Now dead,
owned a subterranean spring, which he called
"Mediterranean passage." This spring is
powerful enough to run a rickety, "up-and-down"
saw-mill. The great height of the water
allowed me to paddle into the mill with my canoe.
At half past seven o'clock a deserted log
cabin at Barrington's Ferry offered us shelter for
the night. The whole of the next day we rowed
through the same immense forests, finding no
more cultivated land than during our first day's
voyage. We landed at a log cabin in a small
clearing to purchase eggs of a poor woman,
whose husband had shot her brother a few days
before. As the wife's brother had visited the
cabin with the intention of killing the husband,
the woman seemed to think the murdered man
had "got his desarts," and, as a coroner's jury
had returned a verdict of "justifiable homicide,"
the affair was considered settled.
Below this cabin we came to Island No. 1,
where rapids trouble boatmen in the summer
months. Now we glided gently but swiftly over
the deep current. The few inhabitants we met
along the banks of the Suwanee seemed to carry
with them an air of repose while awake. To
rouse them from mid-day slumbers we would
call loudly as we passed a cabin in the woods,
and after considerable delay a man would appear
at the door, rubbing his eyes as though the genial
sunlight was oppressive to his vision. It was
indeed a quiet, restful region, this great
wilderness of the Suwanee.
We passed Mrs. Goodman's farm and log
buildings on the left bank, just below Island
No. 8, before noon, and about this time Major
Purviance shot at a large wild turkey (Meleagris
gallopavo), knocking it off a bank into the
water. The gobbler got back to land, and led
us a fruitless chase into the thicket of saw-palmetto.
He knew his ground better than we, for,
though wounded, he made good his escape.
We stopped a few moments at Troy, which,
though dignified in name, consists only of a
store and some half dozen buildings.
A few miles below this place, on the left
bank of the river, is an uninhabited elevation
called Rolins' Bluff, from which a line running
north 220 east, twenty-three miles and a half in
length, will strike Live Oak. A charter to
connect Live Oak with this region of the Suwanee
by means of a railroad had just passed the
Florida legislature, but had been killed by the veto
of the governor. After sunset the boats were
secured in safe positions in front of a deserted
cabin, round which a luxuriant growth of
bitter-orange trees showed what nature could do for
this neglected grove. The night air was balmy,
and tremulous with insect life, while the
alligators in the swamps kept up their bellowings till
morning.
After breakfast we descended to the mouth of
the Santa Fe River, which was on the left bank
of the Suwanee. The piny-woods people called
it the Santaffy. The wilderness below the Santa
Fe is rich in associations of the Seminole Indian
war. Many relics have been found, and, among
others, on the site of an old Indian town,
entombed in a hollow tree, the skeletons of an
Indian adult and child, decked with beads, were
discovered. Fort Fanning is on the left bank,
and Old Town Hammock on the right bank of
the Suwanee.
During the Seminole war, the hammock and
the neighboring fastnesses became the
hiding-places of the persecuted Indians, and so wild
and undisturbed is this region, even at this time,
that the bear, lynx, and panther take refuge from
man in its jungles.
Colonel J. L. F. Cottrell left his native
Virginia in 1854, and commenced the cultivation of
the virgin soil of Old Town Hammock. Each
state has its peculiar mode of dividing its land,
and here in Florida this old plantation was in
township 10, section 24, range 13. The estate
included about two thousand acres of land, of
which nearly eleven hundred were under
cultivation. The slaves whom the colonel brought
from Virginia were now his tenants, and he
leased them portions of his arable acres. He
considered this locality as healthy as any in the
Suwanee country. The old planter's home, with
its hospitable doors ever open to the stranger,
was embowered in live-oaks and other trees,
from the branches of which the graceful festoons
of Spanish moss waved in the soft air, telling of
a warm, moist atmosphere.
A large screw cotton-press and corn-cribs,
with smoke-house and other plantation buildings,
were conveniently grouped under the spreading
branches of the protecting oaks. The estate
produced cotton, corn, sweet potatoes, cattle,
hogs, and poultry. Deer sometimes approached
the enclosed fields, while the early morning call
of the wild turkey came from the thickets of the
hammock. In this retired part of Florida,
cheered by the society of a devoted wife and
four lovely daughters, lived the kind-hearted
gentleman who not only pressed on us the
comforts of his well-ordered house, but also
insisted upon accompanying the paper canoe from
his forest home to the sea.
When gathered around the firesides of the
backwoods people, the conversation generally
runs into hunting stories, Indian reminiscences,
and wild tales of what the pioneers suffered
while establishing themselves in their forest
homes. One event of startling interest had
occurred in the Suwanee country a few weeks
before the paper canoe entered its confines.
Two hunters went by night to the woods to
shoot deer by firelight. As they stalked about,
with light-wood torches held above their heads,
they came upon a herd of deer, which, being
bewildered by the glare of the lights, made no
attempt to escape.
