(From “Forty Etchings, from Sketches Made with the Camera Lucida in North America in 1827 and 1828,” by Captain Basil Hall, R. N.)

Arrived at the end of our river journey, father chartered a whole stage to take his family a two days’ trip into the heart of the blue grass region. Nine passengers filled the interior of the coach, and four or five, if need be, could ride on top. The rumble (we always called it boot) was filled with baggage. The vehicle had no springs, but was swung on braces, which gave it a kind of swaying motion that always made me sick. However, we managed to start off in fine style, but every time there was a stop to change horses all of us alighted, stiff and tired and hot, to “stretch our legs,” like Squeers in Dickens’ “Nicholas Nickleby.” At noon we rejoiced to hear our coachman’s horn, a grand, loud blast, followed by toot, toot!—one toot for each passenger, so the tavern man would know how many plates to lay, and his wife how many biscuits and chicken legs to have ready. We always made out to spend the one night of the journey at Weissiger’s tavern in Frankfort, the best tavern in all the land. We had a leisurely breakfast the following morning and were refreshed in body and soul for the last lap of our journey.

Late afternoon the stage winds up a hill, and in a woods pasture and surrounded by blue grass meadows the gable end of a red brick house can be seen. My dear, tired mother puts her head out of the window, “Driver, blow your horn.” A great blast sounds over the waving grass and blossoming fields, and we know that they know we are coming. Tired as the horses are after the long, hard pull; tired as the coachman must be, he cracks his whip, and we gallop up the shady lane to the dear old door as briskly as though we were fresh from the stable. Long before we are fully there, and the steps of the nine-passenger coach can be lowered; long before the boys can jump off the top, a host of dear faces, both white and black, is assembled to greet us. As a little child I always wondered why it was, when the occasion was so joyful, and all of us tumbled from that stage so beaming and happy, that as my aunt folded my mother in her arms, they both wept such copious tears. Now I know.

XX
HOTEL AT PASS CHRISTIAN IN 1849

If there is a more restful spot on earth than a comfortable rocking-chair on a deep veranda, with a nearby view of the dancing waters of the gulf through a grove of tall pines, commend me to it. A whole month on the west coast of Florida, all sand underfoot, pines and oaks overhead, is ideal for fagged-out, tired-out, frayed-out humanity from busy cities. This is not an advertisement, so I do not propose to tell where six people from six different and widely separated parts of the country last year dropped down from the skies, as it were, upon just such a delightful straight mile of gulf coast.

One halts at a “turpentine depot” and takes a queer little tram to the Gulf, seven miles away. Tram is hauled over wooden rails by two tired nags whose motions suggest the lazy air of the pines. It is loaded with the baggage—crates of hunting dogs—(fine hunting abounds), the mail bag, some miscellaneous freight and finally the passengers.

The country hotel is pine; ceilings, floors, walls are pine, the home-made and built-in furniture is pine; a big fire, roaring in the open fireplace if the day is chilly, is also made of pine—the rich, red Florida pine, ever so much richer in color and in turpentine than the boasted Georgia article. With the fish swimming in front of this hotel and the birds flying behind, and rabbits running in both directions, it goes without saying the table is above the average.

Here on the broad verandas, as we rock and dream the lazy days away, visions visit me of the old hotel at Pass Christian in the forties. The oaks and three China trees in front of the veranda, and the view of the nearby waters, the whistle of mocking-birds among the china berries (thank heaven! sparrows have not found this Elysium) lend additional force to the semblance. One old lady, who hunts not, neither does she fish, rocks on the sunny veranda and dreams, as is the wont of those who have lived beyond their day and generation. She brings forth from a long-forgotten corner of memory’s closet a picture covered with the dust of years, and lovingly brushes away the dimness, when behold! old Pass Christian, dear old Pass Christian, before the day of railroads and summer cottages, before the day of 6 o’clock dinners and trailing skirts, of cotillion favors and abbreviated bathing suits.