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.
The slaves whom the colonel brought
from Virginia were now his tenants, and he
leased them portions of his arable acres. He
considered this locality as healthy as any in the
Suwanee country. The old planter's home, with
its hospitable doors ever open to the stranger,
was embowered in live-oaks and other trees,
from the branches of which the graceful festoons
of Spanish moss waved in the soft air, telling of
a warm, moist atmosphere.
A large screw cotton-press and corn-cribs,
with smoke-house and other plantation buildings,
were conveniently grouped under the spreading
branches of the protecting oaks. The estate
produced cotton, corn, sweet potatoes, cattle,
hogs, and poultry. Deer sometimes approached
the enclosed fields, while the early morning call
of the wild turkey came from the thickets of the
hammock. In this retired part of Florida,
cheered by the society of a devoted wife and
four lovely daughters, lived the kind-hearted
gentleman who not only pressed on us the
comforts of his well-ordered house, but also
insisted upon accompanying the paper canoe from
his forest home to the sea.
When gathered around the firesides of the
backwoods people, the conversation generally
runs into hunting stories, Indian reminiscences,
and wild tales of what the pioneers suffered
while establishing themselves in their forest
homes.
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