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We continued to tack along, occasionally stopping to let the men go and catch clams and oysters - for these were luxuries to us, after all our soakings in fresh water. We required salting anew, for salt water is our element, not less than the air of the woods; and it is like a new supply of life, the sensation which we feel on mixing some of the ocean-salts in our veins. The clams are very good, but the oysters are generally long and slim, and poor, in this quarter, although in some places they are better. Those at the mouth of the St. John's are very worthless, with worm-eaten shell and yellow enamel inside; but down at Indian River, south of St. Augustine, they are fine and fat, and very abundant; and so are they here, growing by millions in compact bodies, like so many case-knives packed close on end, with their points upward - excellent to run the point of a good boat upon, or step on with your naked feet!

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We went to the principal mansion at Amelia Island, at the earnest request of the hospitable proprietor; and although we were not previously acquainted, he would not hear of our departure, until we had seen how like an old feudal baron or patriarch he lived. His black retainers were very numerous, and as happy as any people I ever The communications between master and slave were kind, and proved good feeling and a fair union of interests on both sides. The master reflected for his slaves, on the principle that the interests of both parties were inseparable, and the slaves, with the true and affectionate hearts of negroes, worked for their master on the same principle. I confess the horrors' of their slavery did not strike me very forcibly. They had their regular musicians, and every day it was their duty as well as pleasure to play for their master, and at night for themselves. A stronger evidence of the attachment of a man to his friend can hardly be shown in history, than was witnessed on this island, by a slave toward his master, during the former war with the Seminoles. I will relate the story. It should be understood that these Indians are not, by any means, hard masters. Unlike northern men generally of whom I confess I am one myself. they are not exacting. If a negro raises ten bushels of corn a year for his master, he is satisfied; or if he asks for more, and is told there will not be enough for seed next year, and he cannot have more, he does not insist on it which is the same to the slave. A negro knowing this, as they generally do, was told to follow a party of Indians who had invaded the island, and among others had seized his wife. He was commanded to do so, on pain of being shot. The negro hesitated. He knew not whether to give up his master, with labor, and music, and dancing, and all other comforts, or a comparatively easy life with his wife. He soon decided. He turned to run, was shot, and fell a sacrifice to his devotion to his master. who write against slavery, are unfair when they do not give truths like this. Although there are doubtless some instances of severity, yet probably no more than is constantly practised in society here, in collecting rents and interest-money, which white men pay by the sweat of their brows, to give money to men who do not labor themselves. Amelia Island is the most desirable place I saw in Florida. It is true there are no neighbors near, and the post-office is a number

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of miles away; but the soil is excellent, and the situation healthy, and constantly fanned by the trade winds; and with a number of slaves, a man has a good chance here of exceeding his three-score years and ten. The present owner is upward of eighty, I believe, but appears not even sixty. The approach to his mansion is unique. We see nothing like it at the north. Indeed the whole island has a singular appearance: but this serpentine avenue is lined on both sides by a species of the palmetto, which rises like a tree, fifteen inches or more in diameter, and bears large pointed leaves, over two feet broad, and three feet long, and branching off from the body of the tree, so as to form a hemisphere of about ten feet diameter. All are of the same size, in the same soil, whatever may be the height of the tree; for the root is bulbous, and shoots forth the huge vegetable to its full size at once, excepting in height. It is fabled that it used to rise to the height of a large mast in a year, and bore a cabbage or two on the top, and was perennial. With regard to the cabbage, it is partly true for the young leaves taste like cabbages before they open they rise in the form of a folded fan, and are then yellow, sweet, and tender, and often eaten. It kills the tree to cut out these leaves entirely, but otherwise they seem as if they might live for centuries. We were told that they gave out an excellent palm wine in great quantities after being so cut; but I had no opportunity to try it as I travelled about, nor where I stopped. The body of the tree is like the husk of the cocoa-nut.

In the garden were various kinds of tropical flowers, and the walks were lined with orange-trees, which met over head, and formed arbors - like the Gothic temples from which that style of architecture is said to have originated -save that the trees were not tied together at their tops, but met naturally. They thus make delightfully perfumed walks, when in bloom, as the aroma of the orange blossom scents the gale most exquisitely.

Along the shores, but not cultivated, might be seen the Spanish bayonet or glorioso, such as we have here; but then they flower magnificently, and at a distance appear like a number of young ladies. The eye will be deceived twenty times a day by them as it would by their breathing, speaking resemblances, some ill-natured womanhater might say.

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I went down to the boat, after a time, and left our hospitable host, who loaded my arms with books - a most acceptable present to beguile me on the way, and much pleasure did I find in reading some of them.

On our way to St. Mary's River, Georgia, we were overtaken by one of the severest storms of thunder and lightning I ever experienced. It made every soul on board -four of us - stare. We threw out a very heavy anchor, for the size of the boat, but she dragged it ashore, although the wind had no great opportunity to strike us in the land-locked place where we were. It rained so very hard, that as many of us as could do so thrust ourselves under the half-deck at the bows. By this movement, I was crowded against the mast, down which a stream was running so that it wet me through. The deck also leaked, insomuch that my companion could not move without being in the same predicament as myself. What could be done?

I had the authority, and might have turned him out in the rain, but this would have been too bad; so I began to tell stories about lightning, and the relative dangers of various situations. I told him, in particular, of a blacksmith who had been wet by the rain, and stood near his chimney, when the lightning came down and shivered every rag of clothes off him in an instant. His chimney had been the conductor, as all high points were. I then talked about our

mast, and asked if there were not a steel or iron point in the topmast. I knew there was one, for a vane or fly to turn upon. I then pointed out the stream by which I was becoming wet, and hoped I should not be stripped as unceremoniously as the blacksmith had been. All this time a feu-de-joie was going on over head, and the sky was splitting on all sides, like a muskmelon cut all around. Our worthy, when he began to understand things, looked out with a very wise face, but rather a dull eye, and said that, for his part, he thought it began to hold up, and he did not care for a few drops of rain: he would not be cramped up under deck any longer. So out he crawled, and left me ready to die with smothered laughter. It was not very generous, perhaps, but there was danger; and he must be more than mortal who can suppress a good joke in such a situation.

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The storm passed over, and on looking out, we saw another sail, with two huge whiskered, Spanish-looking, piratical fellows close aboard of us. They were in a small open pilot-boat, and under a pack of sailors' pea-jackets and cloaks, looked like straw-stuffed scarecrows. I heard the light merry laugh of a girl, who called to me by 'Who under the sun can there be in that craft, here out of the world of civilized beings, who knows me so well?' I answered. She amused herself for a time, and showed that she was well acquainted with me. At last, on the clearing up of the shower, she threw off her disguise, and revealed a New-York or rather a United States' belle a daughter of one of our national officers, whom you may meet at one time in the desert, and again in Bond-street or AlbionPlace. I just missed seeing her, an evening or two ago, in the latter place. Not many have her temerity. I should have looked twice at her escort before I would have trusted myself with them, without dirk or pistol; but I fancy she could see that monstrous whiskers were the best proofs of peace at heart. I have often suspected, that the rougher the burr the softer the kernel; and if you wish to find a coward, ever afraid of a woman, seek for him in a terrible-looking whiskered man, and beware of your Johnson-looking, 'innocent boy,' or velvet-footed, smiling, cat-like politician, who is now on this side, then on that, shaking hands cordially with every man he meets. The girls know who is who, after all at least some of them do.

After passing a bay, open to the sea, we reached St. Mary's River. There is no such scenery as we have at the north. Nothing bold or picturesque, to any interesting degree. The country has the appearance of a recent formation. Nothing like that with which we meet in primitive regions, or in well-established secondary formations. In two or three places, between St. John's and St. Mary's, the water is changing the situation of the land to such a degree, that it actually has the appearance of having been carried by carts, and washed smooth. But on the St. Mary's, there are salt meadows below, and

swamps and bluffs above, and nothing great any where, excepting quantities of musquitoes and sand-flies.

The town of St. Mary's is small, and contains only a few hundreds of inhabitants, who go to rest every night with the chickens, take good care of their health, and, with plenty of chloride of lime, say their place is extremely healthy. The merchants only ask of the planters to pay up, or give a mortgage, and the planters desire only six or seven years' credit, if we may believe some of the merchants. But let me not 'stretch' it; it is only two or three years' credit they want. I fancy the merchants have the best of the bargain, after all. Men who make many bargains, will overreach those who make only a few, if the old proverb be true, that' practice makes perfect.' It seems to be so in diplomacy, at all events.

The inhabitants of St. Mary's are very kind to strangers, and, so far as I could see, agreeable to each other. In truth, the southern people are almost invariably civil to strangers; and I cannot but admire the chivalrous feeling that prevails among them. But let us bid good bye to St. Mary's, and I will tell you how a rogue and honest man of my acquaintance managed together in Florida, and you will have a hint of the state of the laws in the woods.

A Minorcan, an honest man, had business in Alachua, which is in the centre of the peninsula, and he went there on horseback. When he arrived, he tied his horse, and went into a house. A rogue, happening to see him, said the horse looked like his, and in fact was so much like one he had lost, that he would take him, for better or for worse. With this pious intent, and to save all useless bloody contention, he went into the house and begged to borrow the Minorcan's sheath-knife, a dagger about an inch broad and a foot long. At first, he positively refused, not because he suspected him, or any other man, but because he said he made it a 'rule never to part with his arms when he was among strangers.' At length, however, he was prevailed upon to lend it; but he had no sooner done so, than his horse's halter was cut, and a new owner was on his back, and tearing through the pine barrens like a scrub-racer. It is useless to attempt to describe a man who feels he has been overreached, and left in the lurch by his own folly. He stamps, and swears, and clenches his hands, and grates his teeth, and walks hither and thither - and sometimes tears his hair, as almost every one has seen some one do, if he has not done it for himself. In this predicament was our goodnatured Minorcan. Eighty miles from home, and without a horse, or money enough with him to buy another. But he made the best of his way back, determined to gain satisfaction as soon as possible. At the time I saw him, he had travelled several hundred miles with the feeling of an Indian, and had recovered his horse, cropped and branded with the mark of the robber, and so disguised, otherwise, that it was almost impossible for his real owner to know him. He took him back by the aid of his knife; and his object, when I saw him, was to bring his opponent to justice by the regular operations of the law; but from the feelings of the wise law-givers of the territory, I do not believe he ever obtained satisfaction, for the impression was general among the lawyers, that if the criminal should not have enough property to pay

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the costs of the court, the accuser should pay them. They passed a law to this effect, I believe, and the Congress of the United States abrogated it. By this system, the injured man or woman, after falling into the hands of open, bold robbers, must run the gauntlet through the meshes of crafty rogues, where honesty makes but a poor figure, and has to rely on Judge Lynch, who first honored us with his presence at the Boston Tea-Party.' Though I would not promulgate revolutionary doctrines, I must say, that all show of justice is a farce, while the defendant is obliged, when innocent, to pay any of the cost, whether it be a civil or criminal case; and so far as my own experience goes, I would sooner depend upon my own arms, without any laws, than upon any court I ever had any thing to do with. These are the sentiments of Orson. Now let us go and catch a rattle-snake alive, and so drive off'ennui,' for a time, at least.

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I was sitting one day, after dinner, too indolent to think, or read, or write, although surrounded by books in my own camp, when I heard a dreadful yell, or scream, from my poor cowardly Brazilian Indiana fellow more than half civilized, whom I kept about me because he could cook very well on an excursion, put a plank in a boat, or mend a sail, or in fact do almost any thing for a traveler, for he had been all over the world, on board a British man of war, 'as well as elsewhere,' so that he spoke contemptuously of wild Indians. Hearing him scream, I looked out, and saw the little fellow with his legs stretched wide apart, his fingers spread like the points of a palmetto leaf, his eyes showing their whites all around, and appearing like a print of Saturn, with its belt on yellow ground, from under a steeple-crowned, hay-stack hat body, which had a handkerchief stuffed between it and his forehead, to prevent it from falling down to his chin. I could not think what to make of all this, and he could not tell me, but continued to cry: 'Me Got! - Me Got!' At last he made out to say, Rattlesnake! I comprehended the whole case in an instant. He had been within an inch of treading on a huge fellow, six or seven feet long. He did not appear to know what to do with him or himself, and I called out to him not to lose sight of him, while I ran to his assistance. There I saw the most majestic reptile I ever beheld, coiled in a circle of about two feet diameter, with his tail in the centre, rattling with the rapidity of lightning, while his head, about a foot and a half from the ground, waved slowly one way and the other, with a grace and majesty I never could have imagined a snake could exhibit. He seemed to know perfectly well that death was lodged in his fangs; and he told us by his rattle to beware how we injured him. But not liking to be dared in this manner, one of us I do not remember which, for by this time another in my employ had followed to learn the difficulty-proposed to see if we could not capture him alive. It was agreed to at once, by all parties; and I remained to keep him at bay, by plaguing him with a stick, as I knew the habits of the reptile, and just how far he could spring. I had a stick in my hand, which I had hastily picked up, and I thrust it at him, but he would not strike it. He knew better, and continued to fix his eye on my hand, which was not more than six or eight inches beyond the length of his stroke, and he thought I might

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