Web
and Book design, Copyright, Kellscraft Studio 1999-2006 (Return to Web Text-ures) |
Click
Here to return to |
ON THE ST. AUGUSTINE ROAD. ONE of my
first inquiries at Tallahassee was for the easiest way to the
woods. The city is built on a hill, with other hills about it. These
are mostly
under cultivation, and such woods as lay within sight seemed to be
pretty far
off; and with the mercury at ninety in the shade, long tramps were
almost out
of the question. “Take the St. Augustine road,” said the man to whom I
had
spoken; and he pointed out its beginning nearly opposite the state
capitol.
After breakfast I followed his advice, with results so pleasing that I
found
myself turning that corner again and again as long as I remained in
Tallahassee. The road
goes abruptly downhill to
the railway track, first between deep red gulches, and then between
rows of
negro cabins, each with its garden of rosebushes, now (early April) in
full
bloom. The deep sides of the gulches were draped with pendent lantana
branches
full of purple flowers, or, more beautiful still, with a profusion of
fragrant
white honeysuckle. On the roadside, between the wheel-track and the
gulch,
grew brilliant Mexican poppies, with Venus’s looking-glass, yellow
oxalis, and
beds of blackberry vines. The woods of which my informant had spoken
lay a
little beyond the railway, on the right hand of the road, just as it
began
another ascent. I entered them at once, and after a semicircular turn
through
the pleasant paths, amid live-oaks, water-oaks, red oaks, chestnut
oaks, magnolias,
beeches, hickories, hornbeams, sweet gums, sweet bays, and long-leaved
and
short-leaved pines, came out into the road again a quarter of a mile
farther up
the hill. They were the fairest of woods to stroll in, it seemed to me,
with
paths enough, and not too many, and good enough, but not too good; that
is to
say, they were footpaths, not roads, though afterwards, on a Sunday
afternoon,
I met two young fellows riding through them on bicycles. The wood was
delightful, also, after my two months in eastern Florida, for lying on
a slope,
and for having an undergrowth of loose shrubbery instead of a jungle
of scrub
oak and saw palmetto. Blue jays and crested flycatchers were doing
their best
to outscream one another, — with the odds in favor of the flycatchers,
— and a
few smaller birds were singing, especially two or three summer
tanagers, as
many yellow-throated warblers, and a ruby-crowned kinglet. In one part
of the
wood, near what I took to be an old city reservoir, I came upon a
single
white-throated sparrow and a humming-bird, — the latter a strangely
uncommon
sight in Tallahassee, where, of all the places I have ever seen, it
ought to
find itself in clover. Here, too, were a pair of Carolina wrens, just
now in
search of a building-site, and conducting themselves exactly in the
manner of
bluebirds intent on such business; peeping into every hole that offered
itself,
and then, after the briefest interchange of opinion, — unfavorable on
the
female’s part, if we may guess, — concluding to look a little farther. As I
struck the road again, a man came along on horseback, and we fell
into conversation about the country. “A lovely country,” he called
it, and I
agreed with him. He inquired where I was from, and I mentioned that I
had
lately been in southern Florida, and found this region a strong
contrast.
“Yes,” he returned; and, pointing to the grass, he remarked upon the
richness
of the soil. “This yere land would fertilize that,” he said, speaking
of
southern Florida. “I shouldn’t wonder,” said I. I meant to be
understood as
concurring in his opinion, but such a qualified, Yankeefied assent
seemed to
him no assent at all. “Oh, it will, it will!” he responded, as if the
point
were one about which I must on no account be left unconvinced. He told
me that
the fine house at which I had looked, a little distance back, through a
long
vista of trees, was the residence of Captain H., who owned all the land
along
the road for a good distance. I inquired how far the road was pretty,
like
this. “For forty miles,” he said. That was farther than I was ready to
walk,
and coming soon to the top of the hill, or, more exactly, of the
plateau, I
stopped in the shade of a china-tree, and looked at the pleasing
prospect.
Behind me was a plantation of young pear-trees, and before me, among
the hills
northward, lay broad, cultivated slopes, dotted here and there with
cabins and
tall, solitary trees. On the nearer slope, perhaps a sixteenth of a
mile away,
a negro was ploughing, with a single ox harnessed in some primitive
manner, —
with pieces of wood, for the most part, as well as I could make out
through an
opera-glass. The soil offered the least possible hindrance, and both he
and the
ox seemed to be having a literal “walk-over.” Beyond him — a full
half-mile
away, perhaps — another man was ploughing with a mule; and in another
direction a third was doing likewise, with a woman following in his
wake. A
colored boy of seventeen — I guessed his age at twenty-three — came up
the road
in a cart, and I stopped him to inquire about the crops and other
matters. The
land in front of me was planted with cotton, he said; and the men
ploughing in
the distance were getting ready to plant the same. They hired the land
and the
cabins of Captain H., paying him so much cotton (not so much an acre,
but so
much a mule, if I understood him rightly) by way of rent. We talked a
long time
about one thing and another. He had been south as far as the Indian
River
country, but was glad to be back again in Tallahassee, where he was
born. I
asked him about the road, how far it went. “They tell me it goes smack
to St.
Augustine,” he replied; “I ain’t tried it.” It was an unlikely story,
it seemed
to me, but I was assured afterward that he was right; that the road
actually
runs across the country from Tallahassee to St. Augustine, a distance
of about
two hundred miles. With company of my own choosing, and in cooler
weather, I
thought I should like to walk its whole length.1 My young
man was in
no haste. With the reins (made of rope, after a fashion much followed
in
Florida) lying on the forward axle of his cart, he seemed to have put
himself
entirely at my service. He had to the full that peculiar urbanity which
I began
after a while to look upon as characteristic of Tallahassee negroes, —
a
gentleness of speech, and a kindly, deferential air, neither forward
nor
servile, such as sits well on any man, whatever the color of his skin. In that
respect he was like another boy of about his own age, who lived
in the cabin directly before us, but whom I did not see till I had been
several
times over the road. Then he happened to be at work near the edge of
the field,
and I beckoned him to me. He, too, was serious and manly in his
bearing, and showed
no disposition to go back to his hoe till I broke off the interview, —
as if it
were a point of good manners with him to await my pleasure. Yes, the
plantation
was a good one and easily cultivated, he said, in response to some
remark of my
own. There were five in the family, and they all worked. “We are all
big enough
to eat,” he added, quite simply. He had never been North, but had
lately
declined the offer of a gentleman who wished to take him there, — him
and
“another fellow.” He once went to Jacksonville, but couldn’t stay. “You
can get
along without your father pretty well, but it’s another thing to do
without
your mother.” He never meant to leave home again as long as his mother
lived;
which was likely to be for some years, I thought, if she were still
able to do
her part in the cotton-field. As a general thing, the colored tenants
of the
cabins made out pretty well, he believed, unless something happened to
the
crops. As for the old servants of the H. family, they didn’t have to
work, —
they were provided for; Captain H.’s father “left it so in his
testimonial.” I
spoke of the purple martins which were flying back and forth over the
field
with many cheerful noises, and of the calabashes that hung from a tall
pole in
one corner of the cabin yard, for their accommodation. On my way South,
I told
him, I had noticed these dangling long-necked squashes everywhere, and
had
wondered what they were for. I had found out since that they were the
colored
man’s martin-boxes, and was glad to see the people so fond of the
birds. “Yes,”
he said, “there’s no danger of hawks carrying off the chickens as long
as the
martins are round.” Twice
afterward, as I went up the road, I found him ploughing between
the cotton rows; but he was too far away to be accosted without
shouting, and
I did not feel justified in interrupting him at his work. Back and
forth he went through, the long furrow after the patient ox,
the hens and chickens following. No doubt they thought the work was all
for
their benefit. Farther away, a man and two women were hoeing. The
family
deserved to prosper, I said to myself, as I lay under a big
magnolia-tree (just
beginning to open its large white flowers) and idly enjoyed the scene.
And it
was just here, by the bye, that I solved an interesting etymological
puzzle, to
wit, the origin and precise meaning of the word “baygall,” — a word
which the
visitor often hears upon the lips of Florida people. An old hunter in
Smyrna,
when I questioned him about it, told me that it meant a swampy piece of
wood,
and took its origin, he had always supposed, from the fact that
bay-trees and
gall-bushes commonly grew in such places. A Tallahassee gentleman
agreed with
this explanation, and promised to bring home some gall-berries the next
time he
came across any, that I might see what they were; but the berries were
never
forthcoming, and I was none the wiser, till, on one of my last trips up
the St.
Augustine road, as I stood under the large magnolia just mentioned, a
colored
man came along, hat in band, and a bag of grain balanced on his head. “That’s a
large magnolia,” said I. He assented. “That’s
about as large as magnolias ever grow, isn’t it?” “No, sir;
down in the gall there’s magnolias a heap bigger ‘n that.” “A gall?
What’s that?” “A
baygall, sir.” “And
what’s a baygall?” “A big
wood.” “And why
do you call it a baygall?” He was
stumped, it was plain to see. No doubt he would have scratched
his head, if that useful organ had been accessible. He hesitated; but
it isn’t
like an uneducated man to confess ignorance. “‘Cause it’s a desert,” he
said,
“a thick place.” “Yes,
yes,” I answered, and he resumed his march. The road
was traveled mostly by negroes. On Sunday afternoons it looked
quite like a flower garden, it was so full of bright dresses coming
home from
church. “Now’-days folks git religion so easy!” one young woman said to
another, as they passed me. She was a conservative. I did not join the
procession, but on other days I talked, first and last, with a good
many of the
people; from the preacher, who carried a handsome cane and made me a
still
handsomer bow, down to a serious little fellow of six or seven years,
whom I
found standing at the foot of the hill, beside a bundle of dead wood.
He was
carrying it home for the family stove, and had set it down for a
minute’s rest.
I said something about his burden, and as I went on he called after me:
“What
kind of birds are you hunting for?
Ricebirds?” I answered that I was looking for birds of all
sorts. Had he
seen any ricebirds lately? Yes, he said;
he started a flock the other day up on2 the hill. “How did
they
look?” said I. “They is red blackbirds,” he returned. This was not the
first
time I had heard the redwing called the ricebird. But how did the boy
know me
for a bird-gazer? That was a mystery.
It came over me all at once that possibly I had become better known in
the
community than I had in the least suspected; and then I remembered my
field-glass. That, as I could not help being aware, was an object of
continual
attention. Every day I saw people, old and young, black and white,
looking at
it with undisguised curiosity. Often they passed audible comments upon
it
among themselves. “How far can you see through the spyglass?” a bolder
spirit
would now and then venture to ask; and once, on the railway track out
in the
pine lands, a barefooted, happy-faced urchin made a guess that was
really
admirable for its ingenuity. Looks like you’re goin’ over inspectin’
the
wire,” he remarked. On rare occasions, as an act of special grace, I
offered
such an inquirer a peep through the magic lenses, — an experiment that
never
failed to elicit exclamations of wonder. Things were so near! And the
observer
looked comically incredulous, on putting down the glass, to find how
suddenly
the landscape had slipped away again. More than one colored man wanted
to know
its price, and expressed a fervent desire to possess one like it; and
probably,
if I had ever been assaulted and robbed in all my solitary wanderings
through
the flat-woods and other lonesome places, my “spyglass” rather than my
purse —
the “lust of the eye” rather than the “pride of life” — would have been
to
thank. Here,
however, there could be no thought of such a contingency. Here
were no vagabonds (one inoffensive Yankee specimen excepted), but
hard-working
people going into the city or out again, each on his own lawful
business.
Scarcely one of them, man or woman, but greeted me kindly. One, a white
man on
horseback, invited, and even urged me, to mount his horse, and let him
walk a
piece. I must be fatigued, he was sure, — how could I help it? — and he would as soon walk as not. Finding
me obstinate, he walked his horse at my side, chatting about the
country, the
trees, and the crops. He it was who called my particular attention to
the
abundance of blackberry vines. “Are the berries sweet?” I asked. He
smacked
his lips. “Sweet as honey, and big as that,” measuring off a liberal
portion of
his thumb. I spoke of them half an hour later to a middle-aged colored
man.
Yes, he said, the blackberries were plenty enough and sweet enough;
but, for
his part, he didn’t trouble them a great deal. The vines (and he
pointed at
them, fringing the roadside indefinitely) were great places for
rattlesnakes.
He liked the berries, but he liked somebody else to pick them. He was
awfully
afraid of snakes; they were so dangerous. Yes, sir “(this in answer to
an
inquiry), “there are plenty of rattlesnakes here clean up to
Christmas.” I
liked him for his frank avowal of cowardice, and still more for his
quiet
bearing. He remembered the days of slavery, — “before the surrender,”
as the
current Southern phrase is, — and his face beamed when I spoke of my
joy in
thinking that his people were free, no matter what might befall them.
He, too,
raised cotton on hired land, and was bringing up his children — there
were
eight of them, he said — to habits of industry. My second
stroll toward St. Augustine carried me perhaps three miles, —
say one sixty-sixth of the entire distance, — and none of my subsequent
excursions took me any farther; and having just now commended a negro
for his
candor, I am moved to acknowledge that, between the sand underfoot and
the sun
overhead, I found the six miles, which I spent at least four hours in
accomplishing, more fatiguing than twice that distance would have been
over New
Hampshire hills. If I were to settle in that country, I should probably
fall
into the way of riding more, and walking less. I remember thinking how
comfortable a certain ponderous black mammy looked, whom I met on one
of these
same sunny and sandy tramps. She sat in the very middle of a tipcart,
with an
old and truly picturesque man’s hat on her head (quite in the fashion,
feminine
readers will notice), driving a one-horned ox with a pair of
clothes-line
reins. She was traveling slowly, just as I like to travel; and, as I
say, I was
impressed by her comfortable appearance. Why would not an equipage like
that be
just the thing for a naturalistic idler? Not far
beyond my halting-place of two days before I came to a Cherokee
rosebush, one of the most beautiful of plants,—white, fragrant, single
roses (real roses) set
in the midst of the
handsomest of glossy green leaves. I was delighted to find it still in
flower.
A hundred miles farther south I had seen it finishing its season a full
month
earlier. I stopped, of course, to pluck a blossom. At that moment a
female
redbird flew out of the bush. Her mate was beside her instantly, and a
nameless
something in their manner told me they were trying to keep a secret.
The nest,
built mainly of pine needles and other leaves, was in the middle of the
bush, a
foot or two from the grass, and contained two bluish or greenish eggs
thickly
spattered with dark brown. I meant to look into it again (the owners
seemed to
have no great objection), but somehow missed it every time I passed.
From that
point, as far as I went, the road was lined with Cherokee roses, — not
continuously,
but with short intermissions; and from the number of redbirds seen,
almost
invariably in pairs, I feel safe in saying that the nest I had found
was
probably one of fifteen or twenty scattered along the wayside. How
gloriously
the birds sang! It was their day for singing. I was ready to christen
the road
anew, — Redbird Road. But the
redbirds, many and conspicuous as they were, had no monopoly of
the road or of the day. House wrens were equally numerous and equally
at home,
though they sang more out of sight. Red-eyed chewinks, still far from
their
native berry pastures, hopped into a bush to cry, “Who’s he?” at the
passing of
a stranger, in whom, for aught I know, they may have half recognized an
old
acquaintance. A bunch of quails ran across the road a little in front
of me,
and in another place fifteen or twenty red-winged blackbirds (not a red
wing
among them) sat gossiping in a treetop. Elsewhere, even later than this
(it was
now April 7), I saw flocks, every bird of which wore shoulder-straps, —
like
the traditional militia company, all officers. They did not gossip, of course
(it is the male that sports
the red), but they made a lively noise. As for the
mocking-birds, they were at the front here, as they were
everywhere. During my fortnight in Tallahassee there were never many
consecutive five minutes of daylight in which, if I stopped to listen,
I could
not hear at least one mocker. Oftener two or three were singing at once
in as
many different directions. And, speaking of them, I must speak also of
their
more northern cousin. From the day I entered Florida I had been saying
that the
mocking-bird, save for his occasional mimicry of other birds, sang so
exactly
like the thrasher that I did not believe I could tell one from the
other. Now,
however, on this St. Augustine road, I suddenly became aware of a bird
singing
somewhere in advance, and as I listened again I said aloud, with full
persuasion, “There! that’s a thrasher!” — There was a something of
difference:
a shade of coarseness in the voice, perhaps; a tendency to force the
tone, as
we say of human singers, — a something,
at all events, and the longer I hearkened, the more confident I felt
that the
bird was a thrasher. And so it was, — the first one I had heard in
Florida,
although I had seen many. Probably the two birds have peculiarities of
voice
and method that, with longer familiarity on the listener’s part, would
render
them easily distinguishable. On general principles, I must believe that
to be
true of all birds. But the experience just described is not to be taken
as proving
that I have any such familiarity. Within a week afterward, while
walking along
the railway, I came upon a thrasher and a mocking-bird singing side by
side;
the mocker upon a telegraph pole, and tile thrasher on the wire,
halfway
between the mocker and the next pole. They sang and sang, while I stood
between
them in the cut below and listened; and if my life had depended on my
seeing
how one song differed from the other, I could not have done it. With my
eyes
shut, the birds might have changed places, — if they could have done it
quickly
enough, — and I should have been none the wiser. As I have
said, I followed the road over the nearly level plateau for
what I guessed to be about three miles. Then I found myself in a bit
of hollow
that seemed made for a stopping-place, with a plantation road running
off to
the right, and a hillside cornfield of many acres on the left. In the
field
were a few tall dead trees. At the tip of one sat a sparrow-hawk, and
to the
trunk of another clung a red-bellied woodpecker, who, with
characteristic
foolishness, sat beside his hole calling persistently, and then, as if
determined to publish what other birds so carefully conceal, went
inside,
thrust out his head, and resumed his clatter. Here, too, were a pair of
bluebirds, noticeable for their rarity, and for the wonderful color —a
shade
deeper than is ever seen at the North, I think — of the male’s blue
coat. In a
small thicket in the hollow beside the road were noisy white-eyed
vireos, a
ruby-crowned kinglet, — a tiny thing that within a month would be
singing in
Canada, or beyond, — an unseen wood pewee, and (also unseen) a hermit
thrush,
one of perhaps twenty solitary individuals that I found scattered about
the
woods in the course of my journeyings. Not one of them sang a note.
Probably
they did not know that there was a Yankee in Florida who — in some
moods, at
least — would have given more for a dozen bars of hermit thrush music
than for
a day and a night of the mocking-bird’s medley. Not that I mean to
disparage
the great Southern performer; as a vocalist he is so far beyond the
hermit
thrush as to render a comparison absurd; but what I love is a singer,
a voice to reach the soul. An old
Tallahassee negro, near the “white Norman school,”
— so he called it, — hit off
the mocking-bird pretty well. I had called his attention to one singing
in an
adjacent dooryard. “Yes,” he said, “I
love to hear ‘em. They’s very amusin’,
very amusin’.” My own feeling can hardly be a
prejudice, conscious or
unconscious, in favor of what has grown dear to me through early and
long-continued association. The difference between the music of birds
like the
mocker, the thrasher, and the catbird and that of birds like the
hermit, the
veery, and the wood thrush is one of kind, not of degree; and I have
heard
music of the mockingbird’s kind (the
thrasher’s, that is to say) as long as I
have heard music at all. The question is one of taste, it is true; but
it is
not a question of familiarity or favoritism. All praise to the mocker
and the
thrasher! May their tribe increase! But if we are to indulge in
comparisons,
give me the wood thrush, the hermit, and the veery; with tones that the
mocking-bird can never imitate, and a simplicity which the
Fates — the wise
Fates, who will have variety — have put forever beyond his
appreciation and his
reach. Florida as
I saw it (let the qualification be noted) is no more a land
of flowers than New England. In some respects, indeed, it is less so.
Flowering
shrubs and climbers there are in abundance. I rode in the cars through
miles on
miles of flowering dogwood and pink azalea. Here, on this Tallahassee
road,
were miles of Cherokee roses, with plenty of the climbing scarlet
honeysuckle
(beloved of humming-birds, although I saw none here), and nearer the
city, as
already described, masses of lantana and white honeysuckle. In more
than one
place pink double roses (vagrants from cultivated grounds, no doubt)
offered
buds and blooms to all who would have them. The cross-vine (Bignonia), less freehanded,
hung its showy
bells out of reach in the treetops. Thorn‑bushes of several kinds were
in
flower (a puzzling lot), and the treelike blueberry (Vaccinium arboreum), loaded
with its large, flaring white
corollas, was a real spectacle of beauty. Here, likewise, I found one
tiny
crab-apple shrub, with a few blossoms, exquisitely tinted with
rose-color, and
most exquisitely fragrant. But the New Englander, when he talks of wild
flowers, has in his eye something different from these. He is not
thinking of
any bush, no matter how beautiful, but of trailing arbutus, hepaticas,
bloodroot, anemones, saxifrage, violets, dogtooth violets, spring
beauties,
“cowslips,” buttercups, corydalis, columbine, Dutchman’s breeches,
clintonia,
five-finger, and all the rest of that bright and fragrant host which,
ever
since he can remember, he has seen covering his native hills and
valleys with
the return of May. It is not
meant, of course, that plants like these are wholly wanting in
Florida. I remember an abundance of violets, blue and white, especially
in the
flat-woods, where also I often found pretty butterworts of two or three
sorts.
The smaller blue ones took very acceptably the place of hepaticas, and
indeed I
heard them called by that name. But, as compared with what one sees in
New
England, such ground flowers,” flowers which it seems perfectly natural
to
pluck for a nosegay, were very little in evidence. I heard Northern
visitors
remark the fact again and again. On this pretty road out of Tallahassee
—
itself a city of flower gardens — I can recall nothing of the kind
except half
a dozen strawberry blossoms, and the oxalis and specularia before
mentioned.
Probably the round-leaved boustonia grew here, as it did everywhere, in
small
scattered patches. If there were violets as well, I can only say I
have
forgotten them. Be it
added, however, that at the time I did not miss them. In a garden
of roses one does not begin by sighing for mignonette and lilies of the
valley.
Violets or no violets, there was no lack of beauty. The Southern
highway
surveyor, if such a personage exists, is evidently not consumed by that
distressing
puritanical passion for slicking up things “which too often makes of
his
Northern brother something scarcely better than a public nuisance. At
the
South you will not find a woman cultivating with pain a few exotics
beside the
front door, while her husband is mowing and burning the far more
attractive
wild garden that nature has planted just outside the fence. The St.
Augustine
road, at any rate, after climbing the hill and getting beyond the wood,
runs
between natural hedges, — trees, vines, and shrubs carelessly
intermingled, —
not dense enough to conceal the prospect or shut out the breeze
(“straight from
the Gulf,” as the Tallahassean is careful to inform you), but
sufficient to
afford much welcome protection from the sun. Here it was good to find
the
sassafras growing side by side with the persimmon, although when, for
old
acquaintance’ sake, I put a leaf into my mouth I was half glad to fancy
it a
thought less savory than some I had tasted in Yankeeland. I took a kind
of
foolish satisfaction, too, in the obvious fact that certain plants —
the sumach
and the Virginia creeper, to mention no others —were less at home here
than a
thousand miles farther north. With the wild-cherry trees, I was obliged
to
confess, the case was reversed. I had seen larger ones in
Massachusetts, perhaps,
but none that looked half so clean and thrifty. In truth, their
appearance was
a puzzle, rum-cherry trees as by all tokens they undoubtedly were, till
of a
sudden it flashed upon me that there were no caterpillars’ nests in
them! Then
I ceased to wonder at their odd look. It spoke well for my botanical
acumen
that I had recognized them at all. Before I
had been a week in Tallahassee I found that, without
forethought or plan, I had dropped into the habit (and how pleasant it
is to
think that some good habits can be dropped into!) of making the St.
Augustine
road my after-dinner sauntering-place. The morning was for a walk: to
Lake Bradford,
perhaps, in search of a mythical ivory-billed woodpecker, or westward
on the
railway for a few miles, with a view to rare migratory warblers. But
in the
afternoon I did not walk, — I loitered; and though I still minded the
birds and
flowers, I for the most part forgot my botany and ornithology. In the
cool of
the day, then (the phrase is an innocent euphemism), I climbed the
hill, and
after an hour or two on the plateau strolled back again, facing the
sunset
through a vista of moss-covered live-oaks and sweet gums. Those quiet,
incurious hours are among the pleasantest of all my Florida memories. A
cuckoo
would be cooing, perhaps; or a quail, with cheerful ambiguity, — such
as
belongs to weather predictions in general, — would be prophesying “more
wet
“and “no more wet “in alternate breaths; or two or three night-hawks
would be
sweeping back and forth high above the valley; or a marsh hawk would be
quartering over the big oatfield. The martins would be cackling, in any
event,
and the kingbirds practicing their aerial mock somersaults; and the
mocking-bird would be singing, and the redbird whistling. On the
western slope,
just below the oatfield, the Northern woman who owned the pretty
cottage there
(the only one on the road) was sure to be at work among her flowers. A
laughing
colored boy who did chores for her (without injury to his health, I
could
warrant) told me that she was a Northerner. But I knew it already; I
needed no
witness but her beds of petunias. In the valley, as I crossed the
railroad
track, a loggerhead shrike sat, almost of course, on. the telegraph
wire in
dignified silence; and just beyond, among the cabins, I had my choice
of
mocking-birds and orchard orioles. And so,
admiring the roses and the pomegranates, the lantanas and the
honeysuckles, or chatting with some dusky fellow-pilgrim, I mounted the
hill to
the city, and likely as not saw before me a red-headed woodpecker
sitting on
the roof of the State House, calling attention to his patriotic self —
in his
tricolored dress — by occasional vigorous tattoos on the tinned
ridgepole. I
never saw him there without gladness. The legislature had begun its
session in
an economical mood, — as is more or less the habit of legislatures, I
believe,
— and was even considering a proposition to reduce the salary and
mileage of
its members. Under such circumstances, it ought not to have been a
matter of
surprise, perhaps, that no flag floated from the cupola of the capitol.
The
people’s money should not be wasted. And possibly I should never have
remarked
the omission but for a certain curiosity, natural, if not inevitable,
on the
part of a Northern visitor, as to the real feeling of the South toward
the
national government. Day after day I had seen a portly gentleman — with
an air,
or with airs, as the spectator might choose to express it — going in
and out of
the State House gate, dressed ostentatiously in a suit of Confederate
gray. He
had worn nothing else since the war, I was told. But of course the
State of
Florida was not to be judged by the freak of one man, and he only a
member of
the “third house.” And even when I went into the governor’s office, and
saw the
original “ordinance of secession” hanging in a conspicuous place on the
wall,
as if it were an heirloom to be proud of, I felt no stirring of
sectional
animosity, thorough-bred Massachusetts Yankee and old-fashioned
abolitionist as
I am. A brave people can hardly be expected or desired to forget its
history,
especially when that history has to do with sacrifices and heroic
deeds. But
these things, taken together, did no doubt prepare me to look upon it
as a
happy coincidence when, one morning, I heard the familiar cry of the
red-headed woodpecker, for the first time in Florida, and looked up to
see him
flying the national colors from the ridgepole of the State House. I did
not
break out with Three cheers for the red, white, and blue! I am
naturally
undemonstrative; but I said to myself that Melanerpes
erythrocephalus was a very handsome bird. 1 But let
no enthusiast set out to walk from one city to the other on the
strength of
what is here written. After this sketch was first printed — in The Atlantic Monthly — a
gentleman who
ought to know whereof he speaks sent me word that my informants were
all of
them wrong — that the road does not run to St. Augustine. For myself, I
assert
nothing. As my colored boy said, “I ain’t tried it.” 2 He did not say “upon” any more than Northern white boys do. |