The Tendency Of Inlets On This Coast Is To Shift To The Southward, As Do The Inlets On The Coast Of New Jersey.

Oystermen, fishermen, and farmers live along the upland, and in some cases on the island beaches.

From these bays, timber, firewood, grain, and oysters are shipped to northern ports. The people are everywhere kind and hospitable to strangers. A mild climate, cheap and easily worked soils, wild-fowl shooting, fine oysters and fishing privileges, offer inducements to Northerners and Europeans to settle in this country; the mild form of ague which exists in most of its localities being the only objection. While debating this point with a native, he attacked my argument by saying:

"Law sakes! don't folks die of something, any way? If you don't have fever 'n' ague round Massachusetts, you've got an awful lot of things we hain't got here - a tarnashun sight wuss ones, too; sich as cumsempsun, brown-critters, mental spinageetis, lung-disease, and all sorts of brownkill disorders. Besides, you have such awful cold winters that a farmer has to stay holed four months out of the year, while we folks in the south can work most of the time out of doors. I'll be dog-goned if I hadn't ruther live here in poverty than die up north a-rolling in riches. Now, stranger, as to what you said about sickness, why we aren't no circumstance to you fellows up north. Why, your hull country is chuckfull of pizenous remedies. When I was a-coasting along Yankeedom and went ashore, I found all the rocks along the road were jist kivered with quack-medicine notices, and all the farmers hired out the outsides of their barns to advertise doctor's stuff on."

In no portion of America do the people seem to feel the burden of earning a livelihood more lightly. They get a great deal of social enjoyment out of life at very little cost, and place much less value on the "mighty dollar" than do their brother farmers of the northern section of the states. The interesting inquiry of "Who was his father?" commences at Philadelphia, and its importance intensifies as you travel southward. Old family associations have great weight among all classes.

It was six miles from the mouth of Love Creek across the little sound to Burton's marshy island at the entrance of Indian River Sound. Indian River supplies its bay with much of its fresh water, and the small inlet in the beach of the same name with the salt water of the ocean. Large flocks of geese and ducks were seen upon the quiet waters of the sound. Pursuing my southward course across Indian River Sound three miles, I entered a small creek with a wide mouth, which flows north from the cedar swamp, known as White's Creek, which I ascended until the stream became so narrow that it seemed almost lost in the wilderness, when suddenly an opening in the forest showed me a clearing with the little buildings of a farm scattered around.

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