HE little wharf at Mandarin is a tiny abutment into the great blue sea of the St. John's waters, five miles in width. The opposite shores gleam out blue in the vanishing distance; and the small wharf is built so far out, that one feels there as in a boat at sea. Here, trundled down on the truck along a descending tram-way, come the goods which at this point await shipment on some of the many steamboats which ply back and forth upon the river; and here are landed by almost every steamer goods and chattels for the many families which are hidden in the shadows of the forests that clothe the river's shore. In sight are scarce a dozen houses, all told; but far back, for a radius of ten or fifteen miles, are scattered farmhouses whence come tributes of produce to this point. Hundreds of barrels of oranges, boxes of tomatoes and early vegetables, grapes, peaches, and pomegranates, here pause on their way to the Jacksonville market.
One morning, as the Professor and I were enjoying our morning stroll on the little wharf, an unusual sight met our eye,—a bale of cotton, long and large, pressed hard and solid as iron, and done up and sewed in a wholly workmanlike manner, that excited our surprise. It was the first time since we had been in Mandarin—a space of some four or five years—that we had ever seen a bale of cotton on that wharf. Yet the whole soil of East Florida is especially adapted not only to the raising of cotton, but of the peculiar, long staple cotton which commands the very highest market-price. But for two or three years past the annual ravages of the cotton-worm had been so discouraging, that the culture of cotton had been abandoned in despair.
Whence, then, had come that most artistic bale of cotton, so well pressed, so trim and tidy, and got up altogether in so superior a style?
Standing by it on the wharf was an aged negro, misshapen, and almost deformed. He was thin and bony, and his head and beard were grizzled with age. He was black as night itself; and but for a glittering, intellectual eye, he might have been taken for a big baboon,—the missing link of Darwin. To him spoke the Professor, giving a punch with his cane upon the well-packed, solid bale:—
"Why, this is splendid cotton! Where did it come from? Who raised it?"
"We raise it, sah,—me 'n' dis yer boy," pointing to a middle-aged black man beside him: "we raise it."
"Where?"
"Oh! out he'yr a piece."
A lounging white man, never wanting on a wharf, here interposed:—
"Oh! this is old Cudjo. He lives up Julington. He's an honest old fellow."