The little wharf at Mandarin is a tiny abutment into the great blue sea
of the St. John's waters, five miles in width. The opposite shores gleam
out blue in the vanishing distance; and the small wharf is built so far
out, that one feels there as in a boat at sea. Here, trundled down on
the truck along a descending tram-way, come the goods which at this
point await shipment on some of the many steamboats which ply back and
forth upon the river; and here are landed by almost every steamer goods
and chattels for the many families which are hidden in the shadows of
the forests that clothe the river's shore. In sight are scarce a dozen
houses, all told; but far back, for a radius of ten or fifteen miles,
are scattered farmhouses whence come tributes of produce to this point.
Hundreds of barrels of oranges, boxes of tomatoes and early vegetables,
grapes, peaches, and pomegranates, here pause on their way to the
Jacksonville market.
One morning, as the Professor and I were enjoying our morning stroll on
the little wharf, an unusual sight met our eye,--a bale of cotton, long
and large, pressed hard and solid as iron, and done up and sewed in a
wholly workmanlike manner, that excited our surprise. It was the first
time since we had been in Mandarin--a space of some four or five
years--that we had ever seen a bale of cotton on that wharf. Yet the
whole soil of East Florida is especially adapted not only to the raising
of cotton, but of the peculiar, long staple cotton which commands the
very highest market-price. But for two or three years past the annual
ravages of the cotton-worm had been so discouraging, that the culture of
cotton had been abandoned in despair.
Whence, then, had come that most artistic bale of cotton, so well
pressed, so trim and tidy, and got up altogether in so superior a style?
Standing by it on the wharf was an aged negro, misshapen, and almost
deformed. He was thin and bony, and his head and beard were grizzled
with age. He was black as night itself; and but for a glittering,
intellectual eye, he might have been taken for a big baboon,--the
missing link of Darwin. To him spoke the Professor, giving a punch with
his cane upon the well-packed, solid bale:--
"Why, this is splendid cotton! Where did it come from? Who raised it?"
"_We_ raise it, sah,--me 'n' dis yer boy," pointing to a middle-aged
black man beside him: "we raise it."
"Where?"
"Oh! out he'yr a piece."