As This Was No Unusual Occurrence, From The Constant Apprehension We Were In Of An Attack By The Indians On The Stockade, And As It Had Several Times Occurred Before During My Stay, I Resolved To Lie And Listen Awhile Before I Rose.

The earnest conversation and the noise of horses soon after satisfied me it was only a friendly arrival.

I, however, felt anxious to obtain intelligence as to the success of a treaty then pending between the United States Government and the Indians; the favourable termination of which would not only render my return to Tallahassee more safe, but put a stop, perhaps for ever, to those constant scenes of blood and depredation that were by this time become quite sickening to me. This feeling was much enhanced at the time by the express between Fort Andrews and Deadman's Bay, being shot by a party of the common enemy. The body of this poor fellow was never found, but traces of blood were to be seen near the spot where he had been attacked; and the saddle and bridle of his horse were found cut into a thousand pieces; the probability being that he was wounded and taken prisoner, doubtless to be tortured to death, a practice common with all Indian tribes in time of war.

On my proceeding to a house used as officers' quarters, outside the stockade, I found the stir had been caused by the arrival of two companies of light-horse soldiers from St. Marks, escorting several couples of bloodhounds, to aid the army, operating in that part of Florida, to exterminate the Indians. These dogs were very ferocious, and, on approaching the leashmen, who had them in charge, they opened in full yell, and attempted to break loose. The dogs had just arrived from Cuba with their keepers, their importation having been caused by the supposition, that, like the Maroons in Jamaica, who, for nearly thirty years, defied the colonists there, the Indians would be terrified into submission. This, however, turned out to be erroneous; for, on their first trial, the Indians killed several, and the scheme was very properly abandoned a short time after.

Such barbarous means were very unjustifiable, although many (to use the language of the Earl of Chatham, when deprecating a similar course in the English House of Lords) considered that every means that God and nature had placed in their hands, were allowable in the endeavour to bring to a close a war that had cost the Federal Government an immense amount of blood and treasure. I am of opinion, however, from what I afterwards heard, that the step was not an altogether popular one in the eastern and northern states, although it certainly was so in the southern; it being argued in the public prints there, that as dogs had been used in hunting down fugitive negroes from time immemorial, the mere fact of bloodhounds being used instead of mastiffs was a peccadillo unworthy of name.

The tobacco plant, though growing in many parts of Florida spontaneously, like the broad-leafed dock in England, is often cultivated in garden-ground for domestic use, some of the finer kinds being as aromatic as those of Cuba.

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