
trees as they raise their heads in this their native
land, and seem to be'covered with great crimson
roses. The poor stunted bushes of Northern
greenhouses are as much like it as our
stunted virtues and poor frost-nipped enjoyments shall be like the bloom and radiance of
God's paradise hereafter. In April they begin
to bloom; and they bloom on till' November.
Language cannot do justice to the radiance,
the brightness, the celestial calm and glory,
of these spring  days.  There is an assurance of perpetuity in them. You do not say, as
at the North, that a fine day is a "weatherbreeder," and expect a week of storms to pay
for it.  Day after day passes in brightness.
Morning after morning, you wake to see the same
sunshine gilding the tops of the orange-trees, and
hear the same concert of birds. All the forest



LETTER-WRITING.


I57


trees stand in perfected glory; and the leaves
have sprung forth with such rapidity and elastic
vigor as gives the foliage a wondrous brightness.
The black-jack oaks - trees which, for some reason or other, are apt to be spoken of as of small
account - have now put forth their large, sharplycut, oak-shaped leaves. We say this because it
is the only one of the oak species here that at
all resembles the oaks we have been accustomed
to see. The pawpaw-bushes are all burst out in
white fringes of blossom; and the silver bells of
the sparkle-berry are now in their perfection.
Under foot, a whole tribe of new flowers have
come in place of the departed violets. The
partridge-berry or squaw-berry of the North
grows, in the woods in dense mats, and is now
white with its little starry blossoms. Certain
nameless little golden balls of flowers twinkle in
the grass and leaves like small constellations.
We call them, for lack of botanic language,




I58


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


"sun-kisses."  Our party, the other night, made
an expedition to the "second branch," and
brought home long vines of purple wisteria, red
trumpet-creeper, and some sprays of white blossoms unknown to us: so that our house still is
a flower-show. Spring is as much a pomp and a
glory here as in Northern States; for although the
winter is far more endurable, and preserves far
more beauty, yet the outburst of vividness and
vigor when the sun begins to wax powerful is
even greater and more marked than at the North.
The roses are now in perfection. Ours have
not thriven as they might have done were it not
for the all-devouring orange-trees; but still they
give us every morning, with our breakfast, a
comforting assortment. La Marque, Giant of
Battles, Hermosa, a little cluster rose, and a
dozen more, have brightened our repast. This
is the land to raise roses, however; and we mean
yet to have a rose-garden at a safe distance from




LETTER- WRITING.


I59


any orange-trees, and see what will come of it.
Here are no slugs or rose-bugs or caterpillars
to make rose-culture a burden and a vexation.
Finally, as we have had so many letters asking
information of us, we wish somebody who is
wise enough would write one, and give us some
on a certain point. One of our orange-trees has
become an invalid. The case may be stated as
follows: Early in the season, Mr. F., in looking
over the grove, found this tree, then loaded with
fruit, dropping its leaves; the leaves curling, or, as
they say here, "rolling," as is the fashion of orange-trees when suffering from drought. Immediately he took all the fruit from the tree, pruned
it, dug about the roots, and examined them to find
something to account for this. For a while, by
careful tending, the tree seemed to be coming
to itself; but, when the blossoming-time came
round, half its leaves fell, and it burst into blossoms on every spray and twig in the most pre



i60        PALMETTO-LEA VES.
ternatural manner. It reminded us of some poor
dear women, who, when they lose their health,
seem resolved to kill themselves in abundant good
works.  It was really blossoming to death.
Now, we ask any wise fruit-growers, What is this
disease? and how is it to be treated? We have
treated it by cutting off all the blossoms, cutting
back the branches, watering with water in which
guano and lime have been dissolved; and the
patient looks a little better. A negro workman
testified that a tree in a similar state had been
brought back by these means. Can any fruitgrower give any light on this subject?




MAGNOLIA WEEK.


APRIL 20.


T is vain to propose and announce
subjects from week to week. One
-       ~  must write what one is thinking of.
When the mind is full of one thing, why go
about to write on another?
The past week we have been engrossed by
magnolias.  On  Monday, our friend D,
armed and equipped with scaling-ladders, ascended the glistening battlements of the great
11                    61




162


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


forest palaces fronting his cottage, and bore
thence the white princesses, just bursting into
bud, and brought them down to us. Forthwith
all else was given up: for who would take the
portrait of the white lady must hurry; for, like
many queens of earth, there is but a step between perfected beauty and decay, -a moment
between beauty and ashes.
We bore them to our chamber, and before
morning the whole room was filled with the intoxicating, dreamy fragrance; and lo! while we
slept, the pearly hinges had revolved noiselessly,
and the bud that we left the evening before had
become a great and glorious flower.  To descend to particulars, imagine a thick, waxencupped peony of the largest size, just revealing
in its centre an orange-colored cone of the size
of a walnut. Around it, like a circlet of emeralds, were the new green leaves, contrasting in
their vivid freshness with the solid, dark-green




MAGNOLIA WEEK.


I63


brilliancy of the old foliage. The leaves of the
magnolia are in themselves beauty enough without the flower. We used to gather them in a
sort of rapture before we ever saw the blossom;
but all we can say of the flower is, that it is
worthy of them.
We sat down before this queen of flowers, and
worked assiduously at her portrait.  We had,
besides the full blossom, one bud of the size and
shape of a large egg, which we despaired of seeing opened, but proposed to paint as it was. The
second morning, our green egg began to turn
forth a silver lining; and, as we worked, we could
see it slowly opening before us. Silvery and
pearly were' the pure tips; while the outside was
of a creamy yellow melting into green. Two
days we kept faithful watch and ward at the
shrine; but, lo! on the morning of the third our
beautiful fairy had changed in the night to an
ugly brownie. The petals, so waxen fair the




I64


PA LMETTO-LEA VES.


night before, had become of a mahogany color;
and a breeze passing by swept them dishonored
in showers on the floor. The history of that
magnolia was finished. We had seen it unfold
and die. Our pearly bud, however, went on
waxing and opening till its day came for full
perfection.
The third day, our friend again brought in a
glorious bouquet.  No ordinary flower-vase
would hold it. It required a heavy stone jar,
and a gallon of water; but we filled the recess
of our old-fashioned Franklin stove with the
beauties, and the whole house was scented with
their perfume.
Then we thought of the great lonely swamps
and everglades where thousands of these beauties are now bursting into flower with Iro earthly
eye to behold them.
The old German legends of female spirits inhabiting trees recurred to us. Our magnolia




MAGNOLIA WEEK.


I65


would. make a beautiful Libussa. A flower is
commonly thought the emblem of a woman; and
a woman is generally thought of as something
sweet, clinging, tender, and perishable.  But
there are women flowers that correspond to the
forest magnolia, - high and strong, with a great
hold of root and a great spread of branches; and
whose pulsations of heart and emotion come
forth like these silv6r lilies that illuminate the
green shadows of the magnolia-forests.
Yesterday, our friend the Rev. Mr. Mcalled and invited us to go with him to visit his
place, situated at the mouth of Julington, just
where it flows into the St. John's. Our obliging
neighbor immediately proposed to take the
whole party in his sailing-yacht.
An impromptu picnic was proclaimed through
the house. Every one dropped the work in
hand, and flew to spreading sandwiches.
Oranges   were  gathered, luncheon-baskets




I66


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


packed; and the train filed out from the two
houses. The breeze was fresh and fair; and
away we flew. Here, on the St. John's, a watercoach is more to the purpose, in the present
state of our wood-roads, than any land-carriage;
and the delight of sailing is something infinitely above any other locomotion.  On this
great, beautiful river you go drifting like a
feather or a cloud; while the green, fragrant
shores form a constantly-varying picture as you
pass. Yesterday, as we were sailing, we met a
little green, floating island, which seemed to
have started out on its own account, and gone to
seek its fortune. We saw it at first in the distance, - a small, undulating spot of vivid green.
Our little craft was steered right alongside, so
that we could minutely observe. It was some
half-dozen square yards of pickerel-weed, bonnet
water-lettuce, and other water-plants, which, it
would seem, had concluded to colonize, and go




MA GNOLIA WEEK.


I67


out to see the world in company. We watched
them as they went nodding and tilting off over
the blue waters, and wondered where they would
bring up.
But now we are at the mouth of Julington,
and running across to a point of land on the
other side. Our boat comes to anchor under a
grove of magnolia-trees which lean over the
water. They are not yet fully in blossom. One
lily-white bud and one full-blown flower appear
on a low branch overhanging the river, and are
marked to be gathered when we return. We
go up, and begin strolling along the shore. The
magnolia-grove extends along the edge of the
water for half a mile. Very few flowers are yet
developed; but the trees themselves, in the vivid
contrast of the new leaves with the old, are
beauty enough. Out of the centre of the spike
of last year's solemn green comes the most
vivid, varnished cluster of fresh young leaves,




168


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


and from the centre of this brilliant cluster
comes the flower-bud. The magnolia, being an
evergreen, obeys in its mode of growth the law
which governs all evergreens. When the new
shoots come out, the back-leaves fall off. This
produces in the magnolia a wonderfully-beautiful effect of color. As we looked up in the
grove, each spike had, first, the young green
leaves; below those, the dark, heavy ones; and
below those still, the decaying ones, preparing to
fall. These change with all the rich colors of
decaying leaves. Some are of a pure, brilliant
yellow; others yellow, mottled and spotted with
green; others take a tawny orange, and again a
faded brown.
The afternoon sun, shining through this grove,
gave all these effects of color in full brightness.
The trees, as yet, had but here and there a blossom. Each shoot had its bud, for the most part
no larger than a walnut. The most advanced




MA GNOLIA WEEK.


I69


were of the size of an egg, of white tinted with
green.  Beneath the trees the ground was
thickly strewn with the golden brown and
mottled leaves, which were ever and anon sailing down as the wind swayed them.
Numbers of little seedling magnolias were
springing up everywhere about us; and we easily
pulled up from the loose yielding soil quite a
number of them, wrapping their roots in the
gray moss which always lies at hand for packingpurposes.
The place had many native wild orange-trees,
which had been cut off and budded with the
sweet orange, and were making vigorous
growth. Under the shade of the high live-oaks
Mr. M-      had set out young orange and
lemon trees through quite an extent of the
forest. He told us that he had two thousand
plants thus growing. It is becoming a favorite
idea with fruit-planters here, that the tropical




170


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


fruits are less likely to be injured by frosts, and
make a more rapid and sure growth, under the
protecting shadow of live-oaks.  The wild orange is found frequently growing in this way;
and they take counsel of Nature in this respect.
After wandering a while in the wood, we picnicked under a spreading live-oak, with the
breeze from the river drawing gratefully across
us.
Our dinner over, Mr. M-  took us through
his plantations of grapes, peaches, and all other
good things.  Black Hamburg grapes grafted
upon the root of the native vine had made luxuriant growth, and were setting full of grapes.
There were shoots of this year's growth full six
and seven feet in length. In the peach-orchard
were trees covered with young peaches, which
Mr. M — told us were only three years from
the seed. All the garden vegetables were there
in fine order; and the string-beans appeared to
be in full maturity.




MA GNOLIA WEEK.


I7I


It is now five years since Mr. M-  bought
and began to clear this place, then a dense forest. At first, the letting-in of the sun on the
decaying vegetation, and the upturning of the
soil, made the place unhealthy; and it was found
necessary to remove the family. Now the work
is done, the place cleared, and, he says, as
healthy as any other.
Mr. M      is an enthusiastic horticulturist
and florist, and is about to enrich the place with
a rose-garden of some thousands of choice
varieties. These places in Florida must not in
any wise be compared with the finished ones of
Northern States. They are spots torn out of
the very heart of the forest, and where Nature is
rebelling daily, and rushing with all her might
back again into the wild freedom from which she
has been a moment led captive.
But a day is coming when they will be wonderfully beautiful and productive.




172


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


We had one adventure in conquering and
killing a formidable-looking black-snake about
seven feet in length. He had no fangs, and, Mr.
M — told us, belonged to a perfectly respectable
and harmless family, whose only vice is chickenstealing. They are called chicken-snakes, in
consequence of the partiality they show for
young chickens, which they swallow, feathers
and all, with good digestion and relish. He informed us that they were vigorous ratters, and
better than either terrier or cat for keeping
barns clear of rats; and that for this purpose
they were often cherished in granaries, as they
will follow the rats to retreats where cats cannot
go.  Imagine the feelings of a rat when this
dreadful visitor comes like grim death into his
family-circle!
In regard to snakes in general, the chance of
meeting hurtful ones in Florida is much less
than in many other States. Mr. M, who in




MAGNOLIA WEEK.


I73


the way of his mission has ridden all through
Florida, never yet met a rattlesnake, or was
endangered by any venomous serpent. Perhaps
the yearly burnings of the grass which have
been practised so long in Florida have had
some effect in checking the increase of serpents
by destroying their eggs.
As the afternoon sun waxed low we sought
our yacht again, and came back with two magnolia-flowers and several buds.
This week, too, the woods are full of the
blossoms of the passion-flower.
Our neighbor Mr. C-  has bought the beautiful oak-hammock, where he is preparing to build a
house. Walking over to see the spot the other
evening, we found a jungle of passion-flowers
netted around on the ground, and clinging to
bush and tree. Another neighbor also brought
us in some branches of a flowering-shrub called
the Indian pipe, which eclipses the sparkle



I74


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


berry. Like that, it seems to be a glorified
variety of high huckleberry or blueberry. It
has the greatest profusion of waxen white bells
fringing every twig; and, blas6 as we have been
with floral displays, we had a new sensation
when it was brought into the house.
Thus goes the floral procession in April in
the wild-woods. In the gardens, the oleanders,
pink, white, and deep crimson, are beginning
their long season of bloom. The scarlet pomegranate, with its vivid sparks of color, shines
through the leaves.
We are sorry for all those who write to beg
that we will send by mail a specimen of this or
that flower. Our experience has shown us that
in that way they are not transferable. Magnoliabuds would arrive dark and dreadful; and it is
far better to view the flowers ever fresh and
blooming, through imagination, than to receive
a desolate, faded, crumpled remnant by mail.




BUYING LAND IN FLORIDA.
MAY 2.
*i~~E have before us a neat little pile of
~3  5 I   what we call "Palmetto letters,"- rean~V~g    sponses to our papers from all States
in the Union. Our knowledge of geography
has really been quite brightened by the effort to
find out where all our correspondents are living. Nothing could more mark the exceptional
severity of the recent winter than the bursts of
enthusiasm with which the tidings of flowers
175




I76


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


and open-air freedom in Florida have come to
those struggling through snow-drifts and hailstorms in the more ungenial parts of our Union.
Florida seems to have risen before their vision
as the hymn sings of better shores: —
"On Jordan's stormy banks I stand,
And cast a wistful eye
To Canaan's fair and happy land."
Consequently, the letters of inquiry have
come in showers. What is the price of land?
Where shall we go? How shall we get there?
&c.
We have before advertised you, O beloved
unknown! who write, that your letters are welcome, ofttimes cheering, amusing, and undeniably nice letters; yet we cannot pledge ourselves
to answer, except in the gross, and through " The
Christian Union." The last inquiry is from
three brothers, who want to settle and have




BUYING LAND IN FLORIDA.


I77


homes together at the South. They ask, "Is
there government land that can be had in Florida?" Yes, there is a plenty of it; yet, as
Florida is the oldest settled State in the Union,
and has always been a sort of bone for which
adventurers have wrangled, the best land in it
has been probably taken up. We do not profess to be land-agents; and we speak only for
the tract of land lying on the St. John's River,
between Mandarin and Jacksonville, when we
say that there are thousands of acres of good
land, near to a market, near to a great river on
which three or four steamboats are daily plying,
that can be had for five dollars per acre, and for
even less than that. Fine, handsome buildinglots in the neighborhood of Jacksonville are
rising in value, commanding much higher prices
than the mere productive valie of the land. In
other words, men pay for advantages, for society, for facilities afforded by settlements.
12




PALMETTO-LEA VES.


Now, for the benefit of those who are seriously thinking of coming to Florida, we have
taken some pains to get the practical experience
of men who are now working the land, as to
what it will do. On the 2d of May, we
accepted the invitation of Col. Hardee to visit
his pioneer nursery, now in the fourth year of
its existence. Mr. Hardee is an enthusiast in
his business; and it is a department where we
are delighted to see enthusiasm. The close of
the war found him, as he said, miserably poor.
But, brave and undiscouraged, he retained his
former slaves as free laborers; took a tract of
land about a mile and a half from Jacksonville;
put up a house; cleared, planted, ploughed, and
digged: and, in the course of four years, results
are beginning to tell handsomely, as they always
do for energy and industry. He showed us
through his grounds, where every thing was
growing at the rate things do grow here in the




BUYING LAND IN FLORIDA.


I79


month of May. Two things Mr. Hardee seems
to have demonstrated: first, that strawberryculture may be a success in Florida; and,
second, that certain varieties of Northern apples
and pears may be raised here. We arrived in
Florida in the middle of January; and one of
the party who spent a night at the St. James
was surprised by seeing a peck of fresh, ripe
strawberries brought in. They were from Mr.
Hardee's nursery, and grown in the open air;
and he informed us that they had, during all the
winter, a daily supply of the fruit, sufficient for a
large family, and a considerable overplus for the
market. The month of May, however, is the
height of the season; and they were picking,
they informed us, at the rate of eighty quarts
per day.
In regard to apples and pears, Mr. Hardee's
method is to graft them upon the native hawthorn; and the results are really quite wonder



I8o


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


ful. Mr. Hardee was so complaisant as to cut
and present to us a handsome cluster of red
Astrachan apples about the size of large hickorynuts, the result of the second year from the graft.
Several varieties of pears had made a truly
astonishing growth, and promise to fruit, in time,
abundantly. A large peach-orchard presented
a show of peaches, some of the size of a butternut, and some of a walnut. Concerning one
which he called the Japan peach, he had sanguine hope of ripe fruit in ten days. We were
not absolute in the faith as to the exact date,
but believe that there will undoubtedly be ripe
peaches there before the month of May is out.
Mr. Hardee is particularly in favor of cultivating
fruit in partially-shaded ground. Most of these
growths we speak of were under the shade of
large live-oaks; but when he took us into the
wild forest, and showed us peach, orange, and
lemon trees set to struggle for existence on the




BUYING LAND IN FLORIDA.


I8i


same footing, and with only the same advantages,
as the wild denizens of the forest, we rather
demurred. Was not this pushing theory to extremes? Time will show.
Col. Hardee has two or three native seedling
peaches grown in Florida, of which he speaks
highly, - Mrs. Thompson's Golden Free, which
commences ripening in June, and continues till
the first of August; the "Cracker Cart," very
large, weighing sometimes thirteen ounces; the
Cling Yellow; and the Japan, very small and
sweet, ripening in May.
Besides these, Mr. Hardee has experimented
largely in vines, in which he gives preference to
the Isabella, Hartford Prolific, and Concord.
He is also giving attention to roses and ornamental shrubbery. What makes the inception
of such nurseries as Mr. Hardee's a matter of
congratulation is that they furnish to purchasers
things that have been proved suited to the




I82


PA8LMIE TTO-LEA VES.


climate and soil of Florida. Peach-trees, roses,
and grapes, sent from the North, bring here the
habit of their Northern growth, which often
makes them worthless. With a singular stubbornness, they adhere to the times and seasons
to which they have been accustomed farther
North. We set a peach-orchard of some four
hundred trees which we obtained from a nursery
in Georgia. We suspect now, that, having a
press of orders, our nurseryman simply sent us
a packet of trees from some Northern nursery.
The consequence is, that year after year, when
all nature about them is bursting into leaf and
blossom, when peaches of good size gem the
boughs of Florida trees, our peach-orchard
stands sullen and leafless; nor will it start bud or
blossom till the time for peaches to start in New
York. The same has been our trouble with
some fine varieties of roses which we took
from our Northern grounds. As yet, they are




BUYING LAND IN FLORIDA.


I83


hardly worth the ground they occupy; and
whether they ever will do any thing is a matter
of doubt. Meanwhile we have only to ride a
little way into the pine-woods to see around
many a rustic cabin a perfect blaze of crimson
roses and cluster roses, foaming over the fences
in cascades of flowers. These are Florida roses,
born and bred; and this is the way they do with
not one tithe of the work and care that we have
expended on our poor Northern exiles.  Mr.
Hardee, therefore, in attempting the pioneer
nursery of Florida, is doing a good thing for
every new-comer; and we wish him all success.
As a parting present, we received a fine summer
squash, which, for the first of May, one must
admit is good growth. And now, for the benefit
of those who may want to take up land in
Florida, we shall give the experience of some
friends and neighbors of ours who have carried




184       PALMETTO-LEA VES.
through about as thorough and well-conducted
an experiment as any; and we give it from memoranda which they have kindly furnished, in the
hope of being of use to other settlers.




OUR EXPERIENCE IN CROPS.


FEW years ago, three brothers, farmers, from Vermont, exhausted by the
long, hard winters there, came to
Florida to try an experiment. They bought two
hundred and seventy-five acres in the vicinity of
Mandarin at one dollar per acre. It was pineland, that had been cut over twice for timber,
and was now considered of no further value by
its possessor, who threw it into the hands of a
185




I86


PALME TTO-LEA VES.


land-agent to make what he could of it. It was
the very cheapest kind of Florida land.
Of this land they cleared only thirty-five
acres. The fencing cost two hundred dollars.
They put up a large, unplastered, two-story
house, with piazzas to both floors, at a cost of
about a thousand dollars. The additional outlay
was on two mules and a pair of oxen, estimated
at four hundred dollars. The last year, they put
up a sugar-mill and establishment at a cost of
five hundred dollars.
An orange-grove, a vineyard, and a peachorchard, are all included in the programme of
these operators, and are all well under way. But
these are later results. It is not safe to calculate on an orange-grove under ten years, or on a
vineyard or peach-orchard under four or five.
We have permission to copy verbatim certain
memoranda of results with which they have
furnished us.




OUR EXPERIENCE IN CROPS.  I87


CABBAGES.
First Year. - Sowed seed in light sandy soil
without manure. Weak plants, beaten down by
rain, lost.
Second Year. -Put out an acre and a half
of fine plants: large part turned out poorly.
Part of the land was low, sour, and wet, and all
meagrely fertilized. Crop sold in Jacksonville
for two hundred and fifty dollars.
Third Year. -Three acres better, but still
inadequately manured, and half ruined by the
Christmas frost: brought about eight hundred
dollars.
Fourth Year (I871-72.)-Two acres better
manured; planted in low land, on ridges five feet
apart: returned six hundred dollars. In favorable
seasons, with good culture, an acre of cabbages
should yield a gross return of five hundred
dollars, of which three hundred would be clear
profit.




I88


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


CUCUMBERS,
First Year. - Planted four acres, mostly new,
hard, sour land, broad-casting fifty bushels of
lime to the acre, and using some weak, halfrotted compost in the hills: wretched crop.
The whole lot sent North: did not pay for shipment.
Second Year. - An acre and a half best land,
heavily manured with well-rotted compost worked
into drills eight feet apart: yielded fifty bushels,
which brought two hundred and fifty dollars in
New York. More would have been realized, except that an untimely hail-storm spoiled the vines
prematurely.
Third Year. - An acre and a half, well cultivated and manured, yielded four hundred
bushels, and brought a gross return of thirteen
hundred dollars.




OUR EXPERIENCE IN CROPS.  I89


TOMATOES.
First Year. - Lost many plants through rain
and wet, and insufficient manure. Those we got
to the New-York market brought from four to
six dollars per bushel.
Second Year. - Manured too heavily in the
hill with powerful unfermented manures. A
heavy rain helped ruin the crop. Those, however, which we sent to market, brought good
prices.
Third Year. -None planted for market; but
those for family use did so well as to put us in
good humor with the crop, and induce us to
plant for this year.
SWEET-POTATOES.
Every year we have had pretty good success
with them on land well prepared with lime and
ashes. We have had three hundred and fifty
bushels to the acre.




I90


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


SUGAR-CANE
Has done very respectably on one-year-old soil
manured with ashes only; while mellow land,
well prepared with muck, ashes, and fish-guano,
has yielded about twenty barrels of sugar to the
acre.
IRISH POTATOES.
We have found these on light soil, with only
moderate fertilizing, an unprofitable crop at four
dollars, but on good land, with very heavy manuring, decidedly profitable at two dollars per
bushel. Fine potatoes rarely are less than that
in Jacksonville. They will be ready to dig in
April and May.
PEAS
May be extraordinarily profitable, and may fail
entirely. A mild winter, without severe frosts,
would bring them  early into market.  The




OUR EXPERIENCE IN CROPS.  191


Christmas freeze of I870 caught a half-acre of
our peas in blossom, and killed them to the
ground.
Planted in the latter part of January, both
peas and potatoes are pretty sure. We have not
done much with peas; but a neighbor of ours
prefers them to cabbages. He gets about three
dollars per bushel.
As a general summary, our friend adds,"For two years in succession, we have found
our leading market-crops handsomely remunerative. The net returns look well compared with
those of successful gardening near New York.
Cabbages raised here during the fall and winter,
without any protection, bear as good price as do
the spring cabbages which are raised in coldframes at the North; and early cucumbers,
grown in the open air, have been worth as much
to us as to Northern gardeners who have grown
them in hot-beds.




I92


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


" The secret of our success is an open one; but
we ourselves do not yet come up to our mark,
and reduce our preaching to practice. We have
hardly made a good beginning in high manuring.
We did not understand at first, as we now do,
the difference between ordinary crops and early
vegetables and fruits. Good corn may be raised
on poor land at the rate of five or ten bushels to
the acre; but, on a hundred acres of scantily-fertilized land, scarcely a single handsome cabbage
can be grown. So with cucumbers: they will
neither be early, nor fit for market, if raised on
ordinary land with ordinary culture. Most of
the market-gardening in Florida, so far as we
know it, cannot but prove disastrous.  Landagents and visionaries hold forth that great
crops may be expected from insignificant outlays; and so they decoy the credulous to their
ruin. To undertake raising vegetables in Florida, with these ideas of low culture, is to embark




OUR EXPERIENCE IN CROPS.  I93


in a leaky and surely-sinking ship. If one is
unwilling to expend for manure alone upon a
single acre in one year enough to buy a hundred acres of new land, let him give a wide
berth to market-gardening. Such expenditures
have to be met at the North; and there is no
getting round it at the South.
"Yet one can economize here as one cannot at
the North. The whole culture of an early vegetable-garden can go on in connection with the
later crop of sugar-cane. Before our cabbages
were off the ground this spring, we had our
cane-rows between them; and we never before
prepared the ground and planted the cane so
easily. On another field we have the cane-rows
eight feet apart, and tomatoes and snap-beans
intervening. We have suffered much for lack
of proper drainage.  We have actually lost
enough from water standing upon crops to have
underdrained the whole enclosure. We under13




194


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


took to till more acres than we could do justice
to. In farming, the love of acres is the root of
all evil."
So much for our friend's experiences. We
consider this experiment a most valuable one for
all who contemplate buying land and settling in
Florida. It is an experiment in which untiring
industry, patience, and economy have been
brought into exercise. It has been tried on the
very cheapest land in Florida, and its results are
most instructive.
Market-gardening must be the immediate
source of support; and therefore this experiment
is exactly in point.
This will show that the land is the least of the
expense in starting a farm; and that it is best,
in the first instance, to spend little for land, and
much for the culture of it.
Thousands of people pour down into Florida
to winter, and must be fed. The Jacksonville




OUR EXPERIENCE IN CROPS. I95


market, and the markets of all the different
boarding establishments on the river, need
ample supplies; and there is no fear that there
will not be a ready sale for all that could be
raised.
Our friends are willing to make a free contribution of their own failures and mistakes for
the good of those who come after. It shows that
a new country must be studied and tried before
success is attained. New-comers, by settling in
the vicinity of successful planters, may shorten
the painful paths of experience.
All which we commend to all those who have
written to inquire about buying land in Florida.




MAY IN FLORIDA.


MANDARIN, May 28, I872.
HE month of May in Florida corresponds to July and August at the
north.
Strawberries, early peaches, blackberries, huckleberries, blueberries, and two species of wild
plums, are the fruits of this month, and make
us forget to want the departing oranges. Still,
however, some of these cling to the bough; and
it is astonishing how juicy and refreshing they
196




MAY IN FLORIDA.


I97


still are. The blueberries are larger and sweeter,
and less given to hard seeds, than any we have
ever tasted.  In the way of garden-vegetables,
summer squashes, string-beans, and tomatoes are
fully in season.
This year, for the most part, the month has
been most delightful weather.
With all the pomp and glory of Nature in full
view; beholding in the wet, low lands red, succulent shoots, which, under the moist, fiery breath of
the season, seem really to grow an inch at a time,
and to shoot up as by magic; hearing bird-songs
filling the air from morning to night, - we feel a
sort of tropical exultation, as if great, succulent
shoots of passion or poetry might spring up
within us from out this growing dream-life.
The birds! - who can describe their jubilees,
their exultations, their never-ending, still beginning babble and jargon of sweet sounds? All
day the air rings with sweet fanciful trills and




I98


PALMETTO-LEA yES.


melodies, as if there were a thousand little vibrating bells. They iterate and reiterate one sweet
sound after another; they call to one another,
and answer from thicket to thicket; they pipe;
they whistle; they chatter and mock at each
other with airy defiance: and sometimes it seems
as if the very air broke into rollicking birdlaughter. A naturalist, who, like Thoreau, has
sojourned for months in the Florida forests to
study and observe Nature, has told us that no
true idea of the birds' plumage can be got till
the hot months come on. Then the sun pours
light and color, and makes feathers like steely
armor.
The birds love the sun: they adore him.
Our own Phcebus, when his cage is hung on the
shady side of the veranda, hangs sulky and
silent; but put him in the full blaze of the
sun, and while the thermometer is going up to
the nineties, he rackets in a perfectly crazy




iMA Y IN FLORIDA.


I99


abandon of bird babblement, singing all he ever
heard before, and trying his bill at new notes,
and, as a climax, ending each outburst with a
purr of satisfaction like an overgrown cat.
Several pairs of family mocking-birds have their
nests somewhere in our orange-trees; and there
is no end of amusement in watching their dainty
evolutions. Sometimes, for an hour at a.time,
one of them, perched high and dry on a topmost
twig, where he gets the full blaze of the sun,
will make the air ring with so many notes and
noises, that it would seem as if he were forty
birds instead of one. Then, again, you will see
him stealing silently about as if on some mysterious mission, perching here and there with a
peculiar nervous jerk of his long tail, and a
silent little lift of his wings, as if he were fanning himself What this motion is for, we have
never been able to determine.
Our plantation, at present, is entirely given




200


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


over to the domestic affairs of the mocking-birds,
dozens of whom have built their nests in the
green, inaccessible fastnesses of the orange-trees,
and been rearing families in security. Now,
however, the young birds are to be taught to fly;
and the air resounds with the bustle and chatter
of the operation. Take, for example, one scene
which is going on as we write. Down on the
little wharf which passes through the swamp in
front of our house, three or four juvenile mocking-birds are running up and down like chickens,
uttering plaintive cries of distress. On either
side, perched on a tall, dry, last-year's coffeebean-stalk, sit "papa and mamma," chattering,
scolding, exhorting, and coaxing.  The little
ones run from side to side, and say in plaintive
squeaks, "I can't," "I daren't," as plain as birds
can say it. There! now they spread their little wings; and - oh, joy! - they find to their
delight that they do not fall: they exult in the




MA Y IN FLORIDA.


201


possession of a new-born sense of existence.
As we look at this pantomime, graver thoughts
come over us, and we think how poor, timid little
souls moan, and hang back, and tremble, when the
time comes to leave this nest of earth, and trust
themselves to the free air of the world they were
made for. As the little bird's moans and cries
end in delight and rapture in finding himself in a
new, glorious, free life; so, just beyond the dark
step of death, will come a buoyant, exulting
sense of new existence. Our life here is in intimate communion with bird-life. Their singing
all day comes in bursts and snatches; and one
awakes to a sort of wondering consciousness of
the many airy dialects with which the blue
heavens are filled. At night a whippoorwill or
two, perched in the cypress-trees, make a plaintive and familiar music. When the nights are
hot, and the moon bright, the mocking-birds
burst into gushes of song at any hour. At mid



202


PA LME TTO-LEA VES.


night we have risen to listen to them. Birds
are as plenty about us as chickens in a barnyard; and one wonders at their incessant activity
and motion, and studies what their quaint little
fanciful ways may mean, half inclined to say
with Cowper, -
"But I, whatever powers were mine,
Would cheerfully those gifts resign
For such a pair of wings as thine,
And such a head between'em."
Speaking of birds reminds us of a little pastoral which is being enacted in the neighborhood of St. Augustine. A young man from
Massachusetts, driven to seek health in a milder
climate, has bought a spot of land for a nurserygarden in the neighborhood of St. Augustine.
We visited his place, and found him and his
mother in a neat little cottage, adorned only
with grasses and flowers picked in the wild




MA Y IN FLORIDA.


203


woods, and living in perfect familiarity with the
birds, which they have learned to call in from
the neighboring forests. It has become one of
the fashionable amusements in the season for
strangers to drive out to this cottage and see the
birds fed. At a cry from the inmates of the
cottage, the blue-jays and mocking-birds will
come in flocks, settle on their shoulders, eat out
of their hands, or out of the hands of any one
who chooses to hold food to them. When we
drove out, however, the birds were mostly dispersed about their domestic affairs; this being
the nesting season. Moreover, the' ample supply of fresh wild berries in the woods makes
them less anxious for such dry food as contented
them in winter.  Only one pet mocking-bird
had established himself in a neighboring tree,
and came at their call. Pic sat aloft, switching
his long tail with a jerky air of indifference, like
an enfant gdtg. When raisins were thrown up,




204


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


he caught them once or twice; but at last, with
an evident bird-yawn, declared that it was no go,
and he didn't care for raisins. Ungrateful Pic!
Next winter, eager and hungry, he will be grateful; and so with all the rest of them.
One of the charms of May not to be forgotten
is the blossoming of the great Cape jessamine
that stands at the end of the veranda, which has
certainly had as many as three or four hundred
great, white, fragrant flowers at once.
As near as possible, this is the most perfect of
flowers. It is as pure as the white camellia, with
the added gift of exquisite perfume. It is a
camellia with a soul! Its leaves are of most brilliant varnished green; its buds are lovely; and
its expanded flower is of a thick, waxen texture,
and as large as a large camellia. We have sat
moonlight nights at the end of the veranda, and
enjoyed it. It wraps one in an atmosphere of
perfume. Only one fault has this bush: it blos



MA Y IN FLORIDA.           205
soms only once a season; not, like the everspringing oleander, for months.  One feels a
sense of hurry to enjoy and appropriate a bloom
so rare, that lasts only a few weeks.
Here in Florida, flowers form a large item of
thought and conversation wherever one goes;
and the reason of it is the transcendent beauty
and variety that are here presented. We have
just returned from St. Augustine, and seen some
gardens where wealth and leisure have expended
themselves on flowers; and in our next chapter
we will tell of some of these beauties.




F^ r —$    N
s     "I,


ST. AUGUSTINE.
MANDARIN, May 30, 1872.


HE thermometer with us, during the
third week in May, rose to ninety-two
in the shade; and as we had received
an invitation from a friend to visit St. Augustine,
which is the Newport of Florida, we thought it
a good time to go seaward. So on a pleasant
morning we embarked on the handsome boat
"Florence," which has taken so many up the
206




ST. A UGUSTINE.


207


river, and thus secured all the breeze that was
to be had.
"The Florence " is used expressly for a river
pleasure-boat, plying every day between Jacksonville and Pilatka. It is long and airy, and
nicely furnished; and one could not imagine a
more delightful conveyance. In hot weather,
one could not be more sure of cool breezes than
when sailing up and down perpetually in "The
Florence." Our destiny, however, landed us in
the very meridian of the day at Tekoi. Tekoi
consists of a shed and a sand-bank, and a little
shanty, where, to those who require, refreshments are served.
On landing, we found that we must pay for
the pleasure and coolness of coming up river
in "The Florence" by waiting two or three
mortal hours till "The Starlight" arrived; for
the railroad-car would not start till the full
complement of passengers was secured. We




208


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


had a good opportunity then of testing what the
heat of a Florida sun might be, untempered by
live-oaks and orange shades, and unalleviated by
ice-water; and the lesson was an impressive one.
The railroad across to St. Augustine is made
of wooden rails; and the cars are drawn by
horses.
There was one handsome car like those used
on the New-York horse-railroads: the others
were the roughest things imaginable. Travellers
have usually spoken of this road with execration
for its slowness and roughness; but over this,
such as it was, all the rank and fashion of our
pleasure-seekers, the last winter, have been
pouring in unbroken daily streams. In the
height of the season, when the cars were
crowded, four hours were said to be consumed
in performing this fifteen miles. We, however,
did it in about two.
To us this bit of ride through the Florida




ST. AUGUSTINE.


209


woods is such a never-ceasing source of interest
and pleasure, that we do not mind the slowness
of it, and should regret being whisked by at
steam-speed. We have come over it three
times; and each time the varieties of shrubs and
flowers, grasses and curious leaves, were a
never-failing study and delight. Long reaches
of green moist land form perfect flower-gardens,
whose variety of bloom changes with every
month. The woods hang full of beautiful climbing plants. The coral honeysuckle and the red
bignonia were in season now. Through glimpses
and openings here and there we could see into
forests of wild orange-trees; and palmetto-palms
raised their scaly trunks and gigantic green
fans. The passengers could not help admiring
the flowers: and as there were many stops and
pauses, and as the gait of the horses was never
rapid, it was quite easy for the gentlemen to
gather and bring in specimens of all the beau14




210


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


ties; and the flowers formed the main staple of
the conversation. They were so very bright
and gay and varied, that even the most unobserving could not but notice them.
St. Augustine stands on a flat, sandy level,
encompassed for miles and miles by what is
called " scrub," - a mixture of low palmettoes
and bushes of various descriptions. Its history
carries one back almost to the middle ages.
For instance, Menendez, who figured as commandant in its early day, was afterwards appointed to command the Spanish Armada, away
back in the times of Queen Elizabeth; but,
owing to the state of his health, he did not accept the position.
In the year 1586, Elizabeth then being at war
with Spain, her admiral, Sir Francis Drake,
bombarded St. Augustine, and took it; helping
himself, among other things, to seven brass cannon, two thousand pounds in money, and other




ST. AUGUSTINE.


211


booty. In I605 it was taken and plundered by
buccaneers; in I702, besieged by the people of
the Carolinas; in I740, besieged again by Gen.
Oglethorpe of Georgia.
So we see that this part of our country, at
least, does not lie open to the imputation so
often cast upon America, of having no historic
associations; though, like a great deal of the
world's history, it is written in letters of blood
and fire.
Whoever would know, let him read Parkman's "Pioneers of France," under the article
"Huguenots in Florida," and he will see how
the first Spanish governor, Menendez, thought
he did God service when he butchered in cold
blood hundreds of starving, shipwrecked Huguenots who threw themselves on his mercy,
and to whom he had extended pledges of shelter
and protection.
A government-officer, whose ship is stationed




212


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


in Matanzas Inlet, told me that the tradition is
that the place is still haunted by the unquiet
ghosts of the dead. An old negro came to him,
earnestly declaring that he had heard often, at
midnight, shrieks and moans, and sounds as of
expostulation, and earnest cries in some foreign
language, at that place; and that several white
people whom he had taken to the spot had
heard the same.  On inquiring of his men,
Capt..H — could find none who had heard the
noises; although, in digging in the sands, human
bones were often disinterred. But surely, by all
laws of demonology, here is where there ought
to be the materials for a first-class ghost-story.
Here, where there' has been such crime,
cruelty, treachery, terror, fear, and agony, we
might fancy mourning shades'wandering in
unrest, - shades of the murderers, forever deploring their crime and cruelty.
The aspect of St. Augustine is quaint and




ST. AUGUSTINE.


213


strange, in harmony with its romantic history.
It has no pretensions to architectural richness
or beauty; and yet it is impressive from its unlikeness to any thing else in America. It is as
if some little, old, dead-and-alive Spanish town,
with its fort and gateway and Moorish belltowers, had broken loose, floated over here,
and got stranded on a sand-bank. Here you
see the shovel-hats and black gowns of priests;
the convent, with gliding figures of nuns; and
in the narrow, crooked streets meet dark-browed
people with great Spanish eyes and coal-black
hair. The current of life here has the indoleht,
dreamy stillness that characterizes life in Old
Spain. In Spain, when you ask a man to do
any thing, instead of answering as we do, " In
a minute," the invariable reply is, "In an hour;"
and the growth and progress of St. Augustine
have been according.  There it stands, alone,
isolated, connected by no good roads or naviga



214


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


tion with the busy, living world. Before 1835,
St. Augustine was a bower of orange-trees.
Almost every house looked forth from these encircling shades. The frost came and withered
all; and in very few cases did it seem to come
into the heads of the inhabitants to try again.
The orange-groves are now the exception, not
the rule; and yet for thirty years it has been
quite possible to have them.
As the only seaport city of any size in
Florida, St. Augustine has many attractions.
Those who must choose a Southern home, and
who are so situated that they must remain
through the whole summer in the home of their
choice, could not do better than to choose St.
Augustine. It is comparatively free from malarial.fevers; and the sea-air tempers the oppressive heats of summer, so that they are quite
endurable.  Sea-bathing can be practised in
suitable bathing-houses; but -the sharks make




ST. AUGUS TINE.


2I5


open sea-bathing dangerous. If one comes expecting a fine view of the open ocean, however,
one will be disappointed; for Anastasia Islanda long, low sand-bar- stretches its barren line
across the whole view, giving only so much seaprospect as can be afforded by the arm of the
sea- about two miles wide -which washes the
town. Little as this may seem of the ocean,
the town lies so flat and low, that, in stormy
weather, the waves used to be driven up into it,
so as to threaten its destruction. A sea-wall of
solid granite masonry was deemed necessary to
secure its safety, and has been erected by the
United-States Government. This wall affords a
favorite promenade to the inhabitants, who there
enjoy good footing and sea-breezes.
What much interested us in St. Augustine
was to see the results of such -wealth and care
as are expended at the North on gardening
being brought to bear upon gardens in this




216


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


semi-tropical region. As yet, all that we have
seen in Florida has been the beginning of industrial experiments, where utility has been the
only thing consulted, and where there has been
neither time nor money to seek the ornamental.
Along the St. John's you can see, to-day, hundreds of places torn from the forest, yet showing the unrotted stumps of the trees; the house
standing in a glare of loose white sand, in
which one sinks over shoes at every step. If
there be a flower-garden (and, wherever there is
a woman, there will be), its prospects in the loose
sliding sands appear discouraging. Boards and
brick-edgings are necessary to make any kind
of boundaries; and a man who has to cut down a
forest, dig a well, build a house, plant an orangegrove, and meanwhile raise enough garden-stuff
to pay his way, has small time for the graces.
But here in St. Augustine are some families
of wealth and leisure, driven to seek such a




ST. AUGUSTINE.


217


winter-home, who amuse themselves during their
stay in making that home charming; and the
results are encouraging.
In the first place, the slippery sand-spirit has
been caught, and confined under green grassplats. The grass problem has been an earnest
study with us ever since we came here. What
grass will bear a steady blaze of the sun for six
months, with the thermometer at a hundred
and thirty or forty, is.a question. It is perfectly
easy, as we have proved by experiment, to raise
flattering grass-plats of white clover, and even
of the red-top, during the cool, charming
months of January, February, and March; but
their history will be summed up in the scriptural account —" which to day is, and to-morrow
is cast into the oven"- as soon as May begins.
The chances of an enduring sod for ornamental purposes are confined to two varieties, -the
broad and the narrow leafed Bermuda grasses.




2I8


PA LMETTO-LEA VES.


These have roots that run either to the centre
of the earth, or far enough in that direction for
practical purposes; and are, besides, endowed
with the faculty of throwing out roots at every
joint, so that they spread rapidly. The broadleafed kind is what is principally employed in
St. Augustine; and we have seen beautifullykept gardens where it is cut into borders, and
where the grass-plats and croquet-grounds
have been made of it to admirable advantage.
A surface of green in this climate is doubly
precious to the eye.
We were visiting in a house which is a model
for a hot climate.  A wide, cool hall runs
through the centre; and wide verandas, both
above and below, go around the whole four
sides. From these we could look down at our
leisure into the foliage of a row of Magnolia
grandiflora, now  in  blossom.  Ivy, honeysuckles, manrundia, and a host of other




ST. A UGUSTINE.


2I9


climbing-plants, make a bower of these outside corridors of the house. The calla-lilies
blossom almost daily in shaded spots; and beds
of fragrant blue violets are never without
flowers. Among the ornamental shrubbery we
noticed the chaparral, - a thorny tree, with
clusters of yellow blossoms, and long, drooping,
peculiar leaves, resembling in effect the willowleafed acacia. The banana has a value simply
as an ornamental-leaf plant, quite apart from the
consideration of its fruit, which one can buy, perhaps, better than one can raise, in this part of
Florida; but it is glorious, when the thermometer
is going up into the hundreds, to see the great,
fresh, broad, cool leaves of the banana-tree leaping into life, and seeming to joy in existence. In
groups of different sizes, they form most beautiful and effective shrubbery. The secret of
gardening well here is to get things that love
the sun. Plants that come originally from hot




220


PA LiMETTO-LEA VES.


regions, and that rejoice the hotter it grows, are
those to be sought for. The date-palm has
many beautiful specimens in the gardens of St.
Augustine. A date-palm, at near view, is as
quaint and peculiar a specimen of Nature as one
can imagine. Its trunk seems built up of great
scales, in which ferns and vines root themselves,
and twine and ramble, and hang in festoons.
Above, the leaves, thirty feet long, fall in a
feathery arch, and in the centre, like the waters
of a fountain, shoot up bright, yellow, drooping
branches that look like coral. These are the
flower-stalks. The fruit, in this climate, does not
ripen so as to be good for any thing.
One gentleman showed me a young palm,
now six feet high, which he had raised from a
seed of the common shop date, planted four
years ago. In this same garden he showed me
enormous rose-trees, which he had formed by
budding the finest of the Bourbon ever-bloom



ST. A UGUS T/VE.


221


ing roses in the native Florida rose.  The
growth in three years had been incredible; and
these trees are an ever-springing fountain of
fresh roses. There is a rose-tree in St. Augustine, in a little garden, which all the sight-seers
go to see. It is a tree with a trunk about the
size of an ordinary man's arm, and is said to
have had a thousand roses on it at a time. Half
that number will answer our purpose; and we
will set it down at that. Rose-slugs and rosebugs are pests unheard of here.  The rose
grows as in its native home. One very pretty
feature of the houses here struck me agreeably.
There is oftentimes a sort of shaded walk under
half the house, opening upon the garden. You
go up a dusty street, and stand at a door, which
you expect will open into a hall.  It opens,
and a garden full of flowers and trees meets
your view. The surprise is delightful. In one
garden that we visited we saw a century-plant




222


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


in bud. The stalk was nineteen feet high; and
the blossoms seemed to promise to be simi:
lar to those of the yucca. The leaves are like
the aloe, only longer, and twisted and contorted
in a strange, weird fashion. On the whole, it
looked as if it might have been one of the
strange plants in Rappicini's garden in Padua.
The society in St. Augustine, though not
extensive, is very delightful. We met and were
introduced to some very cultivated, agreeable
people. There is a fair prospect that the city
will soon be united by railroad to Jacksonville,
which will greatly add to the facility and convenience of living there.  We recrossed the
railroad at Tekoi, on our way home, in company
with a party of gentlemen who are investigating
that road with a view of putting capital into it,
and so getting it into active running order.
One of -them informed me that he was also
going to Indian River to explore, in view of the




ST. AUGUSTINE.


223


projected plan to unite it with the St. John's by
means of a canal. Very sensibly he remarked,
that, in order to really make up one's mind about
Florida, one should see it in summer; to which
we heartily assented.
By all these means this beautiful country is
being laid open, and made accessible and inhabitable as a home and refuge for those who need it.
On the steamboat, coming back, we met the
Florida Thoreau of whom we before spoke,a devoted, enthusiastic lover of Nature as she
reveals herself in the most secluded everglades
and forests. He supports himself, and pays the
expenses of his tours, by selling the curiosities
of Nature which he obtains to the crowd of
eager visitors who throng the hotels in winter.
The feathers of the pink curlew, the heron, the
crane, the teeth of alligators, the skins of deer,
panther, and wild-cat, are among his trophies.
He asserted with vehemence that there were




224


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


varieties of birds in Florida unknown as yet to
any collection of natural history. He excited
us greatly by speaking of a pair of pet pink
curlews which had been tamed; also of a snowwhite stork, with sky-blue epaulet on each
shoulder, which is to be found in the everglades.
He was going to spend the whole summer alone
in these regions, or only with Indian guides;
and seemed cheerful and enthusiastic.  He
should find plenty of cocoanuts, and would
never need to have a fever if he would eat daily
of the wild oranges which abound. If one only
could go in spirit, and not in flesh, one would
like to follow him into the everglades. The
tropical forests of Florida contain visions and
wonders of growth and glory never yet revealed
to the eye of the common traveller, and which
he who sees must risk much to explore. Our
best wishes go with our enthusiast. May he
live to tell us what he sees!




..i
I1~~~,:-  --  -  -, 1,CL- C'C -  -   --  -


OUR NEIGHBOR OVER THE WAY.
MANDARIN, May 14, I872.
UR neighbor over the way is not, to
be sure, quite so near or so observable as if one lived on Fifth Avenue
or Broadway.
Between us and his cottage lie five good miles
of molten silver in the shape of the St. John's
River, outspread this morning in all its quivering
sheen, glancing, dimpling, and sparkling, dotI5                   225




226


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


ted with sail-boats, and occasionally ploughed
by steamboats gliding like white swans back
and forth across the distance.
Far over on the other side, where the wooded
shores melt into pearly blue outlines, gleams out
in the morning sun a white, glimmering spot
about as big as a ninepence, which sh6ws us
where his cottage stands. Thither we are going
to make a morning visit. Our water-coach is
now approaching the little wharf front of our
house: and we sally forth equipped with our sunumbrellas; for the middle of May here is like
the middle of August at the North. The watercoach, or rather omnibus, is a little thimble of a
steamer, built for pleasuring on the St. John's,
called "The Mary Draper."   She is a tiny
shell of a thing, but with a nice, pretty cabin,
and capable of carrying comfortably thirty or
forty passengers. During the height of the travelling-season "The Mary Draper" is let out to




OUR NEIGHBOR OVER THE WAY. 227


parties of tourists, who choose thus at their leisure
to explore the river, sailing, landing, rambling,
exploring, hunting, fishing, and perhaps inevitably flirting among the flowery nooks and palmetto-hammocks of the shore. We have seen
her many a time coming gayly back from an excursion, with the voice of singing, and laugh of
youths and maidens, resounding from her deck,
flower-wreathed and flower-laden like some
fabled bark from the fairy isles. But now, in
the middle of May, the tourists are few; and so
"The Mary Draper" has been turned into a sort
of errand-boat, plying up and down the river to
serve the needs and convenience of the permanent inhabitants. A flag shown upon our wharf
brings her in at our need; and we step gayly on
board, to be carried across to our neighbors.
We take our seats at the shaded end of the
boat, and watch the retreating shore, with its
gigantic live-oaks rising like a dome above the




228


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


orange-orchards, its clouds of pink oleandertrees that seem every week to blossom fuller
than the last; and for a little moment we can
catch the snow-white glimmer of the great Cape
jessamine-shrub that bends beneath the weight
of flowers at the end of our veranda. Our little
cottage looks like a rabbit's nest beside the
monster oaks that shade it; but it is cosey to see
them all out on the low veranda, - the Professor
with his newspapers, the ladies with their
worsteds and baskets, in fact the whole of our
large family, - all reading, writing, working, in
the shady covert of the orange-trees.
From time to time a handkerchief is waved
on their part, and the signal returned on ours;
and they follow our receding motions with a spyglass. Our life is so still and lonely here, that
even so small an event as our crossing the river
for a visit is all-absorbing.
But, after a little, our craft melts off into the




OUR NEIGHBOR OVER THE WAY. 229


distance, " The Mary Draper" looks to our friends
no larger than a hazel-nut, and the trees of the
other side loom up strong and tall in our eyes,
and grow clearer and clearer; while our home,
with its great live-oaks and its orange-groves,
has all melted into a soft woolly haze of distance.
Our next neighbor's great whitewashed barn is
the only sign of habitation remaining; and that
flashes out a mere shining speck in the distance.
Now the boat comes up to Mr. -'s wharf;
and he is there to meet and welcome us.
One essential to every country-house on the
St. John's is this accessory of a wharf and boathouse. The river is, for a greater or less distance from the shore, too shallow to admit the
approach of steamboats; and wharves of fifty
or a hundred feet in length are needed to enable
passengers to land.
The bottom of the river is of hard, sparkling
white sand, into which spiles are easily driven;




230


PA LME TTO-LEA VES.


and the building and keeping-up of such a wharf
is a trifling trouble and expense in a land where
lumber is so plentiful.
Our friend Mr. -    is, like many other old
Floridian residents, originally from the North.
In early youth he came to Florida a condemned
and doomed consumptive, recovered his health,
and has lived a long and happy life here, and
acquired a handsome property.
He owns extensive tracts of rich and beautiful
land on the west bank of the St. John's, between
it and Jacksonville, destined, as that city grows
and extends, to become of increasing value.
His wife, like himself originally of Northern
origin, has become perfectly acclimated and naturalized by years' residence at the South; and is,
to all intents and purposes, a Southern woman.
They live all the year upon their place; those
who formerly were their slaves settled peaceably
around them as free laborers, still looking.up




OUR NEIGHBOR OVER THE WAY. 231


to them for advice, depending on them for aid,
and rendering to them the willing, well-paid services of freemen.
Their house is a simple white cottage, situated so as to command a noble view of the
river. A long avenue of young live-oak-trees
leads up from the river to the house. The
ground is covered with a smooth, even turf of
Bermuda grass, -the only kind that will endure
the burning glare of the tropical summer. The
walls of the house are covered with roses, now
in full bloom. La Marque, cloth-of-gold, and
many another kind, throw out their splendid
clusters, and fill the air with fragrance. We
find Mrs. --   and her family on the veranda, -
the usual reception-room in a Southern house.
The house is the seat of hospitality; every room
in it sure to be full, if not with the members of
the family proper, then with guests from Jacksonville, who find, in this high, breezy situation,
a charming retreat from the heat of the city.




232


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


One feature is characteristic of Southern
houses, so far as we have seen. The ladies are
enthusiastic plant-lovers; and the veranda is
lined round with an array of boxes in which gardening experiments are carried on. Rare plants,
slips, choice seedlings, are here nurtured and
cared for. In fact, the burning power of the
tropical sun, and the scalding, fine white sand, is
such, that to put a tender plant or slip into it
seems, in the words of Scripture, like casting it
into the oven; and so there is everywhere more
or less of this box-gardening.
The cottage was all in summer array; the
carpets taken up and packed away, leaving the
smooth, yellow pine floors clean and cool as
the French parquets.
The plan of the cottage is the very common
one of Southern houses. A wide, clear hall, furnished as a sitting-room, opening on a veranda
on either end, goes through the house; and all




OUR NEIGHBOR OVER THE WAY. 233


the other rooms open upon it. We sat chatting,
first on the veranda; and, as the sun grew hotter, retreated inward to the hall, and discussed
flowers, farm, and dairy.
On the east bank of the St. John's, where our
own residence is, immediately around Mandarin,
the pasturage is poor, and the cattle diminutive
and half starved. Knowing that our neighbor
was an old resident, and enthusiastic stock-raiser
and breeder, we came to him for knowledge on
these subjects. Stock-breeding has received a
great share of attention from the larger planters
of Florida. The small breed of wild native
Florida cattle has been crossed and improved by
foreign stock imported at great expense. The
Brahmin cattle of India, as coming from a tropical
region, were thought specially adapted to the
Floridian climate, and have thriven well here.
By crossing these with the Durham and Ayrshire and the native cattle, fine varieties of ani



234


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


mals have been obtained. Mr.    showed me
a list of fifty of his finest cows, each one of which
has its distinguishing name, and with whose
pedigree and peculiarities he seemed well acquainted.
In rearing, the Floridian system has always
been to make every thing subservient to the increase of the herd. The calf is allowed to run
with the cow; and the supply of milk for the
human being is only what is over and above the
wants of the calf. The usual mode of milking is
to leave the calf sucking on one side, while the
milker sits on the other, and gets his portion.
It is an opinion fixed as fate in the mind of
every negro cow-tender, that to kill a calf would
be the death of the mother; and that, if you separate the calf from the mother, her milk will dry
up. Fresh veal is a delicacy unheard of; and
once, when we suggested a veal-pie to a strapping
Ethiopian dairy-woman, she appeared as much




OUR NEIGHBOR OVER THE WAY. 235


shocked as if we had proposed to fricassee a baby.
Mr. --, however, expressed his conviction that
the Northern method of taking off the calf, and
securing the cow's milk, could be practised
with success, and had been in one or two cases.
The yield of milk of some of the best blood cows
was quite equal to that of Northern milkers, and
might be kept up by good feeding. As a rule,
however, stock-raisers depend for their supply
of milk more on the number of their herd than
the quantity given by each. The expenses of
raising are not heavy where there is a wide expanse of good pasture-land for them to range in,
and no necessity for shelters of any kind through
the year.
Mr.     spoke of the river-grass as being a
real and valuable species of pasturage. On the
west side of the river, the flats and shallows
along by the shore are covered with a broadleaved water-grass, very tender and nutritious, of




236


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


which cattle are very fond. It is a curious sight
to see whole herds of cows browsing in the
water, as one may do every day along the course
of this river.
The subject of dairy-keeping came up;
and, at our request, Mrs. -   led the way to
hers.  It is built out under a dense shade
of trees in an airy situation, with double walls
like an ice-house. The sight of the snowy
shelves set round with pans, on which a rich
golden cream was forming, was a sufficient testimony that there could be beautiful, well-kept
dairies in Florida, notwithstanding its tropical
heats.
The butter is made every morning at an early
hour; and we had an opportunity of tasting it
at the dinner-table.  Like the best butter of
France and England, it is sweet and pure, like
solidified cream, and as different as can be from
the hard, salty mass which most generally passes




OUR NEIGHBOR OVER THE WAY. 237


for butter among us. The buttermilk of a daily
churning is also sweet and rich, a delicious
nourishing drink, and an excellent adjuvant in
the making of various cakes and other household
delicacies.
Our friend's experience satisfied us that there
was no earthly reason in the climate or surroundings of Florida why milk and butter should be
the scarce and expensive luxuries they are now.
What one private gentleman can do simply for
his own comfort and that of his family, we should
think might be repeated on a larger scale by
somebody in the neighborhood of Jacksonville as
a money speculation. Along the western bank
of this river are hundreds of tracts of good grazing land, where cattle might be pastured at small
expense; where the products of a dairy on a large
scale would meet a ready and certain sale. At
present the hotels and boarding-houses are supplied with condensed milk, and butter, imported




238


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


from the North: and yet land is cheap here;
labor is reasonable; the climate genial, requiring
no outlay for shelter, and comparatively little
necessity of storing food for winter. Fine breeds
of animals of improved stock exist already, and
can be indefinitely increased; and we wonder
that nobody is to be found to improve the opportunity to run a stock and dairy farm which
shall supply the hotels and boarding-houses of
Jacksonville.
After visiting the dairy, we sauntered about,
looking at the poultry-yards, where different
breeds of hens, turkeys, pea-fowl, had each their
allotted station. Four or five big dogs, hounds
and pointers, trotted round with us, or rollicked
with a party of grandchildren, assisted by the
never-failing addition of a band of giggling little
negroes. As in the old times, the servants of the
family have their little houses back of the premises; and the laundry-work, &c., is carried on




OUR NEIGHBOR OVER THE WAY. 239


outside. The propensity at the South is to multiply little buildings. At the North, where there
is a winter to be calculated on, the tactics of
living are different. The effort is to gather all
the needs and wants of life under one roof, to be
warmed and kept in order at small expense. In
the South, where building-material is cheap, and
building is a slight matter, there is a separate
little building for every thing; and the back
part of an estate looks like an eruption of little
houses. There is a milk-house, a corn-house, a
tool-house, a bake-house, besides a house for each
of the leading servants, making quite a village.
Our dinner was a bountiful display of the luxuries of a Southern farm, - finely-flavored fowl
choicely cooked, fish from the river, soft-shell
turtle-soup, with such a tempting variety of early
vegetables as seemed to make it impossible to
do justice to all.  Mrs. --  offered us a fine
sparkling wine made of the juice of the wild



240


PA LLIE TTO-LEA VES.


orange. In color it resembled the finest sherry,
and was much like it in flavor.
We could not help thinking, as we refused
dainty after dainty, from mere inability to take
more, of the thoughtless way in which it is often
said that there can be nothing fit to eat got in
Florida.
Mr. —'s family is supplied with food almost
entirely from the products of his own farm.
He has the nicest of fed beef, nice tender
pork, poultry of all sorts, besides the resources
of an ample, well-kept dairy. He raises and
makes his own sirup. He has sweet-potatoes,
corn, and all Northern vegetables, in perfection;
peaches, grapes of finest quality, besides the
strictly tropical fruits; and all that he has, any
other farmer might also have with the same
care.
After dinner we walked out to look at the
grapes, which hung in profuse clusters, just




OUR NEIGHBOR OVER THE WAY. 241


beginning to ripen on the vines. On our way
we stopped to admire a great bitter-sweet
orange-tree, which seemed to make " Hesperian
fables true." It was about thirty feet in height,
and with branches that drooped to the ground,
weighed down at the same time with great
golden balls of fruit, and wreaths of pearly buds
and blossoms.  Every stage of fruit, from the
tiny green ball of a month's growth to the perfected orange, were here; all the processes of
life going on together in joyous unity. The tree
exemplified what an orange-tree could become
when fully fed, when its almost boundless capacity for digesting nutriment meets a full supply;
and it certainly stood one of the most royal of
trees. Its leaves were large, broad, and of that
glossy, varnished green peculiar to the orange;
and its young shoots looked like burnished gold.
The bitter-sweet orange is much prized by some.
The pulp is sweet, with a certain spicy flavor; but




242


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


the rind, and all the inner membranes that contain the fruit, are bitter as quinine itself. It is
held to be healthy to eat of both, as the acid
and the bitter are held to be alike correctives
of the bilious tendencies of the climate.
But the afternoon sun was casting the shadows the other way, and the little buzzing " Mary
Draper" was seen puffing in the distance on her
way back from Jacksonville; and we walked
leisurely down the live-oak avenues to the wharf,
our hands full of roses and Oriental jessamine,
and many pleasant memories of our neighbors
over the way.
And now in relation to the general subject of
farming in Florida. Our own region east of the
St. John's River is properly a little sandy belt
of land, about eighteen miles wide, washed by
the Atlantic Ocean on one side, and the St.
John's River on the other. It is not by any
means so well adapted to stock-farming or




OUR NEIGHBOR OVER THE WAY. 243


general farming as the western side of the river.
Its principal value is in fruit-farming; and it will
appear, by a voyage up the river,'that all the
finest old orange-groves and all the new orangeplantations are on the eastern side of the river.
The presence, on either side, of two great
bodies of water, produces a more moist and
equable climate, and less liability to frosts. In
the great freeze of 1835, the orange-groves of
the west bank were killed beyond recovery;
while the fine groves of Mandarin sprang up
again from the root, and have been vigorous
bearers for years since.
But opposite Mandarin, along the western
shore, lie miles and miles of splendid land —
which in the olden time produced cotton of the
finest quality, sugar, rice, sweet-potatoes - now
growing back into forest with a tropical rapidity.
The land lies high, and affords fine sites for dwellings; and the region is comparatively healthy.




244


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


Then Hibernia, Magnolia, and Green Cove, on
the one side, and Jacksonville on the other, show
perfect assemblages of boarding-houses and
hotels, where ready market might be found for
what good farmers might raise. A colony of
farmers coming out and settling here together,
bringing with them church and schoolhouse,
with a minister skilled like St. Bernard both in
husbandry and divinity, might soon create a
thrifty farming-village. We will close this chapter with an extract from a letter of a Northern
emigrant recently settled at Newport, on the
north part of Appalachicola Bay.
SEPT. 22, 1872.
I have been haying this month: in fact I had
mowed my orange-grove, a square of two acres,
from time to time, all summer. But this month
a field of two acres had a heavy burden of
grass, with cow-pease intermixed.  In some
parts of the field, there certainly would be at the




OUR NEIGHBOR OVER THE WAY. 245


rate of three tons to the acre. The whole field
would average one ton to the acre. So I went
at it with a good Northern scythe, and mowed
every morning an hour or two. The hay was
perfectly cured by five, P.M., same day, and put
in barn. The land, being in ridges, made mowing difficult. Next year I mean to lay that land
down to grass, taking out stumps, and making
smooth, sowing rye and clover. I shall plough
it now as soon as the hay is all made, and sow
the rye and clover immediately.  I have five
cows that give milk, and four that should come
in soon. These, with their calves, I shall feed
through the months when the grass is poor. I
have also a yoke of oxen and four young steers,
with Trim the mule. I have already in the barn
three to four tons of hay and corn-fodder, and two
acres of cow-pease cured, to be used as hay. I
hope to have five hundred bushels of sweet-potatoes, which, for stock, are equal to corn. I made




246


PALME TTO-LEA VES.


a hundred and ten bushels of corn, twenty-five
to the acre. My cane is doing moderately well.
Hope to have all the seed I want to plant fourteen acres next year.  Bananas thrive beautifully; shall have fifty offsets to set out this
winter; also three or four thousand oranges,
all large-sized and fair.
All these facts go to show, that, while Florida
cannot compete with the Northern and Western
States as a grass-raising State, yet there are
other advantages in her climate and productions
which make stock-farming feasible and profitable.  The disadvantages  of her burning
climate may, to a degree, be evaded and overcome by the application of the same patient
industry and ingenuity which rendered fruitful
the iron soil and freezing climate of the NewEngland States.




THE GRAND TOUR UP RIVER.


HE.St. John's is the grand waterhighway through some of the most
beautiful portions of Florida; and
tourists, safely seated at ease on the decks of
steamers, can penetrate into the mysteries and
wonders of unbroken tropical forests.
During the "season," boats continually run
from Jacksonville to Enterprise, and back again;
the round trip being made for a moderate sum,
247




248


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


and giving, in a very easy and comparatively
inexpensive manner, as much of the peculiar
scenery as mere tourists care to see. On returning, a digression is often made at Tekoi,
where passengers cross a horse-railroad of fifteen
miles to St. Augustine; thus rendering their
survey of East Florida more complete. In fact,
what may be seen and known of the State in
such a trip is about all that the majority of
tourists see and know.
The great majority also perform this trip, and
see this region, in the dead of winter, when certainly one-half of the glorious forests upon the
shore are bare of leaves.
It is true that the great number of evergreentrees here make the shores at all times quite
different from those of a Northern climate; yet
the difference between spring and winter is as
great here as there.
Our party were resolute in declining all invi



THE GRAND TOUR UP RIVER. 249


tations to join parties in January, February, and
March; being determined to wait till the new
spring foliage was in its glory.
When the magnolia-flowers were beginning
to blossom, we were ready, and took passagea joyous party of eight or ten individuals - on
the steamer " Darlington," commanded by Capt.
Broch, and, as is often asserted, by " Commodore
Rose."
This latter, in this day of woman's rights; is
no mean example of female energy and vigor.
She is stewardess.of the boat, and magnifies her
office. She is a colored woman, once a slave
owned by Capt. Broch, but emancipated, as the
story goes, for her courage, and presence of mind,
in saving his life in a steamboat disaster.
Rose is short and thick, weighing some two
or three hundred, with a brown complexion, and a
pleasing face and fine eyes. Her voice, like that
of most colored women, is soft, and her manner




250


PALME TTO-LEA VES.


of speaking pleasing. All this, however, relates
to her demeanor when making the agreeable to
passengers. In other circumstances, doubtless,
she can speak louder, and with considerable more
emphasis; and show, in short, those martial attributes which have won for her the appellation of
the "Commodore." It is asserted that the whole
charge of provisioning and running the boat, and
all its internal arrangements, vests in Madam
Rose; and that nobody can get ahead of her in
a bargain, or resist her will in an arrangement.
She knows every inch of the river, every house,
every plantation along shore, its former or
present occupants and history; and is always
ready with an answer to a question.   The
arrangement and keeping of the boat do honor
to her. Nowhere in Florida does the guest sit
at a more bountifully-furnished table.  Our
desserts and pastry were really, for the wilderness, something quite astonishing.




THE GRAND TOUR UP RIVER. 251


The St. John's River below Pilatka has few
distinguishing features to mark it out from
other great rivers. It is so wide, that the foliage
of the shores cannot be definitely made out;
and the tourist here, expecting his palm-trees
and his magnolias and flowering-vines, is disappointed by sailing in what seems a never-ending
great lake, where the shores are off in the distance too far to make out any thing in particular.
But, after leaving Pilatka, the river grows narrower, the overhanging banks approach nearer,
and the foliage becomes more decidedly tropical
in its character. Our boat, after touching as
usual at Hibernia, Magnolia, and Green Cove,
brought up at Pilatka late in the afternoon, made
but a short stop, and was on her way again.
It was the first part of May; and the forests
were in that fulness of leafy perfection which
they attain in the month of June at the North.
But there is a peculiar, vivid brilliancy about the




252


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


green of the new spring-leaves here, which we
never saw elsewhere.  It is a brilliancy like
some of the new French greens, now so much
in vogue, and reminding one of the metallic
brightness of birds and insects. In the woods,
the cypress is a singular and beautiful feature.
It attains to a great age and immense size.
The trunk and branches of an old cypress are
smooth and white as ivory, while its light, feathery foliage is of the most dazzling golden-green;
and rising, as it often does, amid clumps of dark
varnished evergreens,-bay and magnolia and
myrtle, —it has a singular and beautiful effect.
The long swaying draperies of the gray moss
interpose everywhere their wavering outlines
and pearl tints amid the brightness and bloom
of the forest, giving to its deep recesses the
mystery of grottoes hung with fanciful vegetable stalactites.
The palmetto-tree appears in all stages, - from




THE GRAND TOUR UP RIVER. 253


its earliest growth, when it looks like a fountain
of great, green fan-leaves bursting from the
earth, to its perfect shape, when, sixty or seventy
feet in height, it rears its fan crown high in air.
The oldest trees may be known by a perfectly
smooth trunk; all traces of the scaly formation
by which it has built itself up in ring after ring
of leaves being obliterated. But younger trees,
thirty or forty feet in height, often show a
trunk which seems to present a regular crisscross of basket-work,- the remaining scales
from whence the old leaves have decayed and
dropped away.   These scaly trunks are often
full of ferns, wild flowers, and vines, which hang
in fantastic draperies down their sides, and form
leafy and flowery pillars.  The palmetto-hammocks, as they are called, are often miles in
extent along the banks of the rivers.  The tops
of the palms rise up round in the distance as so
many hay-cocks, and seeming to rise one above
another far as the eye can reach.




254


PALME TTO-LEA VES.


We have never been so fortunate as to be
able to explore one of these palmetto-groves.
The boat sails with a provoking quickness by
many a scene that one longs to dwell upon,
study, and investigate.  We have been told,
however, by hunters, that they afford admirable
camping-ground, being generally high and dry,
with a flooring of clean white sand.  Their
broad leaves are a perfect protection from rain
and dew; and the effect of the glare of the campfires and torch-lights on the tall pillars, and waving, fan-like canopy overhead, is said to be perfectly magical. The most unromantic and least
impressible speak of it with enthusiasm.
In going up the river, darkness overtook us
shortly after leaving Pilatka.  We sat in a
golden twilight, and saw the shores every
moment becoming more beautiful; but when
the twilight faded, and there was no moon, we
sought the repose of our cabin. It was sultry




THE GRAND TOUR UP RIVER.        255
as August, although only the first part of May;
and our younger and sprightlier members, who
were on the less breezy side of the boat, after
fruitlessly trying to sleep, arose and dressed
themselves, and sat all night on deck.
By this means they saw a sight worth seeing,
and one which we should have watched all night
to see. The boat's course at night is through
narrows of the river, where we could hear the
crashing and crackling of bushes and trees, and
sometimes a violent thud, as the boat, in turning
a winding, struck against the bank.  On the
forward part two great braziers were kept filled
with blazing, resinous light-wood, to guide the
pilot in the path of the boat. The effect of this
glare of red light as the steamer passed through
the palmetto hummocks and moss-hung grottoes
of the forest was something that must have
been indescribably weird and beautiful; and our
young friends made us suitably regret that our




256


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


more airy sleeping-accommodations had lost us
this experience.
In the morning we woke at Enterprise, having come through all the most beautiful and
characteristic part of the way by night.  Enterprise is some hundred and thirty miles
south of our dwelling-place in Mandarin; and, of
course, that much nearer the tropical regions.
We had planned excursions, explorations, picnics in the woods, and a visit to the beautiful
spring in the neighborhood; but learned with
chagrin that the boat made so short a stay, that
none of these things were possible. The only
thing that appears to the naked eye of a steamboat traveller in Enterprise is a large hotel down
upon the landing, said by those who have tested
it to be one of the best kept hotels in Florida.
The aspect of the shore just there is no way picturesque or inviting, but has more that forlorn,
ragged, desolate air that new settlements on the




THE GRAND TO UR UP RIVER.  2 57


river are apt to have.  The wild, untouched
banks are beautiful; but the new settlements
generally succeed in destroying all Nature's
beauty, and give you only leafless, girdled trees,
blackened stumps, and naked white sand, in
return.
Turning our boat homeward, we sailed in
clear morning light back through the charming
scenery which we had slept through the night
before. It is the most wild, dream-like, enchanting sail conceivable. The river sometimes narrows so that the boat brushes under overhanging branches, and then widens into beautiful lakes
dotted with wooded islands. Palmetto-hammocks,
live-oak groves, cypress, pine, bay, and magnolia
form an interchanging picture; vines hang festooned from tree to tree; wild flowers tempt the
eye on the near banks; and one is constantly
longing for the boat to delay here or there; but
on goes her steady course, the pictured scene
17




258


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


around constantly changing. Every now and
then the woods break away for a little space,
and one sees orange and banana orchards, and
houses evidently newly built. At many points
the boat landed, and put off kegs of nails, hoes,
ploughs, provisions, groceries. Some few old
plantations were passed, whose name and history seemed familiar to Madam Rose; but by far
the greater number were new settlements, with
orchards of quite young trees, which will require
three or four more years to bring into bearing.
The greater number of fruit-orchards and
settlements were on the eastern shore of the
river, which, for the reasons we have spoken of,
is better adapted to the culture of fruit.
One annoyance on board the boat was the constant and pertinacious firing kept up by that
class of men who think that the chief end of
man is to shoot something. Now, we can put
up with good earnest hunting or fishing done




THE GRAND TOUR UP RIVER. 259


for the purpose of procuring for man food, or
even the fur and feathers that hit his fancy
and taste.
But we detest indiscriminate and purposeless
maiming and killing of happy animals, who have
but one life to live, and for whom the agony of
broken bones or torn flesh is a helpless, hopeless pain; unrelieved by any of the resources
which enable us to endure. A parcel of hulking
fellows sit on the deck of a boat, and pass through
the sweetest paradise God ever made, without one
idea of its loveliness, one gentle, sympathizing
thought of the animal happiness with which the
Creator has filled these recesses. All the way
along is a constant fusillade upon every living
thing that shows itself on the bank. Now a bird
is hit, and hangs, head downward, with a broken
wing; and a coarse laugh choruses the deed.
Now an alligator is struck; and the applause
is greater. We once saw a harmless young




260


PA LPMETTO-LEA VES.


alligator, whose dying struggles, as he threw out
his poor little black paws piteously like human
hands, seemed to be vastly diverting to these
cultivated individuals. They wanted nothing of
him except to see how he would act when he
was hit, dying agonies are so very amusing!
Now and then these sons of Nimrod in their
zeal put in peril the nerves, if not lives, of passengers. One such actually fired at an alligator
right across a crowd of ladies, many of them invalids; and persisted in so firing a second time,
after having been requested to desist. If the
object were merely to show the skill of the
marksman, why not practise upon inanimate
objects? An old log looks much like an alligator: why not practise on an old log? It requires as much skill to hit a branch, as the bird
singing on it: why not practise on the branch?
But no: it must be something that ej;/oys and
can suffer; something that loves life, and must




THE GRAND TOUR UP RIVER.        261
Ise it. Certainly this in an inherent savagery
difficult to account for.  Killing for killing's
sake belongs not even to the tiger. The tiger
kills for food; man, for amusement.
At evening we were again at Pilatka; when
the great question was discussed, Would we, or
would we not, take the tour up the Okalewaha
to see the enchanted wonders of the Silver
Spring! The Okalewaha boat lay at the landing;
and we went to look at it. The Okalewaha is a
deep, narrow stream, by the by, emptying into
the St. John's, with a course as crooked as
Apollo's ram's horn; and a boat has been
constructed for the express purpose of this passage.
The aspect of this same boat on a hot night
was not inspiriting. It was low, long, and narrow; its sides were rubbed glassy smooth, or
torn and creased by the friction of the bushes and
trees it had pushed through. It was without glass




262


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


windows, -which would be of no use in such
navigation,- and, in place thereof, furnished with
strong shutters to close the air-holes. We looked
at this same thing as it lay like a gigantic coffin
in the twilight, and thought even the Silver
Spring would not pay for being immured there,
and turned away.
A more inviting project was to step into a
sail-boat, and be taken in the golden twilight
over to Col. Harte's orange-grove, which is said
-with reason, we believe - to be the finest in
Florida.
We landed in the twilight in this grove of six
hundred beautiful orange-trees in as high condi-.
tion as the best culture could make them. The
well-fed orange-tree is known by the glossy,
deep green of its foliage, as a declining tree is by
the yellow tinge of its leaves. These trees looked
as if each leaf, if broken, would spurt with juice.
Piles of fish-guano and shell banks, prepared as




THE GRAND TOUR UP RIVER.  263


top-dress for the orchard, were lying everywhere
about, mingling not agreeably with the odor of
orange-blossoms. We thought to ourselves, that,
if the orange-orchard must be fed upon putrefying fish, we should prefer not to have a house
in it. The employee who has charge of the orchard lives in a densely-shaded cottage in the
edge of it. A large fruit-house has recently
been built there; and the experiments of Col.
Harte seem to demonstrate, that, even if there
occur severe frosts in the early winter, there is
no sort of need, therefore, of losing the orangecrop. His agent showed us oranges round and
fair that had been kept three months in moss
in this fruit-house, and looking as fresh and
glossy as those upon the trees. This, if proved
by experience, always possible, does away with
the only uncertainty relating to the orange-crop.
Undoubtedly the fruit is far better to continue
all winter on the trees, and be gathered from




264


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


time to time as wanted, as has always been the
practice in Florida. But, with fruit-houses and
moss, it will be possible, in case of a threatened
fall of temperature, to secure the crop. The
oranges that come to us from Malaga and
Sicily are green as grass when gathered and
packed, and ripen, as much as they do ripen, on
the voyage over.   We should suppose the
oranges of Florida might be gathered much
nearer ripe in the fall, ripen in the house or on
the way, and still be far better than any from
the foreign market. On this point fruit-growers are now instituting experiments, which, we
trust, will make this delicious crop certain as it
is abundant.
Sailing back across the water, we landed, and
were conveyed to the winter country-seat of a
Brooklyn gentleman, who is with great enthusiasm cultivating a place there. It was almost
dark; and we could only hear of his gardens and




THE GRAND TOUR UP RIVER. 265


grounds and improvements, not see them. In
the morning, before the boat left the landing, he
took us a hasty drive around the streets of the
little village. It is an unusually pretty, attractive - looking place for a Florida settlement.
One reason for this is, that the streets and
vacant lots are covered with a fine green turf,
which, at a distance, looks like our New-England
grass. It is a mixture of Bermuda grass with a
variety of herbage, and has just as good general effect as if it were the best red-top.
There are several fine residences in and around
Pilatka, - mostly winter-seats of Northern settlers. The town has eight stores, which do a business for all the surrounding country for miles. It
has two large hotels, several boarding-houses,
two churches, two steam saw-mills, and is the
headquarters for the steamboats of the Upper
St. John's and its tributaries. Four or flve steamers from different quarters are often stopping




266


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


at its wharf at a time. "The Dictator" and
" City Point," from Charleston, run to this place
outside by the ocean passage, and, entering the
mouth of the St. John's, stop at Jacksonville
by the way.  The "Nick King" and "Lizzie
Baker," in like manner, make what is called the
inside trip, skimming through the network of
islands that line the coast, and bringing up at the
same points.  Then there are the river-lines
continually plying between Jacksonville and this
place, and the small boats that run weekly to
the Ocklawaha: all these make Pilatka a busy,
lively, and important place.
With Pilatka the interest of our returnvoyage finished.  With Green -Cove Springs,
Magnolia, Hibernia, at all of which we touched
on our way back, we were already familiar; and
the best sight of all was the cottage under the
oaks, to which we gladly returned.




.~ 2-.<.__t    I___ _,0i 4  " -I' —-, "u  -I  < 
J~,,-2 


OLD CUDJO AND THE ANGEL.


HE little wharf at Mandarin is a tiny
abutment into the great blue sea of
the St. John's waters, five miles in
width. The opposite shores gleam out blue
in the vanishing distance; and the small wharf
is built so far out, that one feels there as in
a boat at sea.  Here, trundled down on the
truck along a descending tram-way, come the
goods which at this point await shipment on
267




268


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


some of the many steamboats which ply back
and forth upon the river; and here are landed
by almost every steamer goods and chattels for
the many families which are hidden in the shaddows of the forests that clothe the river's shore.
In sight are scarce a dozen houses, all told; but
far back, for a radius of ten or fifteen miles, are
scattered farmhouses whence come tributes of
produce to this point. Hundreds of barrels of
oranges, boxes of tomatoes and early vegetables,
grapes, peaches, and pomegranates, here pause
on their way to the Jacksonville market.
One morning, as the Professor and I were enjoying our morning stroll on the little wharf, an
unusual sight met our eye,-a bale of cotton,
long and large, pressed hard and solid as iron,
and done up and sewed in a wholly workmanlike
manner, that excited our surprise. It was the
first time since we had been in Mandarin - a
space of some four or five years - that we had




OLD CUD7O AND THE ANGEL. 269


ever seen a bale of cotton on that wharf. Yet
the whole soil of East Florida is especially
adapted not only to the raising of cotton, but of
the peculiar, long staple cotton which commands
the very highest market-price. But for two or
three years past the annual ravages of the cotton-worm had been so discouraging, that the culture of cotton had been abandoned in despair.
Whence, then, had come that most artistic
bale of cotton, so well pressed, so trim and tidy,
and got up altogether in so superior a style?
Standing by it on the wharf was an aged
negro, misshapen, and almost deformed. He was
thin and bony, and his head and beard were grizzled with age. He was black as night itself;
and but for a glittering, intellectual eye, he
might have been taken for a big baboon, - the
missing link of Darwin. To him spoke the Professor, giving a punch with his cane upon the
well-packed, solid bale: 




270


PA LMETTO-LEA VES.


" Why, this is splendid cotton! Where did it
come from? Who raised it?"
"We raise it, sah, - me'n' dis yer boy," pointing to a middle-aged black man beside him:
"we raise it."
"Where?"
"Oh! out he'yr a piece."
A lounging white man, never wanting on a
wharf, here interposed:" Oh! this is old Cudjo. He lives up Julington. He's an honest old fellow."
Now, we had heard of this settlement up Julington some two or three years before. A party of
negroes from South Carolina and Georgia had
been induced to come into Florida, and take up a
tract of government land. Some white man in
whom they all put confidence had undertaken for
them the task of getting their respective allotments surveyed and entered for them, so that they
should have a solid basis of land to work upon.




OLD CUD7O AND THE ANGEL. 271


Here, then, they settled down; and finding, accidentally, that a small central lot was not enclosed
in any of the allotments, they took it as an indication that there was to be their church, and accordingly erected there a prayer-booth, where they
could hold those weekly prayer-meetings which
often seem with the negroes to take the place of
all other recreations. The neighboring farmers
were not particularly well disposed towards the
little colony. The native Floridian farmer is a
quiet, peaceable being, not at all disposed to infringe the rights of others, and mainly anxious for
peace and quietness. But they supposed that a
stampede of negroes from Georgia and Carolina
meant trouble for them, meant depredations upon
their cattle and poultry, and regarded it with no
friendly eye; yet, nevertheless, they made no
demonstration against it. Under these circumstances, the new colony had gone to work with untiring industry. They had built log-cabins and




272


PALME TTO-LEA YES.


barns; they had split rails, and fenced in their
land; they had planted orange-trees; they had
cleared acres of the scrub-palmetto: and any one
that ever has seen what it is to clear up an acre of
scrub-palmetto will best appreciate the meaning
of that toil. Only those black men, with sinews of
steel and nerves of wire, - men who grow stronger
and more vigorous under those burning suns that
wither the white men,-are competent to the
task.
But old Cudjo had at last brought his land
from the wild embrace of the snaky scrub-palmetto
to the point of bearing a bale of cotton like the
one on the wharf. He had subdued the savage
earth, brought her under, and made her tributary
to his will, and demonstrated what the soil of East
Florida might, could, and would do, the cottonworm to the contrary notwithstanding.
And yet this morning he stood by his cotton,
drooping and dispossessed. The white man that




OLD CUD7O AND THE ANGEL. 273


had engaged to take up land for these colonists
had done his work in such a slovenly, imperfect
manner, that another settler, a foreigner, had taken
up a tract which passed right through old Cudjo's
farm, and taken the land on which he had
spent four years of hard work, -taken his logcabin and barn and young trees, and the very
piece that he had just brought to bearing that
bale of cotton. And there he stood by it, mournful and patient. It was only a continuation of
what he had always experienced,- always oppressed, always robbed and cheated. Old Cudjo
was making the best of it in trying to ship his
bale of cotton, which was all that was left of four
years' toil.
"What!" said the Professor to him, "are you
the old man that has been turned out by that
foreigner?"
"Yes, sah!" he said, his little black eyes kindling, and quivering from head to foot with ex



274


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


citement. "He take ebry t'ing, ebry t'ing,my house I built myself, my fences, and more'n
t'ree t'ousand rails I split myself: he take'em
all!"
There is always some bitter spot in a great loss
that is sorer than the rest. Those rails evidently
cut Cudjo to the heart. The "t'ree t'ousand
rails " kept coming in in his narrative as the utter
and unbearable aggravation of injustice.
"I split'em myself, sah; ebry one, t'ree t'ousand rails! and he take'em all! "
"And won't he allow you any thing?"
"No, sah: he won't'low me not'ing. He say,'Get along wid you! don't know not'ing'bout
you! dis yer land mine.' I tell him,'You don't
know old Cudjo; but de Lord know him: and
by'm by, when de angel Gabriel come and put
one foot on de sea, and fodder on de land, and
blow de trumpet, he blow once for old Cudjo!
You mind now!'"




OLD CUD7O AND THE ANGEL. 275


This was not merely spoken, but acted. The
old black kindled, and stepped off in pantomime.
He put, as it were, one foot on the sea, and the
other on the land; he raised his cane trumpetwise to his mouth. It was all as vivid as reality
to him.
None of the images of the Bible are more frequent, favorite, and operative among the black
race than this. You hear it over and over in every
prayer-meeting.  It is sung in wild chorus in
many a "spiritual." The great angel Gabriel,
the trumpet, the mighty pomp of a last judgment, has been the appeal of thousands of
wronged, crushed, despairing hearts through ages
of oppression. Faith in God's justice, faith in a
final triumph of right over wrong, - a practical
faith, - such had been the attainment of this poor,
old, deformed black. That and his bale of cotton
were all he had to show for a life's labor. He had
learned two things in his world-lesson,-work and




276


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


faith. He had learned the power of practical industry in things possible to man: he had learned
the sublimer power of faith in God for things impossible.
Well, of course we were indignant enough about
poor. old Cudjo: but we feared that the distant
appeal of the angel, and the last trump, was all
that remained to him; and, to our lesser faith,
that seemed a long way to look for justice.
But redress was nearer than we imagined. Old
Cudjo's patient industry and honest work had
wrought favor among his white neighbors. He
had lived down the prejudice with which the settlement had first been regarded; for among quiet,
honest people like the Floridians, it is quite possible to live down prejudice. A neighboring justice
of the peace happened to have an acquaintance in
Washington from this very district, acquainted
with all the land and land-titles. He wrote to this




OLD CUD70 AND THE ANGEL. 277


man an account of the case; and he interested
himself for old Cudjo. He went to the land-office
to investigate the matter. He found, that, in both
cases, certain formalities necessary to constitute a
legal entrance had been omitted; and he fulfilled
for old Cudjo these formalities, thus settling his
title; and, moreover, he sent legal papers by
which the sheriff of the county was enabled to do
him justice: and.so old Cudjo was re-instated in
his rights.
The Professor met him, sparkling and jubilant,
on the wharf once more.
"Well, Cudjo,'de angel' blew for you quicker
than you expected."
He laughed all over. "Ye', haw, haw! Yes,
massa." Then, with his usual histrionic vigor, he
acted over the scene. " De sheriff, he come down
dere. He tell dat man,'You go right off he'yr.
Don't you touch none dem rails. Don't you take
one chip, - not one chip. Don't you take'Haw, haw, haw! " Then he added, —




278        PALMETTO-LEA YES.
" He come to me, sah: he say,'Cudjo, what
you take for your land?' He say he gib me two
hunder dollars. I tell him,' Dat too cheap; dat
all too cheap.' He say,'Cudjo, what will you
take?' I say,'I take ten t'ousand million dollars! dat's what I take.' Haw, haw, haw! "




.PI  -   -f   -' —L
"I aM^^^,. — ~.1... --
rid      I
I' 


THE-,','LABORERS OF THE SOUTH. 
THE LABORERS OF THE SOUTH.


*        OHO shall do the work for us? is the
inquiry in this new State, where there. are marshes to be drained, forests to
be cut down, palmetto-plains to be grubbed up,
and all under the torrid heats of a tropical sun.
"Chinese," say some; "Swedes," say others 
"Germans," others.
But let us look at the facts before our face and
eyes.
279




280


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


The thermometer, for these three days past,
has risen over ninety every day. No white
man that we know of dares stay in the fields
later than ten o'clock: then he retires under
shade to take some other and less-exposing
work. The fine white sand is blistering hot:
one might fancy that an egg would cook, as on
Mt. Vesuvius, by simply burying it in the sand.
Yet the black laborers whom we leave in the
field pursue their toil, if any thing, more actively, more cheerfully, than during the cooler
months. The sun awakes all their vigor and
all their boundless jollity.  When their nooning time comes, they sit down, not in the shade,
but in some good hot place in the sand, and
eat their lunch, and then stretch out, hot and
comfortable, to take their noon siesta with the
full glare of the sun upon them. Down in the
swamp-land near our house we have watched
old Simon as from hour to hour he drove his




THE LABORERS OF THE SOUTH. 28I


wheelbarrow, heavy with blocks of muck, up a
steep bank, and deposited it. "Why, Simon!" we
say: " how can you work so this hot weather?"
The question provokes an explosion of laughter. "Yah, hah, ho, ho, ho, misse! It be hot;
dat so: ho, ho, ho!"
" How can you work so? I can't even think
how you can do such hard work under such
a sun."
" Dat so: ho, ho! Ladies can't; no, dey can't,
bless you, ma'am!" And Simon trundles off with
his barrow, chuckling in his might; comes up with
another load, throws it down, and chuckles
again. A little laugh goes a great way with'Simon; for a boiling spring of animal content is
ever welling up within.
One tremendously hot day, we remember our
Steamer stopping at Fernandina. Owing to the
state of the tide, the wharf was eight or ten feet
above the boat; and the plank made a steep in



282


PALME'TTO-LEA VES.


dined plane, down which a mountain of multifarious freight was to be shipped on our boat.
A gang of negroes, great, brawny, muscular fellows, seemed to make a perfect frolic of this job,
whTch, under such a sun, would have threatened
sunstroke to any white man. How they ran and
shouted and jabbered, and sweated their shirts
through, as one after another received on their
shoulders great bags of cotton-seed, or boxes
and bales, and ran down the steep plane with
them into the boat! At last a low, squat giant
of a fellow, with the limbs and muscles of a great
dray-horse, placed himself in front of a large
truck, and made his fellows pile it high with
cotton-bags; then, holding back with a prodigious force, he took the load steadily down the
steep plane till within a little of the bottom,
when he dashed suddenly forward, and landedl
it half across the boat. This feat of gigantic
strength he repeated again and again, running up




THE LABORERS OF THE SOUTH. 283


each time apparently as fresh as if nothing had
happened, shouting, laughing, drinking quarts of
water, and sweating like a river-god. Never was
harder work done in a more jolly spirit.
Now, when one sees such sights as these, one
may be pardoned for thinking that the negro is
the natural laborer of tropical regions. He is
immensely strong; he thrives and flourishes
physically under a temperature that exposes
a white man to disease and death.
The malarial fevers that bear so hard on the
white race have far less effect on the negro:
it is rare that they have what are called here
the "shakes;" and they increase and multiply, and bear healthy children, in situations
where the white race deteriorate and grow
sickly.
On this point we had an interesting conversation with a captain employed in the Government
Coast Survey. The duties of this survey involve




284


PA LMETTO-LEA VES.


much hard labor, exposure to the fiercest extremes of tropical temperature, and sojourning
ancr travelling in swamps and lagoons, often
most deadly to the white race. For this reason,
he manned his vessel with a crew composed entirely of negroes; and he informed us that the
result had been perfectly satisfactory.  The
negro constitution enabled them  to undergo
with less suffering and danger the severe exposure and toils of the enterprise; and the
gayety and good nature which belonged to the
race made their toils seem to sit lighter upon
them than upon a given number of white men.
He had known them, after a day of heavy exposure, travelling through mud and swamps, and
cutting saw-grass, which wounds like a knife, to
sit down at evening, and sing songs and play on
the banjo, laugh and tell stories, in the very best
of spirits. He furthermore valued them for their
docility, and perfect subjection to discipline.




THE LABORERS OF THE SOUTH. 285


He announced strict rules, forbidding all drunkenness and profanity; and he never found a difficulty in enforcing these rules: their obedience
and submission were perfect. When this gentleman was laid up with an attack of fever in St.
Augustine, his room was beset by anxious negro
mammies, relations of his men, bringing fruits,
flowers, and delicacies of their compounding for
"the captain."
Those who understand and know how to
treat the negroes seldom have reason to complain of their ingratitude.
But it is said, by Northern men who come
down with Northern habits -of labor, that the
negro is inefficient as a laborer.
It is to be conceded that the influence of
climate and constitution, and the past benumbing influences of slavery, do make the habits of
Southern laborers very different from the habits
of Northern men, accustomed, by the shortness




286


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


of summer and the length of winter, to set the
utmost value on their working-time.
In the South, where growth goes on all the
year round, there really is no need of that intense, driving energy and vigilance in the use
of time that are needed in the short summers of
the North: an equal amount can be done with
less labor.
But the Northern man when he first arrives,
before he has proved the climate, looks with impatient scorn on what seems to him the slow,
shilly-shally style in which both black and white
move on. It takes an attack of malarial fever
or two to teach him that he cannot labor the
day through under a tropical sun as he can in
the mountains of New Hampshire. After a
shake or two of this kind, he comes to be
thankful if he can hire Cudjo or Pompey to
plough and hoe in his fields through the blazing
hours, even though they do not plough and hoe
with all the alacrity of Northern farmers.




THE LABORERS OF THE SOUTH. 287


It is also well understood, that, in taking
negro laborers, we have to take men and women
who have been educated under a system the
very worst possible for making good, efficient,
careful, or honest laborers. Take any set of
white men, and put them for two or three generations under the same system of work without
wages, forbid them legal marriage and secure
family ties, and we will venture to predict that
they would come out of the ordeal a much worse
set than the Southern laborers are.
We have had in our own personal experience
pretty large opportunities of observation. Immediately after the war, two young New-England
men hired the Mackintosh Plantation, opposite
to Mandarin, on the west bank of the St. John's
River. It was, in old times, the model plantation
of Florida, employing seven hundred negroes,
raising sugar, rice, Sea-Island cotton. There
was upon it a whole village of well-built, com



288


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


fortable negro houses, -as well built and comfortable as those of any of the white small farmers
around. There was a planter's house.; a schoolhouse, with chambers for the accommodation of a
teacher, who was to instruct the planter's children.  There were barns, and a cotton-gin
and storehouse, a sugar-house, a milk and dairy
house, an oven, and a kitchen; each separate
buildings. There were some two or three hundred acres of cleared land, fit for the raising of
cotton. This whole estate had been hired by
these young men on the principle of sharing
half the profits with the owner. After they had
carried it on one year, some near relatives became partners; and then we were frequent
visitors there. About thirty laboring families
were employed upon the place. These were
from different, more northern States, who had
drifted downward after the Emancipation Act to
try the new luxury of being free to choose their




TIE LABORERS OF THE SOUTH. 289


own situation, and seek their own fortune.
Some were from Georgia, some from South and
some from North Carolina, and some from New
Orleans; in fact, the dibris of slavery, washed
together in the tide of emancipation. Such as
they were, they were a fair specimen of the
Southern negro as slavery had made and left him.
The system pursued with them was not either
patronizing or sentimental. The object was to
put them at once on the ground of free white
men and women, and to make their labor profitable to their employers.  They were taught
the nature of a contract; and their agreements
with their employers were all drawn up in writing, and explained to them. The terms were a
certain monthly sum of money, rations for the
month, rent of cottage, and privileges of milk
from the dairy. One of the most efficient and
intelligent'was appointed to be foreman of the
plantation; and he performed the work of old
I9




290


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


performed by a driver. He divided the hands
into gangs; appointed their places in the field;
settled any difficulties between them; and, in fact,
was an overseer of the detail. Like all uneducated people, the negroes are great conservatives.
They clung to the old ways of working, - to the
gang, the driver, and the old field arrangements,
even where one would have thought another
course easier and wiser.
In the dim gray of the morning, Mose blew
his horn; and all turned out and worked their
two or three hours without breakfast, and then
came back to their cabins to have corn-cake
made, and pork fried, and breakfast prepared.
We suggested that the New-England manner
of an early breakfast would be more to the purpose; but were met by the difficulty, nay, almost
impossibility, of making the negroes work in
any but the routine to which they had been
accustomed. But in this routine they worked




THE LABORERS OF THE SOUTH. 29I


honestly, cheerfully, and with a will. They had
the fruits of their labors constantly in hand,
in the form either of rations or wages; and there
appeared to be much sober content therewith.
On inquiry, it was found, that, though living in
all respectability in families, the parties were,
many of them, not legally married; and an attempt was made to induce them to enter into
holy orders. But the men seemed to regard
this as the imposing of a yoke beyond what they
could bear.  Mose said he had one wife in
Virginny, and one in Carliny; and how did he
know which of'em he should like best? Mandy,
on the female side, objected that she could not
be married yet for want of a white lace veil,
which she seemed to consider essential to the
ceremony. The survey of Mandy in her stuff
gown and cow-hide boots, with her man's hat
on, following the mule with the plough, brought
rather ludicrous emotions in connection with
this want of a white veil.




292


PA LME TTO-LEA VES.


Nevertheless, the legal marriages were few
among them. They lived faithfully in their respective family relations; and they did their
work, on the whole, effectively and cheerfully.
Their only amusement, after working all day,
seemed to be getting together, and holding
singing and prayer meetings, which they often
did to a late hour of the night. We used to sit
and hear them, after ten or eleven o'clock, singing and praying and exhorting with the greatest
apparent fervor. There were one or two of
what are called preachers among them, - men
with a natural talent for stringing words together, and with fine voices. As a matter of
curiosity, we once sat outside, when one of these
meetings was going on, to hear what it was like.
The exhortation seemed to consist in a string
of solemn-sounding words and phrases, images
borrowed from Scripture, scraps of hymns, and
now and then a morsel that seemed like a




THE LABORERS OF THE SOUTH. 293


Roman-Catholic tradition about the Virgin
Mary and Jesus. The most prominent image,
however, was that of the angel, and the blowing
of the last trumpet. At intervals, amid the flying cloud of images and words, came round
something about Gabriel and the last trump, somewhat as follows: " And He will say,'Gabriel, Gabriel, blow your trump: take it cool and easy,
cool and easy, Gabriel: dey's all bound for to
come."
This idea of taking even the blowing of the
last trump cool and easy seemed to be so like
the general negro style of attending to things,
that it struck me as quite refreshing. As to
singing, the most doleful words with the most
lugubrious melodies seemed to be in favor.
"Hark! from the tombs a doleful sound,"
was a special favorite. With eyes shut, and
mouth open, they would pour out a perfect




294


PA LMETTO-LEA VES.


storm of minor-keyed melody on poor old Dr.
Watts's hymn, mispronouncing every word, till
the old doctor himself could not have told whether they were singing English or Timbuctoo.
Yet all this was done with a fervor and earnest
solemnity that seemed to show that they found
something in it, whether we could or not: who
shall say? A good old mammy we used to
know found great refreshment in a hymn, the
chorus of which was, -
" Bust the bonds of dust and thunder;
Bring salvation from on high."
Undoubtedly the words suggested to her very
different ideas from what they did to us; for she
obstinately refused to have them exchanged for
good English. But when the enlightened, wise,
liberal, and refined for generations have found
edification and spiritual profit from a service
chanted in an unknown tongue, who shall say




THE LABORERS OF THE SOUTH. 295


that the poor negroes of our plantation did not
derive real spiritual benefit from their night
services? It was at least an aspiration, a
reaching and longing for something above animal and physical good, a recognition of God and
immortality, and a future beyond this earth,
vague and indefinite though it were.
As to the women, they were all of the class
born and bred as field-hands. They were many
of them as strong as men, could plough and
chop and cleave with the best, and were held
to be among the best field-laborers; but, in all
household affairs, they were as rough and unskilled as might be expected. To mix meal,
water, and salt into a hoe-cake, and to fry salt
pork or ham or chicken, was the extent of their
knowledge of cooking; and as to sewing, it is
a fortunate thing that the mild climate requires
very slight covering. All of them practised,
rudely, cutting, fitting, and making of garments




296


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


to cover their children; but we could see how
hard was their task, after working all day in the
field, to come home and get the meals, and then,
after that, have the family sewing to do. In our
view, woman never was made to do the work
which supports the family; and, if she do it, the
family suffers more for want of the mother's
vitality expended in work than it gains in the
wages she receives. Some of the brightest and
most intelligent negro men begin to see this,
and to remove their wives from field-labor; but
on the plantation, as we saw it, the absence of
the mother all day from home was the destruction of any home-life or improvement.
Yet, with all this, the poor things, many of
them, showed a most affecting eagerness to be
taught to read and write. We carried down
and distributed a stock of spelling-books among
them, which they eagerly accepted, and treasured
with a sort of superstitious veneration; and




THE LABORERS OF THE SOUTH. 297


Sundays, and evenings after work, certain of
them would appear with them in hand, and
earnestly beg to be taught. Alas! we never felt
so truly what the loss and wrong is of being deprived of early education as when we saw how
hard, how almost hopeless, is the task of acquisition in mature life. When we saw the sweat
start upon these black faces, as our pupils
puzzled and blundered over the strange cabalistic forms of the letters, we felt a discouraged
pity. What a dreadful piece of work the reading of the English language is! Which of us
would not be discouraged beginning the alphabet at forty?
After we left, the same scholars were wont to
surround one of the remaining ladies. Sometimes the evening would be so hot and oppressive, she would beg to be excused. "0
misse, but two of us will fan you all the time!"
And "misse" could not but yield to the plea.




298


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


One of the most dreaded characters on the
place was the dairy-woman and cook Minnah.
She had been a field-hand in North Carolina,
and worked at cutting down trees, grubbing
land, and mauling rails. She was a tall, lank,
powerfully-built woman, with a pair of arms like
windmill-sails, and a tongue that never hesitated
to speak her mind to high or low. Democracy
never assumes a more rampant form than in
some of these old negresses, who would say
their screed to the king on his throne, if they
died for it the next minute. Accordingly, Minnah's back was all marked and scored with the
tyrant's answers to free speech. Her old master was accustomed to reply to her unpleasant
observations by stretching her over a log, staking down her hands and feet, and flaying her
alive, as a most convincing style of argument.
For all that, Minnah was neither broken nor
humbled: she still asserted her rights as a




THE LABORERS OF THE SOUTH. 299


human being to talk to any other human being
as seemed to her good and proper; and many
an amusing specimen of this she gave us. Minnah had learned to do up gentlemen's shirts passably, to iron and to cook after a certain fashion,
to make butter, and do some other household
tasks: and so, before the wives of the gentlemen
arrived on the place, she had been selected as
a sort of general housekeeper and manager in
doors; and, as we arrived on the ground first,
we found Minnah in full command,- the only
female presence in the house.
It was at the close of a day in May, corresponding to our August, that Mrs. F-  and
baby and myself, with sundry bales of furniture
and household stuff, arrived at the place. We
dropped down in. a lazy little sail-boat which had
lain half the day becalmed, with the blue, hazy
shores on either side melting into indefinite
distance, and cast anchor far out in the stream;




300


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


and had to be rowed in a smaller boat to the
long wharf that stretched far out into the waters.
Thence, in the thickening twilight, we ascended,
passed through the belt of forest-trees that overhung the shore, and crossed the wide fields of
fine white sand devoted to the raising of cotton.
The planter's house was a one-story cottage, far
in the distance, rising up under the shelter of
a lofty tuft of Spanish oaks.
Never shall we forget the impression of
weird and almost ludicrous dreariness which
took possession of us as Mrs. F-  and myself sat down in the wide veranda of the onestory cottage to wait for the gentlemen, who
had gone down to assist in landing our trunks
and furniture. The black laborers were coming
up from the field; and, as one and another
passed by, they seemed blacker, stranger, and
more dismal, than any thing we had ever seen.
The women wore men's hats and boots, and




THE LABORERS OF THE SOUTH. 30I


had the gait and stride of men; but now and
then an old hooped petticoat, or some cast-off,
thin, bedraggled garment that had once been
fine, told the tale of sex, and had a wofully
funny effect.
As we sat waiting, Minnah loomed up upon
us in the twilight veranda like a gaunt
Libyan sibyl, walking round and round, surveying us with apparent curiosity, and responding to all our inquiries as to who and what she
was by a peculiarly uncanny chuckle. It appeared to amuse her extremely that Mr.
F —   had gone off and left the pantry locked
up, so that she could not get us any supper; we
being faint and almost famished with our day's
sail. The sight of a white baby dressed in
delicate white robes, with lace and embroidery,
also appeared greatly to excite her; and she
stalked round and round with a curious simmer
of giggle, appearing and disappearing at un



302


PA LMETTO-LEA VES.


certain intervals, like a black sprite, during the
mortal hour and a half that it cost our friends to
land the goods from the vessel.
After a while, some supper was got for us in
a wide, desolate apartment, fitted up with a
small cooking-stove in the corner.
Never shall we forget the experience of endeavoring to improvise a corn-cake the next
morning for breakfast.
We went into the room, and found the table
standing just as we had left it the night before, -
not a dish washed, not a thing done in the way
of clearing. On inquiry for Minnah, she was
gone out to milking. It appeared that there
were sixteen cows to be milked before her return. A little colored girl stood ready to wait
on us with ample good nature.
"Lizzie," said we, " have you corn-meal?"
"Oh, yes'm!" and she brought it just as the
corn had been ground, with the bran unsifted.




THE LABORERS OF THE SOUTH. 303


" A sieve, Lizzie."
It was brought.
"A clean pan, Lizzie. Quick!"
"All right," said Lizzie: "let me get a pail of
water." The water was to be drawn from a deep
well in the yard. That done, Lizzie took a pan,
went out the door, produced a small bit of rag,
and rinsed the pan, dashing the contents upon
the sand.
"Lizzie, haven't you any dish-cloth?"
" No'm."
"No towels?"
" No'm."
"Do you always wash dishes this way?"
"Yes'm."
"Well, then, wash this spoon and these two
bake-pans."
Lizzie, good-natured and zealous as the day
is long, bent over her pail, and slopped and
scrubbed with her bit of rag.




304


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


"Now for a pan of sour milk," said we.
It was brought, with saleratus and other condiments; and the cake was made.
But, on examination, the flues of the little
cooking-stove were so choked with the resinous
soot of the "light-wood" which had been used
in it, that it would scarcely draw at all; and
the baking did not progress as in our nice
Stuart stove in our Northern home. Still the
whole experience was so weirdly original, that,
considering this was only a picnic excursion, we
rather enjoyed it.
When we came to unpack china and crockery
and carpets, bureau and bedsteads and dressingglass, Minnah's excitement knew no bounds.
Evidently she considered these articles (cast-off
remnants of our Northern home) as the height
of splendor.
When our upper chamber was matted, and
furnished with white cartains and shades, and




THE LABORERS OF THE SOUTH. 305


bed, chairs, and dressing-glass, Minnah came in
to look; and her delight was boundless.
"Dear me! 0 Lord, 0 Lord!" she exclaimed, turning round and round. "Dese yer
Northern ladies - they hes every thing, and
they does every thing!"
More especially was she taken with the
pictures we hung on the walls. Before one of
these (Raphael's Madonna of the Veil) Minnah
knelt down in a kind of ecstatic trance, and
thus delivered herself:"0 good Lord! if there ain't de Good Man
when he was a baby! How harmless he lies
there! so innocent! And here we be, we wicked
sinners, turning our backs on him, and going to
the Old Boy. 0 Lord, 0 Lord! we ought to
be better than we be: we sartin ought."
This invocation came forth with streaming
tears in the most natural way in the world; and
Minnah seemed, for the time being, perfectly
20




306


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


subdued.  It is only one of many instances
we have seen of the overpowering influence of
works of art on the impressible nervous system
of the negro.
But it is one thing to have an amusing and
picturesque specimen of a human being, as
Minnah certainly was, and another to make one
useful in the traces of domestic life.
As the first white ladies upon the ground,
Mrs. F — and myself had the task of organizing this barbaric household, and of bringing it
into the forms of civilized life. We commenced
with the washing.
Before the time of our coming, it had been
customary for the gentlemen to give their
washing into the hands of Minnah or Judy, to
be done at such times and in such form and
manner as best suited them.
The manner which did suit them best was
to put all the articles to soak indefinitely, in




THE LABORERS OF THE SOUTH. 307


soapsuds, till such time as to them seemed good.
On being pressed for some particular article, and
roundly scolded by any of the proprietors, they
would get up a shirt, a pair of drawers, a collar
or two, with abundant promises for the rest
when they had time.
The helpless male individuals of the establishments had no refuge from the feminine ruses
and expedients, and the fifty incontrovertible
reasons which were always on hand to prove to
them that things could be done no other way than
just as they were done; and, in fact, found it
easier to get their washing back again by blandishments than by bullying.
We ladies announced a regular washing-day,
and endeavored to explain it to our kitchen
cabinet; our staff consisting of Minnah and
Judy, detailed for house-service.
Judy was a fat, lazy, crafty, roly-poly negress,
the Florida wife of the foreman Mose, and




308


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


devoted to his will and pleasure in hopes to supplant the "Virginny" and "Carliny" wives.
Judy said yes to every thing we proposed; but
Minnah was "kinky" and argumentative: but
finally, when we represented to her that the
proposed arrangement was customary in good
Northern society, she gave her assent.
We first proceeded to make a barrel of soda
washing-soap in a great iron sugar-kettle, which
stood out under the fig-trees, and which had
formerly been used for evaporating sugar.
Minnah took the greatest interest in the
operation, and, when the soap was finished,
took the boiling liquid in pailfuls, setting them
on the top of her head, and marching off to the
barrel in the house with them, without ever
lifting a finger.
We screamed after her in horror, -
"Minnah, Minnah! If that should fall, it
would kill you!"




THE LABORERS OF THE SOUTH. 309


A laugh of barbaric exultation was the only
response, as she actually persisted in carrying
pailful after pailful of scalding soap on her head
till all was disposed of.
The next day the washing was all brought out
under the trees and sorted, Mrs. F-    and
myself presiding; and soon Minnah and Judy
were briskly engaged at their respective tubs.
For half an hour, " all went merry as a marriagebell." Judy was about half through her first
tubful, when Mose came back from his morning turn in the fields, and summoned her to come
home and get his breakfast. With Judy's very
leisurely and promiscuous habits of doing business, this took her away for half the forenoon.
Meanwhile, Minnah murmured excessively at
being left alone, and more especially at the continuous nature of the task.
Such a heap of clothes to be washed all in
one day! It was a mountain of labor in Minnah's




3Io


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


imagination; and it took all our eloquence and
our constant presence to keep her in good
humor. We kept at Minnah as the only means
of keeping her at her work.
But, after all, it was no bad picnic to spend a
day in the open air in the golden spring-time of
Florida.  The birds were singing from every
covert; the air was perfectly intoxicating in
its dreamy softness; and so we spread a camp
for the baby, who was surrounded by a retinue
of little giggling, adoring negroes, and gave
ourselves up to the amusement of the scene.
Our encampment was under the broad leaves
of a group of fig-trees; and we hung our
clothes to dry on the sharp thorns of a gigantic
clump of Yucca gloriosa, which made an admirable clothes-frame.
By night, with chuckling admiration, Minnah
surveyed a great basketful of clean clothes, —
all done in one day.




THE LABORERS OF THE SOUTH. 311


The next day came the lesson on ironing; and
the only means of securing Minnah and Judy
to constant work at the ironing-table was the
exercise of our own individual powers of entertainment and conversation. We had our own
table, and ironed with them; and all went well
till Judy remembered she had preparations for
Mose's dinner, arid deserted. Minnah kept up
some time longer; till finally, when we went in
the next room on an errand, she improved the
opportunity to desert.  On returning, we saw
Minnah's place vacant, a half-finished shirt
lying drying on the table.
Searching and calling, we at last discovered
her far in the distance, smoking her pipe, and
lolling tranquilly over the fence of a small enclosure where were sixteen calves shut up together, so that maternal longings might bring
the cow mothers home to them at night.
"Why, Minnah, what are you doing?" we
said as we came up breathless.




312


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


" Laws, missis, I wanted to feed my calves. I
jest happened to think on't." And forthwith she
turned, started to the barn, and came back with
a perfect hay-mow on her head. Then, crossing
the fence into the enclosure, she proceeded to
make division of the same among the calves,
who tumultuously surrounded her. She patted
one, and cuffed another, and labored in a most
maternal style to make them share their commons equally; laughing in full content of heart,
and appearing to have forgotten her ironingtable and all about it.
It was in vain to talk. "She was tired ironing. Did anybody ever hear of doing up
all one's things in a day? Besides, she
wanted to see her calves: she felt just like it."
And Minnah planted her elbows on the fence,
and gazed and smoked and laughed, and talked
baby-talk to her calves, till we were quite provoked; yet we could not help laughing. In fact,




THE LABORERS OF THE SOUTH. 313


long before that dav was done, we were out of
breath, used up and exhausted with the strain
of getting the work out of Minnah. It was the
more tantalizing, as she could do with a fair
amount of skill any thing she pleased, and
could easily have done the whole in a day had
she chosen.
It is true, she was droll enough, in a literary
and artistic view, to make one's fortune in a
magazine or story; but, when one had a house to
manage, a practical humorist is less in point
than in some other places.
The fact was, Minnah, like all other women
bred to the fields, abominated housework like a
man. She could do here and there, and by fits
and starts and snatches; but to go on in any
thing like a regular domestic routine was simply
disgusting in her eyes. So, after a short period
of struggle, it was agreed that Minnah was to
go back to field-work, where she was one of the




314


PALLIMETTO-LEA VES.


most valuable hands; and* a trained house.
servant was hired from Jacksonville.
Minnah returned to the field with enthusiasm. We heard her swinging her long arms,
and shouting to her gang, " Come on, den, boys
and gals! I'm for the fields! I was born, I was
raised, I was fairly begot, in de fields; and I
don't want none o' your housework."
In time we obtained a cook from Jacksonville,
trained, accomplished, neat, who made beautiful bread, biscuit, and rolls, and was a comfort
to our souls.
But this phoenix was soon called for by the
wants of the time, and was worth more than we
could give, and went from us to enjoy forty
dollars per month as cook in a hotel.
Such has been the good fortune of all the
well-trained house-servants since emancipation.
They command their own price.
The untrained plantation hands and their




THE LABORERS OF THE SOUTH. 315


children are and will be just what education
may make them.
The education which comes to them from the
State from being freemen and voters, able to
make contracts, choose locations, and pursue their
own course like other men, is a great deal; and
it is operating constantly and efficaciously.
We give the judgment of a practical farmer
accustomed to hire laborers at the North and
the South; and, as a result of five years' experiment on this subject, he says that the negro
laborer carefully looked after is as good as any
that can be hired at the North.
In some respects they are better. As a class
they are more obedient, better natured, more
joyous, and easily satisfied.
The question as to whether, on the whole, the
negroes are valuable members of society, and
increasing the material wealth of the State, is
best answered by the returns of the Freedman's




316


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


Savings and Trust Company,- an institution
under the patronage of government.
The report of this institution for the year
1872 is before us; and from this it appears that
negro laborers in the different Southern States
have deposited with this Trust Company this
year the sum of THIRTY-ONE MILLION TWO
HUNDRED AND SIXTY THOUSAND FOUR HUNDRED
AND NINETY-NINE DOLLARS.
The report also shows, that, year by year, the
amount deposited has increased. Thus, in 1867,
it was only $I,624,883; in 1868 it was three
million odd; in.869 it was seven million and
odd; in 1870, twelve million and odd; in I87I,
nineteen million and odd.
These results are conclusive to the fact, that,
as a body, the Southern laborers are.a thrifty,
industrious, advancing set; and such as they
are proved by the large evidence of these
figures, such we have observed them in our
more limited experience.




THE LABORERS OF TIHE SOUTH. 317


Our negro laborers, with all the inevitable defects of imperfect training, ignorance, and the
negligent habits induced by slavery, have still
been, as a whole, satisfactory laborers. They
keep their contracts, do their wvork, and save
their earnings. We could point to more than
one black family about us steadily growing up
to competence by industry and saving.
All that is wanted to supply the South with a
set of the most desirable skilled laborers is
simply education.  The negro  children  are
bright; they can be taught any thing: and if
the whites, who cannot bear tropical suns and
fierce extremes, neglect to educate a docile race
who both can and will bear it for them, they
throw away their best chance of success in a
most foolish manner. No community that properly and carefully educates the negro children
now growing up need complain of having an
idle, thriftless, dishonest population about them.




3i8


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


Common schools ought to prevent that.  The
teaching in the common schools ought to be
largely industrial, and do what it can to prepare
the children to get a living by doing something
well. Practical sewing, cutting and fitting, for
girls, and the general principles of agriculture
for boys, might be taught with advantage.
The negroes are largely accused of being
thievish and dishonest.
A priori we should expect that they would be
so. We should imagine, that to labor without
wages for generations, in a state of childish
dependence, would so confuse every idea of
right and wrong, that the negro would be a
hopeless thief.
Our own experience, however, is due in justice to those we have known.
On the first plantation, as we have said, were
about thirty families from all the different
Southern States. It might be supposed that
they were a fair sample.




THE LABORERS OF THE SOUTI. 319


Now as to facts. It was the habit of the
family to go to bed nights, and leave the house
doors unlocked, and often standing wide open.
The keys that locked the provisions hung up in
a very accessible place; and yet no robbery was
ever committed. We used to set the breakfasttable over night, and leave it with all the silver
upon it, yet lost nothing.
In our own apartment we put our rings and
pins on our toilet-cushions, as had been our
habit. We had bits of bright calico and ribbons,
and other attractive articles, lying about; and
the girl that did the chamber-work was
usually followed by a tribe of little curious,
observing negroes: and yet we never missed
so much as a shred of calico. Neither was this
because they did not want them; for the gift of
a strip of calico or ribbon would throw them
into raptures: it was simply that they did not
steal.




320


PALMETTO-LEA VES.


Again: nothing is more common, when we
visit at the North, than to have the complaint
made that fruit is stolen out of gardens. We
have had people tell us that the vexation of
having fruit carried off was so great, that it
took away all the pleasure of a garden.
Now, no fruit is more beautiful, more tempting, than the orange. We live in an orangegrove surrounded by negroes, and yet never have
any trouble of this kind. We have often seen
bags of fine oranges lying all night under the
trees; and yet never have we met with any perceptible loss. Certainly it is due to the negroes
that we have known to say that they are above
the average of many in the lower classes at
the North for honesty.
We have spoken now for the average negro:
what we have said is by no means the best that
can with truth be said of the finer specimens
among them.




THE LABORERS OF THE SOUTH. 321
We know some whose dignity of character,
delicacy, good principle, and generosity, are
admirable, and more to be admired because
these fine traits have come up under the most
adverse circumstances.
In leaving this subject, we have only to repeat
our conviction, that the prosperity of the more
Southern States must depend in a large degree,
on the right treatment and education of the
negro population.
21