While we are still steaming along this beautiful river, past widening valleys, through thickets of dense shrubberies interlaced with gigantic vines, night closes in and shuts the wild picturesque scenery from our view. All wise people retire to the saloon, where somebody makes a feeble attempt to get up a concert; but as there are no singers and no audience to speak of the idea is abandoned and everybody goes to bed.
To make an entire exploration of the St. John’s river involves about eight hundred miles of travel, which, however, is never wearisome, as the scenery shifts and changes at every turn, and the boat is a most comfortable floating home; any one who is not well satisfied with the arrangement and accommodation must be very hard to please. As we are nearing our journey’s end we meet another party of sportsmen returning from an excursion up the Indian river. On board their boat they have about one hundred gigantic turtles, the weight of each one being legibly marked on its back; they were conveying them to Jacksonville, to be shipped thence to the northern markets.
We had intended to leave the boat at Enterprise and spend a few days there rambling about the country and familiarising ourselves with the scenery of the surrounding neighbourhood. However, we were doomed to disappointment, for on arriving there we find the place deserted, the hotel closed, and no prospect of entertainment until October, when it will reopen for the season.
Our captain suggests that there are some fruit-growers or small farmers in the neighbourhood who would make us welcome and put us up comfortably for a few days; but although we know that hospitality is boundless in these regions, we do not feel disposed to take advantage of it. Some of our fellow-passengers go ashore, intending to camp out and make their way across to the Indian river settlement. We spend a delightful three days and nights upon the river, and return to Jacksonville. It is late in the evening when we arrive; we sleep once more at our delightful hotel, and take the early morning train for New Orleans, where we hope to arrive in about two days.
CHAPTER XVI.
Retrospective.—A critical conductor.—Montgomery.—Train wreckers at work.—Weird scenes in the moonlight.—Silent watchers.—“Wild Cat” train to New Orleans.
In the light of the early morning we bid adieu to Florida, its fruits, its flowers, its sunshine and its people. We have found our own country-people largely represented in all parts of the state, and everywhere they are doing well, and look healthy, happy, bright and contented; and on all sides we see evidence of their thrift, industry, and general prosperity. We inquire to whom belongs some lovely extensive orange groves, or some picturesque luxurious dwelling, and we are told to “some English settlers,” who perhaps began with a shanty in the wilderness, and have transformed it into an earthly paradise of peace and plenty. Then a thriving farm, with its abundant cattle, its corn or cotton-fields, and peach or pine orchards stretching away till they are lost in the distance; the farmer is a man from the “old country”—in fact, wherever the Anglo-Saxon spirit stirs, prosperity follows: “When he sets his hand to the plough he doeth it with all his might.” There are very few Irish in Florida, in fact so few that when the familiar accent greets our ears it sounds strange to us in these latitudes, and we turn round to look at the speaker. Their scanty numbers is somewhat surprising, as nowhere could the tide of immigration set in with such promise of success; indeed here is a veritable “Tom Tiddler’s ground,” it needs but the shovel and pickaxe to turn over the soil, when all who will may “pick up the gold and silver.” The foreign element is altogether rather conspicuous from its absence, for there is but a poor sprinkling of German settlers, and the Latin races are scarcely represented at all; even the Spaniards who once were rulers in the land have left but here and there a solitary specimen of their races, and they are not often to be found in the great army of workers. A little fruit, a little corn—such as can be obtained by little labour—contents them; they have no ambition, either for the advancement of themselves, or of their children who follow in their footsteps, and live as their parents lived; if they can sit and smoke and dream under their own fig-tree their cup of happiness is full. English and Americans contribute the greater portion of the population; the stream of immigration has set in from every state in the Union, but New England appears to be the state most largely represented; nearly all the railroads, steamboats, factories, &c., are the outcome of New England and New York enterprise, brains, and capital.
Coloured labour is generally used, both in the house and in the fields, gardens, and groves, but it is uncertain and unsatisfactory in its results; and the immigration of a few thousand of the quiet, industrious, reliable Chinese would be cordially welcomed throughout the State of Florida. They may have their drawbacks and be undesirable as citizens, but as mechanical or field labourers or house servants they are unsurpassed, being quiet, civil, obedient and obliging; set against these good qualities their propensity for petty pilfering and lying; but these vices once acknowledged, you can prepare for or guard against them; their industry and faithful labour may always be relied on. Many other nations have their vices without their redeeming qualities. There is very little crime, comparatively, in Florida; assaults or robberies are of infrequent occurrence. This is perhaps to be wondered at, as the houses are so few and far between, and every facility exists for the operations of tramps or burglars, but tramps and burglars are almost unknown; if any of that genus ventures to interfere with the honest working population a rough-and-ready kind of popular justice speedily overtakes the evil-doer.
The difference between the people here in the extreme South and those in the extreme West is very remarkable. Here the stream of life flows on in peaceful untroubled calm, it moves with a decorous quiet, is never in a hurry; they till the soil, and sow, and reap, prune, and plant in a leisurely fashion. They have made their homes and settled down there and mean to stay. There is no vexatious hurrying to and fro, no sudden influx of strangers from all lands, pouring in and overspreading the country, bringing with them a whirl of evil passions, with murder in their train, each elbowing the other, trampling down all rule and order in their eager thirst for gold! Here there is no excitement, no mines to develop, no visions of sudden fortunes to be grasped in a lucky hour, no rush of eager anxious men in flannel shirts, top-boots, sombreros, armed with knives and revolvers, such as we often see even in the cities of the west; there is no gambling with fate, no endeavour to cheat fortune’s blind old eyes. Here the dignity of labour, as “when Adam delved and Eve span,” asserts itself supreme. Men know that to conscientious labour will come success, with prosperity and ease in the near distance. Well, we say farewell to this land of promise with regret, and once more we establish ourselves on our pleasant Pullman car, and are en route for New Orleans.
One of our casual acquaintances accompanies us to the station, loads us with heaps of good wishes and a basket of beautiful flowers; we exchange a pleasant farewell, and the train moves slowly off. We take our last look at the majestic river, whereon we have passed so many delightful hours; it is clothed with a silver sheen, and ripples and sparkles and flashes in the royal light of the sun. The little Palatka steamer, with a single white sail fluttering from its masthead, puffs fussily on its way, bearing a fresh freight of happy tourists on their way to the wonderful Ocklawaha—as it bore us only a few days ago; for a moment it seems to be racing with us, then we pass out of sight. We take a last look at the pretty embowered city of Jacksonville, and then proceed to decorate our section with flowers, have a table set up, get out our books and a little idle needlework, and settle ourselves comfortably in our travelling home.