MANDARIN, May 14, 1872.
Our neighbor over the way is not, to be sure, quite so near or so
observable as if one lived on Fifth Avenue or Broadway.
Between us and his cottage lie five good miles of molten silver in the
shape of the St. John's River, outspread this morning in all its
quivering sheen, glancing, dimpling, and sparkling, dotted with
sail-boats, and occasionally ploughed by steamboats gliding like white
swans back and forth across the distance.
Far over on the other side, where the wooded shores melt into pearly
blue outlines, gleams out in the morning sun a white, glimmering spot
about as big as a ninepence, which shows us where his cottage stands.
Thither we are going to make a morning visit. Our water-coach is now
approaching the little wharf front of our house: and we sally forth
equipped with our sun-umbrellas; for the middle of May here is like the
middle of August at the North. The water-coach, or rather omnibus, is a
little thimble of a steamer, built for pleasuring on the St. John's,
called "The Mary Draper." She is a tiny shell of a thing, but with a
nice, pretty cabin, and capable of carrying comfortably thirty or forty
passengers. During the height of the travelling-season "The Mary Draper"
is let out to parties of tourists, who choose thus at their leisure to
explore the river, sailing, landing, rambling, exploring, hunting,
fishing, and perhaps inevitably flirting among the flowery nooks and
palmetto-hammocks of the shore. We have seen her many a time coming
gayly back from an excursion, with the voice of singing, and laugh of
youths and maidens, resounding from her deck, flower-wreathed and
flower-laden like some fabled bark from the fairy isles. But now, in the
middle of May, the tourists are few; and so "The Mary Draper" has been
turned into a sort of errand-boat, plying up and down the river to serve
the needs and convenience of the permanent inhabitants. A flag shown
upon our wharf brings her in at our need; and we step gayly on board, to
be carried across to our neighbors.
We take our seats at the shaded end of the boat, and watch the
retreating shore, with its gigantic live-oaks rising like a dome above
the orange-orchards, its clouds of pink oleander-trees that seem every
week to blossom fuller than the last; and for a little moment we can
catch the snow-white glimmer of the great Cape jessamine-shrub that
bends beneath the weight of flowers at the end of our veranda. Our
little cottage looks like a rabbit's nest beside the monster oaks that
shade it; but it is cosey to see them all out on the low veranda,--the
Professor with his newspapers, the ladies with their worsteds and
baskets, in fact the whole of our large family,--all reading, writing,
working, in the shady covert of the orange-trees.
From time to time a handkerchief is waved on their part, and the signal
returned on ours; and they follow our receding motions with a spyglass.
Our life is so still and lonely here, that even so small an event as our
crossing the river for a visit is all-absorbing.
But, after a little, our craft melts off into the distance, "The Mary
Draper" looks to our friends no larger than a hazel-nut, and the trees
of the other side loom up strong and tall in our eyes, and grow clearer
and clearer; while our home, with its great live-oaks and its
orange-groves, has all melted into a soft woolly haze of distance. Our
next neighbor's great whitewashed barn is the only sign of habitation
remaining; and that flashes out a mere shining speck in the distance.
Now the boat comes up to Mr. ----'s wharf; and he is there to meet and
welcome us.
One essential to every country-house on the St. John's is this accessory
of a wharf and boathouse. The river is, for a greater or less distance
from the shore, too shallow to admit the approach of steamboats; and
wharves of fifty or a hundred feet in length are needed to enable
passengers to land.
The bottom of the river is of hard, sparkling white sand, into which
spiles are easily driven; and the building and keeping-up of such a
wharf is a trifling trouble and expense in a land where lumber is so
plentiful.
Our friend Mr. ---- is, like many other old Floridian residents,
originally from the North. In early youth he came to Florida a condemned
and doomed consumptive, recovered his health, and has lived a long and
happy life here, and acquired a handsome property.
He owns extensive tracts of rich and beautiful land on the west bank of
the St. John's, between it and Jacksonville, destined, as that city
grows and extends, to become of increasing value. His wife, like himself
originally of Northern origin, has become perfectly acclimated and
naturalized by years' residence at the South; and is to all intents and
purposes, a Southern woman. They live all the year upon their place;
those who formerly were their slaves settled peaceably around them as
free laborers, still looking up to them for advice, depending on them
for aid, and rendering to them the willing, well-paid services of
freemen.
Their house is a simple white cottage, situated so as to command a noble
view of the river. A long avenue of young live-oak-trees leads up from
the river to the house. The ground is covered with a smooth, even turf
of Bermuda grass,--the only kind that will endure the burning glare of
the tropical summer. The walls of the house are covered with roses, now
in full bloom. La Marque, cloth-of-gold, and many another kind, throw
out their splendid clusters, and fill the air with fragrance. We find
Mrs. ---- and her family on the veranda,--the usual reception-room in a
Southern house. The house is the seat of hospitality; every room in it
sure to be full, if not with the members of the family proper, then with
guests from Jacksonville, who find, in this high, breezy situation, a
charming retreat from the heat of the city.
One feature is characteristic of Southern houses, so far as we have
seen. The ladies are enthusiastic plant-lovers; and the veranda is lined
round with an array of boxes in which gardening experiments are carried
on. Rare plants, slips, choice seedlings, are here nurtured and cared
for. In fact, the burning power of the tropical sun, and the scalding,
fine white sand, is such, that to put a tender plant or slip into it
seems, in the words of Scripture, like casting it into the oven; and so
there is everywhere more or less of this box-gardening.
The cottage was all in summer array; the carpets taken up and packed
away, leaving the smooth, yellow pine floors clean and cool as the
French parquets.
The plan of the cottage is the very common one of Southern houses. A
wide, clear hall, furnished as a sitting-room, opening on a veranda on
either end, goes through the house; and all the other rooms open upon
it. We sat chatting, first on the veranda; and, as the sun grew hotter,
retreated inward to the hall, and discussed flowers, farm, and dairy.
On the east bank of the St. John's, where our own residence is,
immediately around Mandarin, the pasturage is poor, and the cattle
diminutive and half starved. Knowing that our neighbor was an old
resident, and enthusiastic stock-raiser and breeder, we came to him for
knowledge on these subjects. Stock-breeding has received a great share
of attention from the larger planters of Florida. The small breed of
wild native Florida cattle has been crossed and improved by foreign
stock imported at great expense. The Brahmin cattle of India, as coming
from a tropical region, were thought specially adapted to the Floridian
climate, and have thriven well here. By crossing these with the Durham
and Ayrshire and the native cattle, fine varieties of animals have been
obtained. Mr. ---- showed me a list of fifty of his finest cows, each
one of which has its distinguishing name, and with whose pedigree and
peculiarities he seemed well acquainted.
In rearing, the Floridian system has always been to make every thing
subservient to the increase of the herd. The calf is allowed to run with
the cow; and the supply of milk for the human being is only what is over
and above the wants of the calf. The usual mode of milking is to leave
the calf sucking on one side, while the milker sits on the other, and
gets his portion. It is an opinion fixed as fate in the mind of every
negro cow-tender, that to kill a calf would be the death of the mother;
and that, if you separate the calf from the mother, her milk will dry
up. Fresh veal is a delicacy unheard of; and once, when we suggested a
veal-pie to a strapping Ethiopian dairy-woman, she appeared as much
shocked as if we had proposed to fricassee a baby. Mr. ----, however,
expressed his conviction that the Northern method of taking off the
calf, and securing the cow's milk, could be practised with success, and
had been in one or two cases. The yield of milk of some of the best
blood cows was quite equal to that of Northern milkers, and might be
kept up by good feeding. As a rule, however, stock-raisers depend for
their supply of milk more on the number of their herd than the quantity
given by each. The expenses of raising are not heavy where there is a
wide expanse of good pasture-land for them to range in, and no necessity
for shelters of any kind through the year.
Mr. ---- spoke of the river-grass as being a real and valuable species
of pasturage. On the west side of the river, the flats and shallows
along by the shore are covered with a broad-leaved water-grass, very
tender and nutritious, of which cattle are very fond. It is a curious
sight to see whole herds of cows browsing in the water, as one may do
every day along the course of this river.
The subject of dairy-keeping came up; and, at our request, Mrs. ---- led
the way to hers. It is built out under a dense shade of trees in an airy
situation, with double walls like an ice-house. The sight of the snowy
shelves set round with pans, on which a rich golden cream was forming,
was a sufficient testimony that there could be beautiful, well-kept
dairies in Florida, notwithstanding its tropical heats.
The butter is made every morning at an early hour; and we had an
opportunity of tasting it at the dinner-table. Like the best butter of
France and England, it is sweet and pure, like solidified cream, and as
different as can be from the hard, salty mass which most generally
passes for butter among us. The buttermilk of a daily churning is also
sweet and rich, a delicious nourishing drink, and an excellent adjuvant
in the making of various cakes and other household delicacies.
Our friend's experience satisfied us that there was no earthly reason in
the climate or surroundings of Florida why milk and butter should be the
scarce and expensive luxuries they are now. What one private gentleman
can do simply for his own comfort and that of his family, we should
think might be repeated on a larger scale by somebody in the
neighborhood of Jacksonville as a money speculation. Along the western
bank of this river are hundreds of tracts of good grazing land, where
cattle might be pastured at small expense; where the products of a dairy
on a large scale would meet a ready and certain sale. At present the
hotels and boarding-houses are supplied with condensed milk, and butter,
imported from the North: and yet land is cheap here; labor is
reasonable; the climate genial, requiring no outlay for shelter, and
comparatively little necessity of storing food for winter. Fine breeds
of animals of improved stock exist already, and can be indefinitely
increased; and we wonder that nobody is to be found to improve the
opportunity to run a stock and dairy farm which shall supply the hotels
and boarding-houses of Jacksonville.
After visiting the dairy, we sauntered about, looking at the
poultry-yards, where different breeds of hens, turkeys, pea-fowl, had
each their allotted station. Four or five big dogs, hounds and pointers,
trotted round with us, or rollicked with a party of grandchildren,
assisted by the never-failing addition of a band of giggling little
negroes. As in the old times, the servants of the family have their
little houses back of the premises; and the laundry-work, &c., is
carried on outside. The propensity at the South is to multiply little
buildings. At the North, where there is a winter to be calculated on,
the tactics of living are different. The effort is to gather all the
needs and wants of life under one roof, to be warmed and kept in order
at small expense. In the South, where building-material is cheap, and
building is a slight matter, there is a separate little building for
every thing; and the back part of an estate looks like an eruption of
little houses. There is a milk-house, a corn-house, a tool-house, a
bake-house, besides a house for each of the leading servants, making
quite a village.
Our dinner was a bountiful display of the luxuries of a Southern
farm,--finely-flavored fowl choicely cooked, fish from the river,
soft-shell turtle-soup, with such a tempting variety of early vegetables
as seemed to make it impossible to do justice to all. Mrs. ---- offered
us a fine sparkling wine made of the juice of the wild-orange. In color
it resembled the finest sherry, and was much like it in flavor.
We could not help thinking, as we refused dainty after dainty, from mere
inability to take more, of the thoughtless way in which it is often said
that there can be nothing fit to eat got in Florida.
Mr. ----'s family is supplied with food almost entirely from the
products of his own farm. He has the nicest of fed beef, nice tender
pork, poultry of all sorts, besides the resources of an ample, well-kept
dairy. He raises and makes his own sirup. He has sweet-potatoes, corn,
and all Northern vegetables, in perfection; peaches, grapes of finest
quality, besides the strictly tropical fruits; and all that he has, any
other farmer might also have with the same care.
After dinner we walked out to look at the grapes, which hung in profuse
clusters, just beginning to ripen on the vines. On our way we stopped
to admire a great bitter-sweet orange-tree, which seemed to make
"Hesperian fables true." It was about thirty feet in height, and with
branches that drooped to the ground, weighed down at the same time with
great golden balls of fruit, and wreaths of pearly buds and blossoms.
Every stage of fruit, from the tiny green ball of a month's growth to
the perfected orange, were here; all the processes of life going on
together in joyous unity. The tree exemplified what an orange-tree could
become when fully fed, when its almost boundless capacity for digesting
nutriment meets a full supply; and it certainly stood one of the most
royal of trees. Its leaves were large, broad, and of that glossy,
varnished green peculiar to the orange; and its young shoots looked like
burnished gold. The bitter-sweet orange is much prized by some. The pulp
is sweet, with a certain spicy flavor; but the rind, and all the inner
membranes that contain the fruit, are bitter as quinine itself. It is
held to be healthy to eat of both, as the acid and the bitter are held
to be alike correctives of the bilious tendencies of the climate.
But the afternoon sun was casting the shadows the other way, and the
little buzzing "Mary Draper" was seen puffing in the distance on her way
back from Jacksonville; and we walked leisurely down the live-oak
avenues to the wharf, our hands full of roses and Oriental jessamine,
and many pleasant memories of our neighbors over the way.
And now in relation to the general subject of farming in Florida. Our
own region east of the St. John's River is properly a little sandy belt
of land, about eighteen miles wide, washed by the Atlantic Ocean on one
side, and the St. John's River on the other. It is not by any means so
well adapted to stock-farming or general farming as the western side of
the river. Its principal value is in fruit-farming; and it will appear,
by a voyage up the river, that all the finest old orange-groves and all
the new orange-plantations are on the eastern side of the river.
The presence, on either side, of two great bodies of water, produces a
more moist and equable climate, and less liability to frosts. In the
great freeze of 1835, the orange-groves of the west bank were killed
beyond recovery; while the fine groves of Mandarin sprang up again from
the root, and have been vigorous bearers for years since.
But opposite Mandarin, along the western shore, lie miles and miles of
splendid land--which in the olden time produced cotton of the finest
quality, sugar, rice, sweet-potatoes--now growing back into forest with
a tropical rapidity. The land lies high, and affords fine sites for
dwellings; and the region is comparatively healthy. Then Hibernia,
Magnolia, and Green Cove, on the one side, and Jacksonville on the
other, show perfect assemblages of boarding-houses and hotels, where
ready market might be found for what good farmers might raise. A colony
of farmers coming out and settling here together, bringing with them
church and schoolhouse, with a minister skilled like St. Bernard both in
husbandry and divinity, might soon create a thrifty farming-village. We
will close this chapter with an extract from a letter of a Northern
emigrant recently settled at Newport, on the north part of Appalachicola
Bay.