This the major did, and being a Yankee of fluent speech, we soon learned all about him—how he had served in a Massachusetts regiment, and had been the first secretary of state under the new constitution of Florida. This has an imposing sound, but when we learn that almost all the better class of whites were mere unreconstructed rebels, leaving only a few poor whites, some carpet-baggers from the North and the negroes from whom to select the State officers, the position ceases to seem exalted. During breakfast he told us all about New Smyrna and its people, which was not much, since there are only five or six houses there. The conjecture of Captain Morris about the pilot was correct: he was of a good old rebel family, every man of whom of suitable age had been in the Confederate service.
Major Allen went to visit the Victoria, and on his return we both got under way and beat up the river about two miles, anchoring in three fathoms water under the bluff on which stands the collector's house. About noon a boat from each yacht started for the hotel. The river here expands into a bay of a mile in width, containing several islands, some of them wooded, and some low and grassy. The main channel of the Hillsboro' River comes in from the south, half a mile wide, with ten or twelve feet of water. On the west side the bay is a low island with a creek between it and the mainland. On this mainland is a shell bluff, twelve feet high, on which stands the hotel—a long two-story building, with a piazza in front and out-buildings behind. In the front yard are young orange, olive and fig trees, with two splendid oleanders fifteen feet high, one on each side the door. Another tropical plant, seen at the North in greenhouses, but here growing ten feet high in the open air, is the American aloe or century-plant. This house will accommodate twenty-five boarders, but it was not full at the time; so we obtained rooms. It is one of the most comfortable places in Florida, with a well-kept table, provided with fish, oysters, turtle and game. New Smyrna is about thirty miles from Enterprise, on the St. John's River: to this place there are three or four steamers weekly from Jacksonville.
A hunting-party was organized to go the next day to Turnbull's Swamp, which lies a few miles west of Loud's, and contains deer, turkeys and ducks, with bears and panthers for those who desire that kind of game. The party consisted of Captain Morris and Roberts of our yacht; Colonel Vincent and two of the Englishmen from the Victoria, with Weldon the pilot, and a tall Ohio hunter named Halliday, who lived in the woods near Loud's. He took three fox-hounds, and Morris brought his deer-hounds ashore. They took with them a mule and cart, with a tent and blankets, intending to stay in the swamp over night. Captain Herbert and I preferred to go a-fishing, and we hired a man to get bait and take us to the ground in his boat. Doctor White went off by himself to shoot birds for his collection.
About eight A.M. we anglers sailed out of the creek, and stood across the bay with a light southerly breeze. Our boatman was one of the Minorcan race, of whom there are many on this coast, descendants of the men of Turnbull's colony of 1767. He was a cousin of our pilot, by name Pecetti—a stout, well-built man forty years old, with keen black eyes and curling dark hair and beard, and a great fisherman with line and net. He lived near the inlet, and had the kind of boat commonly used in these shallow waters—flat-bottomed, broad in the beam, with centre-board and one mast set well forward. He had dug a peck or two of the large round clams, and two or three throws of his cast-net as we came through the creek procured a dozen mullet.
We ran into a channel between the eastern shore of the bay and an island, and came to in a deep channel near the shore, which was marshy and covered with a dense growth of mangrove bushes.
"Now," said Pecetti as he made fast the painter to a projecting limb, "if the sand-flies don't eat us up, we ought to get some fish here."
"What kind of fish do you find here?" asked Herbert.
"Mostly sheepshead, some groupers and snappers, trout, bass, and whiting. For sheepshead you want clam bait—for the others, mullet is best. Rig up your rods and I will bait for you."
I had a bamboo bass-rod, with a large reel: the captain had a light salmon-rod, with click reel. Pecetti selected for us some stout Virginia hooks tied on double gut, with four-ounce sinkers, the tide being quite strong here and half flood.
I found the bottom alongside the boat with about twelve feet of line, and left my hooks upon it as directed. Soon I felt a slight touch, but pulled up nothing but bare hooks. Twice was I thus robbed by the small fish which swarmed about us, and which get the bait before the larger ones can reach it; but the third time I felt a heavy downward tug, and found myself fast to a strong fish, which fought hard to keep at the bottom, and made short but furious rushes here and there, so that I had to give him line. In a few minutes he tired himself by his own efforts, and I wound him up toward the surface, but no sooner did he approach daylight than he surged downward again. Five minutes' play of this sort exhausted him, and I lifted on board a five-pound sheepshead, the same thick-set, arched-backed fish, with his six dusky bars on a silvery ground, which we buy in Fulton market at half a dollar the pound, and which the wise call Sargus ovis. In the New York waters it is a scarce fish, but runs larger than on the Southern coast, sometimes up to ten or twelve pounds. Here they do not average more than four pounds, a seven-pounder being rare. I agree in opinion with Norris, whose theory is that those found on the coasts of the Middle states are the surplus population of more Southern waters—perhaps the magnificoes of their tribe, who, like the rich planters in the good old times, like to amuse themselves at Cape May or Long Branch.