If nothing is given, the last line reads thus:
No es omo de compliment.
Letter XV.
A Voyage from St. Augustine to Savannah.
Savannah, April 28, 1843.
On the morning of the 24th, we took leave of our good friends in St. Augustine, and embarked in the steamer for Savannah. Never were softer or more genial airs breathed out of the heavens than those which played around us as we ploughed the waters of the Matanzas Sound, passing under the dark walls of the old fort, and leaving it behind us, stood for the passage to the main ocean.
It is a common saying in St. Augustine, that "Florida is the best poor man's country in the world," and, truly, I believe that those who live on the shores of this sound find it so. Its green waters teem with life, and produce abundance of the finest fish,
"——— of shell or fin,
And exquisitest name."
Clams are dug up on the pure sands along the beach, where the fishermen drag their boats ashore, and wherever the salt water dashes, there is an oyster, if he can find aught upon which to anchor his habitation. Along the edge of the marshes, next to the water, you see a row—a wall I should rather say—of oysters, apparently sprouting one out of another, as high as the tide flows. They are called here, though I do not know why, ratoon oysters. The abundance of fish solves the problem which has puzzled many, how the Minorcan population of St. Augustine live, now that their orange-trees, upon which they formerly depended, are unproductive.
In the steamboat were two or three persons who had visited Florida with a view of purchasing land. Now that the Indian war is ended, colonization has revived, and people are thronging into the country to take advantage of the law which assigns a hundred and sixty acres to every actual settler. In another year, the influx of population will probably be still greater, though the confusion and uncertainty which exists in regard to the title of the lands, will somewhat obstruct the settlement of the country. Before the Spanish government ceded it to the United States, they made numerous grants to individuals, intended to cover all the best land of the territory. Many of the lands granted have never been surveyed, and their situation and limits are very uncertain. The settler, therefore, if he is not very careful, may find his farm overlaid by an old Spanish claim.