A Florida Sketch Book - Bradford Torrey
At noon we rested and ate our luncheon in the shade of three or four
tall palmetto-trees standing by themselves on a broad prairie, a place
brightened by beds of blue iris and stretches of golden
senecio,--homelike as well as pretty, both of them. Then we set out
again. The day was intensely hot (March 24), and my oarsman was more
than half sick with a sudden cold. I begged him to take things easily,
but he soon experienced an almost miraculous renewal of his forces. In
one of the first of our after-dinner bonnet patches, he seized his gun,
fired, and began to shout, "A purple! a purple!" He drew the bird in, as
proud as a prince. "There, sir!" he said; "didn't I tell you it was
handsome? It has every color there is." And indeed it was handsome,
worthy to be called the "Sultana;" with the most exquisite iridescent
bluish-purple plumage, the legs yellow, or greenish-yellow (a point by
which it may be distinguished from the Florida gallinule, as the bird
flies from you), the bill red tipped with pale green, and the shield (on
the forehead, like a continuation of the upper mandible) light blue, of
a peculiar shade, "just as if it had been painted." From that moment the
boy was a new creature. Again and again he spoke of his altered
feelings. He could pull the boat now anywhere I wanted to go. He was
perfectly fresh, he declared, although I thought he had already done a
pretty good day's work under that scorching sun. I had not imagined how
deeply his heart was set upon showing me the bird I was after. It made
me twice as glad to see it, dead though it was.
Within an hour, on our way homeward, we came upon another. It sprang out
of the lily pads, and sped toward the tall grass of the shore. "Look!
look! a purple!" the boy cried. "See his yellow legs!" Instinctively he
raised his gun, but I said No. It would be inexcusable to shoot a second
one; and besides, we were at that moment approaching a bird about which
I felt a stronger curiosity,--a snake-bird, or water-turkey, sitting in
a willow shrub at the further end of the bay. "Pull me as near it as it
will let us come," I said. "I want to see as much of it as possible." At
every rod or two I stopped the boat and put up my glasses, till we were
within perhaps sixty feet of the bird. Then it took wing, but instead of
flying away went sweeping about us. On getting round to the willows
again it made as if it would alight, uttering at the same time some
faint ejaculations, like "ah! ah! ah!" but it kept on for a second sweep
of the circle. Then it perched in its old place, but faced us a little
less directly, so that I could see the beautiful silver tracery of its
wings, like the finest of embroidery, as I thought. After we had eyed it
for some minutes we suddenly perceived a second bird, ten feet or so
from it, in full sight. Where it came from, or how
[Transcriber's note: missing page 142]
too, shaped like a narrow wedge, was unconscionably long; and as the
bird showed against the sky, I could think of nothing but an animated
sign of addition. A better man--the Emperor Constantine, shall we
say?--might have seen in it a nobler symbol.
While we were loitering down the river, later in the afternoon, an eagle
made its appearance far overhead, the first one of the day. The boy, for
some reason, refused to believe that it was an eagle. Nothing but a
sight of its white head and tail through the glass could convince him.
(The perfectly square _set_ of the wings as the bird sails is a pretty
strong mark, at no matter what distance.) Presently an osprey, not far
from us, with a fish in his claws, set up a violent screaming. "It is
because he has caught a fish," said the boy; "he is calling his mate."
"No," said I, "it is because the eagle is after him. Wait a bit." In
fact, the eagle was already in pursuit, and the hawk, as he always does,
had begun struggling upward with all his might. That is the fish-hawk's
way of appealing to Heaven against his oppressor. He was safe for that
time. Three negroes, shad-fishers, were just beyond us (we had seen them
there in the morning, wading about the river setting their nets), and at
the sight of them and of us, I have no doubt, the eagle turned away. The
boy was not peculiar in his notion about the osprey's scream. Some one
else had told me that the bird always screamed after catching a fish.
But I knew better, having seen him catch a hundred, more or less,
without uttering a sound. The safe rule, in such cases, is to listen to
all you hear, and believe it--after you have verified it for yourself.
It was while we were discussing this question, I think, that the boy
opened his heart to me about my methods of study. He had looked through
the glass now and then, and of course had been astonished at its power.
"Why," he said finally, "I never had any idea it could be so much fun
just to look at birds in the way you do!" I liked the turn of his
phrase. It seemed to say, "Yes, I begin to see through it. We are in the
same boat. This that you call study is only another kind of sport." I
could have shaken hands with him but that he had the oars. Who does not
love to be flattered by an ingenuous boy?
All in all, the day had been one to be remembered. In addition to the
birds already named--three of them new to me--we had seen great blue
herons, little blue herons, Louisiana herons, night herons, cormorants,
pied-billed grebes, kingfishers, red-winged blackbirds, boat-tailed
grackles, redpoll and myrtle warblers, savanna sparrows, tree swallows,
purple martins, a few meadow larks, and the ubiquitous turkey buzzard.
The boat-tails abounded along the river banks, and, with their tameness
and their ridiculous outcries, kept us amused whenever there was nothing
else to absorb our attention. The prairie lands through which the river
meanders proved to be surprisingly dry and passable (the water being
unusually low, the boy said), with many cattle pastured upon them. Here
we found the savanna sparrows; here, too, the meadow larks were singing.
It was a hard pull across the rough lake against the wind (a dangerous
sheet of water for flat-bottomed rowboats, I was told afterward), but
the boy was equal to it, protesting that he didn't feel tired a bit, now
we had got the "purples;" and if he did not catch the fever from
drinking some quarts of river water (a big bottle of coffee having
proved to be only a drop in the bucket), against my urgent remonstrances
and his own judgment, I am sure he looks back upon the labor as on the
whole well spent. He was going North in the spring, he told me. May joy
be with him wherever he is!
The next morning I took the steamer down the river to Blue Spring, a
distance of some thirty miles, on my way back to New Smyrna, to a place
where there were accessible woods, a beach, and, not least, a daily sea
breeze. The river in that part of its course is comfortably narrow,--a
great advantage,--winding through cypress swamps, hammock woods,
stretches of prairie, and in one place a pine barren; an interesting and
in many ways beautiful country, but so unwholesome looking as to lose
much of its attractiveness. Three or four large alligators lay sunning
themselves in the most obliging manner upon the banks, here one and
there one, to the vociferous delight of the passengers, who ran from one
side of the deck to the other, as the captain shouted and pointed. One,
he told us, was thirteen feet long, the largest in the river. Each
appeared to have its own well-worn sunning-spot, and all, I believe,
kept their places, as if the passing of the big steamer--almost too big
for the river at some of the sharper turns--had come to seem a
commonplace event. Herons in the usual variety were present, with
ospreys, an eagle, kingfishers, ground doves, Carolina doves, blackbirds
(red-wings and boat-tails), tree swallows, purple martins, and a single
wild turkey, the first one I had ever seen. It was near the bank of the
river, on a bushy prairie, fully exposed, and crouched as the steamer
passed. For a Massachusetts ornithologist the mere sight of such a bird
was enough to make a pretty good Thanksgiving Day. Blue yellow-backed
warblers were singing here and there, and I retain a particular
remembrance of one bluebird that warbled to us from the pine-woods. The
captain told me, somewhat to my surprise, that he had seen two flocks of
paroquets during the winter (they had been very abundant along the river
within his time, he said), but for me there was no such fortune. One
bird, soaring in company with a buzzard at a most extraordinary height
straight over the river, greatly excited my curiosity. The captain
declared that it must be a great blue heron; but he had never seen one
thus engaged, nor, so far as I can learn, has any one else ever done so.
Its upper parts seemed to be mostly white, and I can only surmise that
it may have been a sandhill crane, a bird which is said to have such a
habit.
As I left the boat I had a little experience of the seamy side of
Southern travel; nothing to be angry about, perhaps, but annoying,
nevertheless, on a hot day. I surrendered my check to the purser of the
boat, and the deck hands put my trunk upon the landing at Blue Spring.
But there was no one there to receive it, and the station was locked. We
had missed the noon train, with which we were advertised to connect, by
so many hours that I had ceased to think about it. Finally, a negro, one
of several who were fishing thereabouts, advised me to go "up to the
house," which he pointed out behind some woods, and see the agent. This
I did, and the agent, in turn, advised me to walk up the track to the
"Junction," and be sure to tell the conductor, when the evening train
arrived, as it probably would do some hours later, that I had a trunk at
the landing. Otherwise the train would not run down to the river, and my
baggage would lie there till Monday. He would go down presently and put
it under cover. Happily, he fulfilled his promise, for it was already
beginning to thunder, and soon it rained in torrents, with a cold wind
that made the hot weather all at once a thing of the past.
It was a long wait in the dreary little station; or rather it would have
been, had not the tedium of it been relieved by the presence of a newly
married couple, whose honeymoon was just then at the full. Their delight
in each other was exuberant, effervescent, beatific,--what shall I
say?--quite beyond veiling or restraint. At first I bestowed upon them
sidewise and cornerwise glances only, hiding bashfully behind my
spectacles, as it were, and pretending to see nothing; but I soon
perceived that I was to them of no more consequence than a fly on the
wall. If they saw me, which sometimes seemed doubtful,--for love is
blind,--they evidently thought me too sensible, or too old, to mind a
little billing and cooing. And they were right in their opinion. What
was I in Florida for, if not for the study of natural history? And
truly, I have seldom seen, even among birds, a pair less sophisticated,
less cabined and confined by that disastrous knowledge of good and evil
which is commonly understood to have resulted from the eating of
forbidden fruit, and which among prudish people goes by the name of
modesty. It was refreshing. Charles Lamb himself would have enjoyed it,
and, I should hope, would have added some qualifying footnotes to a
certain unamiable essay of his concerning the behavior of married
people.
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.
[Footnote 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."]
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 hand, 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 on[1] 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.
[Footnote 1: He did not say "upon" any more than Northern white boys
do.]
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.