This was a late season, shad were running, and we had them continually on our table, but roses were not in full bloom in the open air, and as for strawberries, which are usually abundant by New Year’s, they had not come in at all yet. We had bought up all the curiosities that we could distribute among our Northern friends; we had played with the baby alligators in the jewelry stores; we had listened to the first installment of the wonderful Florida stories; we had dined at all the excellent Jacksonville hotels, and were ready to withdraw once more from civilization. So the Heartsease spread her sails again, and started up the river. I say “up,” because by the current our course was up stream; but it was down by the map. We were going south, the St. John’s being one of the few of the North American rivers which seem to run the wrong way, that is, from the south to the north. In our short stay in Jacksonville we had learned that alligator-tooth jewelry is occasionally made of celluloid; that one of the best drinks in the world of bar-keeping is a punch compounded from the native sour orange; that Florida stories are always reliable, even when they assert that mosquitoes are so abundant that hogs make meals of them, or inform us that the favorite game fish of Florida, the tarpon, jumps six feet out of water when he is hooked, or that sharks will seize a man if they have to leap as high as the deck of the yacht to do so. In leaving Jacksonville, we supposed we were leaving all this behind us, not knowing that Florida is full of quaint jewelry made, as the jewelry of no other part of the world, out of fish scales, saurian teeth, sea beans, shells, orange tree woods, and sharks’ molars; that everywhere there are wonderful stories which only differ from one another in size; that palmetto hats were to be bought in every village store, and that sour oranges hang from innumerable trees, valueless for traffic, and only begging to be made into nectar fit for gods.
By the time the Doctor had made these philosophical reflections, Heartsease was tearing along before a favoring breeze past Mandarin, past the Magnolia Hotel and Green Cove Spring; past Tocoi, the terminus of the St. Augustine Railroad, till she made anchorage by nightfall off Pilatka. On the way we had put up many ducks, had seen the cows up to their backs in water feeding off the cabbage at the bottom, and thrusting their heads clear under to get it, and we began to realize that in the end we might come to believe anything of the wonders of this wonderful land. On the last day of our stay in Jacksonville, we had given a little lunch on board, and to show what dinners can be got up there, and how easily, I will reproduce the bill of fare. Everything had been prepared on board, and although our cabin could only seat twelve, we placed before the guests cold turkey, beef and tongue, chicken salad, prepared by the Doctor in most artistic style, stewed oysters, roast potatoes, radishes, and for dessert banana salad—an invention of the better part of the party,—Dummit Grove oranges, sapidillas, and grape fruit, with pieces montées of palmetto leaves and sour oranges en branches. There was a little paté de foies gras also, but that need not be counted, because it came from the North.
We found that when we had reached Pilatka the stories, instead of diminishing, developed yet more astonishing proportions. The mosquitoes, that the hogs fed on at Jacksonville, put out the head light of the locomotive at Pilatka, extinguished a bonfire, and made nothing of the negroes “light wood torches;” the tarpon of Jacksonville could only jump six feet high when hooked, while the tarpon of Pilatka, without being hooked, bounded clear over the rail of the steamboat Seth Low, which was ten feet from the water, struck the captain in the stomach, and knocked him down. We had not been at Pilatka two days, before we were ready to swallow any mental hallucination, so rapidly does faith grow in the glorious, and balmy air of Florida.
If Jacksonville had been attractive, Pilatka was equally so. Opposite to if is the famous orange grove of Mr. Hart, which we had to visit, and where we ate our first oranges, plucked by ourselves from the trees, beside tasting mandarins and tangerines, lemons, limes, guava and bananas, and that best of all oranges, the grape fruit. There were great plantations of bananas, which grow by suckers from the roots, and increase like weeds. They have to be three years old before they bear, and the development of the flower and fruit, which was going on while we were there, was a pretty sight. The top of the stalk turns over and produces a huge purple flower of a single leaf, as large as the hand of a giant. From under this large leaf starts a circle of small sprouts like fingers. The big leaf falls off, but from the ends of the fingers burst other, much smaller purple flowers. Then below the row of fingers grows another large flower like the first, and it also uncovers another row of fingers, so on till the entire bunch of bananas, as we know it in the market, is formed. Even then the flower point does not cease growing, but exhibits flower after flower, which are merely ornamental and do not result in fruit. Sprouts start so freely from the roots, that the young bushes have to be cut away every year with scythes, or they would become crowded, and the fruit degenerate. Every day, that was spent studying the wonderful productions of Florida, every new tree or bush, which attracted our attention by its beauty, or its oddity, every new species of fruit, which charmed our palate with its originality of flavor, made us more in love with this interesting country, and wish that it and its accompaniments could only exist in a colder climate. There was but one feeling in the minds of the party on leaving Mr. Hart’s plantation, which was that each of us could own an orange grove, and have it close at home.
One evening as we were returning after a sailing excursion to visit the neighborhood, we heard cries which sounded like cries of distress. The negroes were so in the habit of laughing at, and jibing one another, that we at first took no notice of these. It was nearly night, so dark, that objects could not be distinguished at any considerable distance; but the cries continuing, we determined to see whether they meant merely fun or something more serious, and kept away in the direction from which they came. That moment’s delay cost at least one man his life, and brought sorrow to one household. After sailing a few minutes, we were able to distinguish an object in the water, which looked like a boat capsized. Such it turned out to be, and as we approached, we could make out a number of men clinging to its sides. It was a launch belonging to the crew of a steam ferry boat, and was used by the men after their day’s work was over to take them across the river, as they left the steamer on the other side. It was abundantly able to carry the number that started in it, and more, but some of them had been pouring out libations to Bacchus, or had been carried away by foolish animal spirits, we could not exactly determine which, and the result was, that the party of merry-makers was suddenly turned into one of mourners.
We luffed up alongside, and lay to, while our men lowered the boats, and picked up all the poor fellows who were left. Two were unaccounted for, one of whom had been seen to let go his hold and sink. Several of the others would have soon followed his example, except for our timely arrival, for the water happened to be cool that evening, and quickly benumbed their warm southern blood, although they were whites, and not blacks, as we at first supposed. After they were all on board, and it was apparent that there was no use in looking for their lost comrades, we hitched a line to their boat, and towed it behind us towards the shore. As the men crowded on our deck, they seemed so miserable, and did so tremble with the cold, that the hearts of the ladies were touched, and nothing would do but they must be brought into the cabin, and warmed at the stove, there being not room enough for so many in the forecastle. Their clothes dripped and drained over our pretty carpet, and left stains, which never were to come out, but we felt only too glad that we had been able to be of some use to any of our fellow “toilers of the sea.” We finally warmed their blood, and put fresh life into them with liberal rations of rum, which was fifty years old. Amid their sufferings what caused them the most pain, was, that they would have to tell the wife of the engineer, who was lost, of his death. This they dreaded as much as they would have dreaded another struggle in the water.
There is often danger from the heavy fogs, which roll up dense, and dark on the St. John’s in the night time, and we saw several accidents from that cause. We took the precaution of always anchoring, when not in port, on some flat, and making sure of a well filled anchor light. The steamers invariably follow the channel, for their own protection, and the pilots run at full speed, as in that way alone can they be sure of their position, a knowledge which comes to them by habit. There was, however, one annoyance, which no lights would prevent, no mosquito nets keep out, and no preparation mitigate, the plague of gnats; they come, when they make up their minds to come, in myriads, pour down the companion way, preferring the inside of the cabin to the outside, make themselves at home, push into the state-rooms, and do not care in the least how many millions of their number you immolate. I had been advised that insect powder, if burned in the cabin, would drive them out. On their first visitation I tried the remedy. It is to be feared that the heartless person who gave me that recipe was a practical joker. There is nothing in the nature of gnats to specially provoke merriment so far as I could ever see, or feel, but there are persons who extract pleasure from a funeral. I placed a small quantity of the powder on a piece of paper, which I lighted. The paper was soon consumed, but the powder remained intact, in fact it preserved that part of the paper, which was directly under it. Then I added some chips, and laying the whole on an old plate, tried it again; failure number two, the powder was still unconsumed, and the gnats, who had not neglected these opportunities, while I was busy, to pay their respects to me, were as happy and lively as ever. Determined not be foiled, I then built a fire in the stove, and leaving the stove holes open, poured the powder on the flame. In vain, it only put out the fire. After that I lost faith in the virtues of insect powder, and had to endure as well as I could, lamentations coming faintly through the doors of the state-rooms “Oh what are these strange things that are biting us so.” Patience seems to be the only cure for gnat bites, and we did not carry that article with us.
“Doctor,” said Mr. Green one morning, after we had spent a couple of weeks in the delightful laziness of sight seeing and curiosity buying, “how much longer do you think the skipper intends to keep us idling here?” He had devoted his attention lately to dragging the Doctor with him on his interviewing expeditions, and they had just returned from their tenth call upon the northern shad fishermen, who, having brought their nets from their homes to try and catch the earliest run of shad, were camping in the woods beyond the town.
“I am afraid,” replied our medical associate with base dishonesty, for he was fully as fond of the dolce far niente as myself, “that he intends to remain here for the rest of his natural life.”
“What, going to stay here for ever!” came from the pretty mouth, which belonged to a pretty head, that just then appeared above the companion way, “I do like to go fishing, and get away from people.”