Buying Land in Florida
May2.
W
E have before us a neat little pile of what we call "Palmetto letters,"—responses 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 flowersand open-air freedom in Florida have come to those struggling through snow-drifts and hail-storms 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 eyeTo Canaan's fair and happy land."
"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 havehomes 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 building-lots in the neighborhood of Jacksonville are rising in value, commanding much higher prices than the mere productive value of the land. In other words, men pay for advantages, for society, for facilities afforded by settlements.
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 themonth of May. Two things Mr. Hardee seems to have demonstrated: first, that strawberry-culture 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 wonderful.Mr. Hardee was so complaisant as to cut and present to us a handsome cluster of red Astrachan apples about the size of large hickory nuts, 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 thesame 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 theclimate 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 arehardly 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 carriedthrough 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
A
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 pine-land, 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 aland-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 peach-orchard, 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 copyverbatimcertain memoranda of results with which they have furnished us.
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(1871-72.)—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.
CUCUMBERS.
First Year.—Planted four acres, mostly new, hard, sour land, broad-casting fifty bushels of lime to the acre, and using some weak, half-rotted 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.
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.
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. TheChristmas freeze of 1870 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 cold-frames 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.
"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 andearlyvegetables 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. Land-agents 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 embarkin 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 undertookto till more acres than we could do justice to. In farming, thelove of acresis 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 Jacksonvillemarket, 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 bestudiedand 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 buyinglandin Florida.
May in Florida
Mandarin, May 28, 1872.
T
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 theystill 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 andmelodies, 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 bird-laughter. 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 Phœbus, 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 crazyabandon 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 givenover 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 coffee-bean-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 thepossession 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 midnightwe 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 resignFor such a pair of wings as thine,And such a head between 'em."
"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 nursery-garden 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 wildwoods, 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 anenfant gâté. When raisins were thrown up,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 blossomsonly once a season; not, like the ever-springing 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.
St. Augustine
Mandarin, May 30, 1872.
T
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 theriver, 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. Wehad 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 Floridawoods 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 beauties;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 otherbooty. In 1605 it was taken and plundered by buccaneers; in 1702, besieged by the people of the Carolinas; in 1740, 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 stationedin 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 andstrange, 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 bell-towers, 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 indolent, 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 navigationwith 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 makeopen sea-bathing dangerous. If one comes expecting a fine view of the open ocean, however, one will be disappointed; for Anastasia Island—a long, low sand-bar—stretches its barren line across the whole view, giving only so much sea-prospect 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 thissemi-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 orange-grove, 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 awinter-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 grass-plats. 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.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 broad-leafed kind is what is principally employed in St. Augustine; and we have seen beautifully-kept 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 otherclimbing-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 willow-leafed 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 hotregions, 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-bloomingroses 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 rose-bugs 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-plantin bud. The stalk was nineteen feet high; and the blossoms seemed to promise to be similar 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 theprojected 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 werevarieties 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 snow-white 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!
Our Neighbor over the Way
Mandarin, May 14, 1872.
O
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, dottedwith 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 shows 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 sun-umbrellas; for the middle of May here is like the middle of August at the North. The water-coach, 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 toparties 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 theorange-orchards, its clouds of pink oleander-trees 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 thedistance, "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;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 upto 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.
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 allthe 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 animalshave 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 muchshocked 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 broad-leaved water-grass, very tender and nutritious, ofwhich 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 passesfor 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, importedfrom 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 onoutside. 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-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, justbeginning 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; butthe 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 orgeneral 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 orange-plantations 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.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.