It was
indeed a quiet, restful region, this great
wilderness of the Suwanee.
We passed Mrs. Goodman's farm and log
buildings on the left bank, just below Island
No. 8, before noon, and about this time Major
Purviance shot at a large wild turkey (Meleagris
gallopavo), knocking it off a bank into the
water. The gobbler got back to land, and led
us a fruitless chase into the thicket of saw-palmetto.
He knew his ground better than we, for,
though wounded, he made good his escape.
We stopped a few moments at Troy, which,
though dignified in name, consists only of a
store and some half dozen buildings.
A few miles below this place, on the left
bank of the river, is an uninhabited elevation
called Rolins' Bluff, from which a line running
north 220 east, twenty-three miles and a half in
length, will strike Live Oak. A charter to
connect Live Oak with this region of the Suwanee
by means of a railroad had just passed the
Florida legislature, but had been killed by the veto
of the governor. After sunset the boats were
secured in safe positions in front of a deserted
cabin, round which a luxuriant growth of
bitter-orange trees showed what nature could do for
this neglected grove. The night air was balmy,
and tremulous with insect life, while the
alligators in the swamps kept up their bellowings till
morning.
After breakfast we descended to the mouth of
the Santa Fe River, which was on the left bank
of the Suwanee. The piny-woods people called
it the Santaffy. The wilderness below the Santa
Fe is rich in associations of the Seminole Indian
war. Many relics have been found, and, among
others, on the site of an old Indian town,
entombed in a hollow tree, the skeletons of an
Indian adult and child, decked with beads, were
discovered. Fort Fanning is on the left bank,
and Old Town Hammock on the right bank of
the Suwanee.
During the Seminole war, the hammock and
the neighboring fastnesses became the
hiding-places of the persecuted Indians, and so wild
and undisturbed is this region, even at this time,
that the bear, lynx, and panther take refuge from
man in its jungles.
Colonel J. L. F. Cottrell left his native
Virginia in 1854, and commenced the cultivation of
the virgin soil of Old Town Hammock. Each
state has its peculiar mode of dividing its land,
and here in Florida this old plantation was in
township 10, section 24, range 13. The estate
included about two thousand acres of land, of
which nearly eleven hundred were under
cultivation.
