The St. John's is the great river of Florida, rising in the region of
lakes, swamps and savannahs in the lower peninsula, and flowing
northward four hundred miles to Jacksonville, then turning eastward to
the ocean. It comes through a low and level region, with mostly a
sluggish current; is bordered by dense foliage, and in its northern
portion is a series of lagoons varying in width from one to six miles.
The river is navigable fully two hundred miles above Jacksonville. The
earlier portion of the journey is monotonous, the shores being distant
and the landings made at long piers jutting out over the shallows
from the villages and plantations. At Mandarin is the orange grove
which was formerly the winter home of Harriet Beecher Stowe; Magnolia
amid the pines is a resort for consumptives; and nearby is Green Cove
Springs, having a large sulphur spring of medicinal virtue. In all
directions stretch the pine forests; and the river water, while clear
and sparkling in the sunlight, is colored a dark amber from the swamps
whence it comes. The original Indian name of this river was We-la-ka,
or a "chain of lakes," the literal meaning, in the figurative idea of
the savage, being "the water has its own way." It broadens into
various bays, and at one of these, about seventy-five miles south of
Jacksonville, is the chief town of the upper river, Palatka, having
about thirty-five hundred inhabitants and a much greater winter
population. It is largely a Yankee town, shipping oranges and early
vegetables to the North; and across the river, just above, is one of
the leading orange plantations of Florida--Colonel Hart's, a Vermonter
who came here dying of consumption, but lived to become, in his time,
the leading fruit-grower of the State. Above Palatka the river is
narrower, excepting where it may broaden into a lake; the foliage is
greener, the shores more swampy, the wild-fowl more frequent, and the
cypress tree more general. The young "cypress knees" can be seen
starting up along the swampy edge of the shore, looking like so many
champagne bottles set to cool in the water. The river also becomes
quite crooked, and here is an ancient Spanish and Indian settlement,
well named Welaka, opposite which flows in the weird Ocklawaha River,
the haunt of the alligator and renowned as the crookedest stream on
the continent.
[Illustration: _On the Ocklawaha_]