LETTER—No. 36.
From my long silence of late, you will no doubt have deemed me out of the civil and perhaps out of the whole world.
I have, to be sure, been a great deal of the time out of the limits of one and, at times, nearly out of the other. Yet I am living, and hold in my possession a number of epistles which passing events had dictated, but which I neglected to transmit at the proper season. In my headlong transit through the Southern tribes of Indians, I have “popped out” of the woods upon this glowing land, and I cannot forego the pleasure of letting you into a few of the secrets of this delightful place.
“Flos—floris,” &c. every body knows the meaning of; and Florida, in Spanish, is a country of flowers.—Perdido is perdition, and Rio Perdido, River of Perdition. Looking down its perpendicular banks into its black water, its depth would seem to be endless, and the doom of the unwary to be gloomy in the extreme. Step not accidentally or wilfully over its fatal brink, and Nature’s opposite extreme is spread about you. You are literally in the land of the “cypress and myrtle”—where the ever-green live oak and lofty magnolia dress the forest in a perpetual mantle of green.
The sudden transition from the ice-bound regions of the North to this mild climate, in the midst of winter, is one of peculiar pleasure. At a half-way of the distance, one’s cloak is thrown aside; and arrived on the ever-verdant borders of Florida, the bosom is opened and bared to the soft breeze from the ocean’s wave, and the congenial warmth of a summer’s sun.
Such is the face of Nature here in the rude month of February; green peas are served on the table—other garden vegetables in great perfection, and garden flowers, as well as wild, giving their full and sweetest perfume to the winds.
I looked into the deep and bottomless Perdido, and beheld about it the thousand charms which Nature has spread to allure the unwary traveller to its brink. ’Twas not enough to entangle him in a web of sweets upon its borders, but Nature seems to have used an art to draw him to its bottom, by the voluptuous buds which blossom under its black waters, and whose vivid colours are softened and enriched the deeper they are seen below its surface. The sweetest of wild flowers enamel the shores and spangle the dark green tapestry which hangs over its bosom—the stately magnolia towers fearlessly over its black waters, and sheds (with the myrtle and jessamine) the richest perfume over this chilling pool of death.
How exquisitely pure and sweet are the delicate tendrils which Nature has hung over these scenes of melancholy and gloom! and how strong, also, has she fixed in man’s breast the passion to possess and enjoy them! I could have hung by the tree tops over that fatal stream, or blindly staggered over its thorny brink to have culled the sweets which are found only in its bosom; but the poisonous fang, I was told, was continually aimed at my heel, and I left the sweetened atmosphere of its dark and gloomy, yet enamelled shores.
Florida is, in a great degree, a dark and sterile wilderness, yet with spots of beauty and of loveliness, with charms that cannot be forgotten. Her swamps and everglades, the dens of alligators, and lurking places of the desperate savage, gloom the thoughts of the wary traveller, whose mind is cheered and lit to admiration, when in the solitary pine woods, where he hears nought but the echoing notes of the sand-hill cranes, or the howling wolf, he suddenly breaks out into the open savannahs, teeming with their myriads of wild flowers, and palmettos (plate 147); or where the winding path through which he is wending his lonely way, suddenly brings him out upon the beach, where the rolling sea has thrown up her thousands of hills and mounds of sand as white as the drifted snow, over which her green waves are lashing, and sliding back again to her deep green and agitated bosom (plate 148). This sketch was made on Santa Rosa Island, within a few miles of Pensacola, of a favourite spot for tea (and other convivial) parties, which are often held there. The hills of sand are as purely white as snow, and fifty or sixty feet in height, and supporting on their tops, and in their sides, clusters of magnolia bushes—of myrtle—of palmetto and heather, all of which are evergreens, forming the most vivid contrast with the snow-white sand in which they are growing. On the beach a family of Seminole Indians are encamped, catching and drying red fish, their chief article of food.
I have traversed the snow-white shores of Pensacola’s beautiful bay, and I said to myself, “Is it possible that Nature has done so much in vain—or will the wisdom of man lead him to add to such works the embellishments of art, and thus convert to his own use and enjoyment the greatest luxuries of life?” As a travelling stranger through the place, I said “yes: it must be so.” Nature has here formed the finest harbour in the world; and the dashing waves of the ocean have thrown around its shores the purest barriers of sand, as white as the drifted snow. Unlike all other Southern ports, it is surrounded by living fountains of the purest water, and its shores continually fanned by the refreshing breathings of the sea. To a Northern man, the winters in this place appear like a continual spring time; and the intensity of a summer’s sun is cooled into comfort and luxury by the ever-cheering sea breeze.
This is the only place I have found in the Southern country to which Northern people can repair with safety in the summer season; and I know not of a place in the world where they can go with better guarantees of good health, and a reasonable share of the luxuries of life. The town of Pensacola is beautifully situated on the shore of the bay, and contains at present about fifteen hundred inhabitants, most of them Spanish Creoles. They live an easy and idle life, without any energy further than for the mere means of living. The bay abounds in the greatest variety of fish, which are easily taken, and the finest quality of oysters are found in profusion, even alongside of the wharves.
Government having fixed upon this harbour as the great naval depôt for all the Southern coast, the consequence will be, that a vast sum of public money will always be put into circulation in this place; and the officers of the navy, together with the officers of the army, stationed in the three forts built and now building at this place, will constitute the most polished and desirable society in our country.
What Pensacola has been or is, in a commercial point of view, little can be said; but what it can be, and most certainly will be, in a few years, the most sanguine can hardly predict. I would unhesitatingly recommend this to the enterprising capitalists of the North, as a place where they can live, and where (if nature has been kind, as experience has taught us) they will flourish. A few such men have taken their stand here within a few months past; and, as a first step towards their aggrandizement, a plan of a rail-road has been projected, from Pensacola to Columbus, in Georgia; which needs only to be completed, to place Pensacola at once before any other town on the Southern coast, excepting New Orleans. Of the feasibility of such a work, there is not the slightest doubt; and, from the opinions advanced by Captain Chase and Lieutenant Bowman, two of the most distinguished engineers of the army, it would seem as if Nature had formed a level nearly the whole way, and supplied the best kind of timber on the spot for its erection. The route of this rail-road would be through or near the principal cotton-growing part of Alabama, and the quantity of produce from that state, as well as from a great part of the state of Georgia, which would seek this market, would be almost incalculable. Had this road been in operation during the past winter, it has been ascertained by a simple calculation, that the cotton-growers of Alabama, might have saved 2,000,000 of dollars on their crop; by being enabled to have got it early into market, and received the first price of 18¾ cents, instead of waiting six weeks or two months for a rise of water, enabling them to get it to Mobile—at which time it had fallen to nine cents per pound.
As a work also of national utility, it would rank amongst the most important in our country, and the Government might afford to appropriate the whole sum necessary for its construction. In a period of war, when in all probability, for a great part of the time, this port may be in a state of blockade, such a communication with the interior of the country, would be of incalculable benefit for the transportation of men—of produce and munitions of war.
Of the few remnants of Indians remaining in this part of the country, I have little to say, at present, that could interest you. The sum total that can be learned or seen of them (like all others that are half civilized) is, that they are to be pitied.
The direful “trump of war” is blowing in East Florida, where I was “steering my course;” and I shall in a few days turn my steps in a different direction.
Since you last heard from me, I have added on to my former Tour “down the river,” the remainder of the Mississippi (or rather Missouri), from St. Louis to New Orleans; and I find that, from its source to the Balize, the distance is 4500 miles only! I shall be on the wing again in a few days, for a shake of the hand with the Camanchees, Osages, Pawnees, Kioways, Arapahoes, &c.—some hints of whom I shall certainly give you from their different localities, provided I can keep the hair on my head.
This Tour will lead me up the Arkansas to its source, and into the Rocky Mountains, under the protection of the United States dragoons. You will begin to think ere long, that I shall acquaint myself pretty well with the manners and customs of our country—at least with the out-land-ish part of it.
I shall hail the day with pleasure, when I can again reach the free land of the lawless savage; for far more agreeable to my ear is the Indian yell and war-whoop, than the civilized groans and murmurs about “pressure,” “deposites,” “banks,” “boundary questions,” &c.; and I vanish from the country with the sincere hope that these tedious words may become obsolete before I return. Adieu.