make the journey which is now a delightful trip of one day, for he left New York on the Sabbath morning and the next Sabbath evening he arrived at Jacksonville, which was a small village then with only one poor wharf and not a vehicle of any kind to carry passengers or baggage. He succeeded in getting some negro boys to carry his trunk to a poor hotel where he remained only one day. Through some persuasion he found a man to take him into his private house at Strawberry Mills, seven miles in the country from Jacksonville, across the St. John’s River. Here Mrs. Plant’s health greatly improved, her cough disappeared and she was so much better that by the first of May, Mr. Plant was able to leave her and return to New York. Early in July, Mrs. Plant came back to the city apparently in good health. The following almost romantic story is told in the New York Times of their first experience in Florida.
“In the winter of 1853, a Northern man with an invalid wife brought her down to Jacksonville to benefit her health. The present metropolis of Florida was then a settlement of five or six houses, one of which was called a hotel, but the hotel was so badly kept that the gentleman was cautioned against going to it, and he found accommodations in a private house. He had letters of introduction to a Florida settler, whose home was six or eight miles out of Jacksonville, and as soon as he could communicate with him through a stray traveller, the settler sent his boat after the Northerner and took him to his house. The boat was an immense ‘dug-out,’ made from a single mammoth log, manned by a crew of uniformed blacks, who handled their oars in man-of-war style. At this settler’s house a hospitable and comfortable stopping-place was found.
“In the course of the winter the lady’s health improved to such an extent that her husband decided upon taking her to St. Augustine for a pleasure trip. There was in the household a beautiful Indian girl, the daughter of one of the Seminole chiefs, who afterward became the wife of the settler I have mentioned, and she volunteered to accompany the lady on what was then the long and difficult journey. The only road between Jacksonville and St. Augustine was the old Spanish highway known as ‘the king’s highroad,’ and this was so grown up with trees and bushes that it was barely passable. But even this road lay five or six miles from the settler’s house, and to reach it it was necessary to drive through the trackless woods. The gentleman and his wife and the Indian girl set out in a buggy, their host going before them on horseback to select the road and blaze the trees between his place and the king’s highway, to enable the strangers to find their way back.
“The journey was made in safety; but the return trip took a little longer than was intended, and the party found themselves at the point where they must leave the old highway and turn into the forest just as the deep shades of a Florida night were about to fall. They found the blazed trees, but were unable to follow them. The gentleman, however, managed for some time to pick his way by finding the indistinct wheel tracks in the sand and the broken twigs; but as the darkness increased this became impracticable, and there was every prospect that the invalid lady and her husband and the Indian girl would be compelled to spend the night under the pine trees. But their host was better acquainted with blazed trees, and, as they did not arrive when expected, he set out on horseback to hunt them up, and his shouts soon gave them welcome assurance of succor. The lady’s health was so much improved before the winter ended that she returned home comparatively well, and during the remainder of her life every winter was passed in Florida. Her husband has not since that time missed his annual winter trip to Florida, and he is now spending his thirty-ninth winter in the State.
“The gentleman who found Jacksonville a settlement of a few shanties, and who came so near passing a romantic but uncomfortable night in the woods with his wife and the Seminole girl, told me the story of his adventure a few days ago, while I sat with him in his gorgeous private car, so far down in the State of Florida that, in 1853, few white men had reached it. The Florida climate never did a better winter’s work than when it restored the health of this gentleman’s wife, and thus interested him in the new country, for the gentleman was Mr. H. B. Plant, who no longer does his Florida travelling in a dug-out, but sends his own cars over his own tracks to the farthermost corners of the State.”
