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.
