Jasper County Democrat, Volume 4, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 March 1902 — FLORIDA LETTER. [ARTICLE]

FLORIDA LETTER.

Thelma, Fla., Feb. 25. Editor Democrat: —Another week has come and gone and still no deer or turkey has been slaughtered. We drove, one day last week, to Jug Island Swamp and camped all night. Got there about noon and in the afternoon Mrs.'M. took a stand where a deer had gone into the scrub that morning and Mr. M. went sky-larking out through the piney woods with the pup After sitting as still as is possible for mortal man (or woman) to sit, for about two hours, Mrs. M. was standing up by a large pine, when she heard a rustling in the leaves and palmettos on the ridge of high pine and scrub oak in front of her. Standperfectly still she presently saw an old turkey hen walk out of the palmettos, feeding and scratching along towards her a good long gunshot away. Mrs. M. had been instructed to wait till they were as close as she thought they were ever likely to come before she shot, so she waited but the old hen had her eye on her and after a long searching look and a “put,” “put.” she turned and ran back over the ridge out of sight. Mrs. M. stood perfectly quiet for 10 or 15 minutes more but finally her curiosity got the better of her prudence and she crept slowly up the ridge till just as she reached the top out flew six big turkeys, just out of reach, and after they were nicely started to the swamp an old gobbler made a run for the swamp and all disappeared without a gun being fired. While Mrs M. still stood there hateing herself to death for leaving her stand, Mr. M. and the pup came up from the other side of the bridge with the pup trailing the turkeys, having just struck their tracks. If she had waited another ten minutes Mr. M. would have come in time to have run the turkeys right over her, as she was directly in the run-way of the nearest point of heavy cover for them. Weil, we got up at four o’clock next morning to hear them gobble and Mrs. M. had the satisfaction of hearing.no less than five different gobblers. Mr. M. went in the swamp toward one bnt it saw him before he got close enough to shoot, and he saw it sail off the roost, farther away. But we still hope. We are going in a few days to Mr. Clarke’s own home, about seven miles from here, and camp one night and he is going, too, and call up a turkey. ' Its the old Mercer place, iu the edge of the Devil’s wood yard. We are located now right in a turpentine camp, on Blue Creek, On our side of the creek is the still, a barrel shop, where they make rosin barrels, the comissary, a house where the white men board and bunk, the house we are in and one more empty house, and the mule pen. On the other side of the creek are the negro quarters, about 15 houses full of big and little coons, old and young, black, yellow and white. There is one man as white as anybody, but he is an Ishmael among his colored people, they have no Use for the too white niggers. Mrs. M. sat on a log with a north Carolina nigger abont two hours one afternoon fishing in the same pool. He is an educated nigger, been to a normal school and says 1 he is going to college as soon as I

he gets money enough. Mr. Clarke says he writes a beautiful hand. He seems very intelligent and well posted. Blue Creek is a beautiful little stream and the foliage is very pretty along its banks. The trees are loaded with long grey streamers of Spanish moss and the live oaks and magnolias are beautifully'green, while the soft maples are just starting and are a bright red. We are feasting on cabbage slaw lately. We got a quart of fine scuppernong vinegar and the cabbage grows in the top of a palmetto. There are two species of palmetto, the saw palmetto, the low undergrowth, and the cabbage palmetto, which grows 10 to 12 feet high and with a body 8 to 12 inches in diameter. In the top of these, where the leaves come up out of the body, is a bud, the inner part of which tastes like raw cabbage, only better —rich and nutty flavor. It is fine with salt, pepper, vinegar and sugar on like slaw. The natives cook it like cabbage but we like it better raw. We bought two spring chickens —broilers—for ten cents apiece. We had two dozen eggs given us by Mrs. Clarke. Mrs. S. gave us a ham when she butchered. We have quail, squirrel, fish, sweet potatoes, grits, Florida syrup, corn bread, light bread, uneda biscuit, lemon cookies, cheese, canned tomatoes, tea, coffee, cocoa, onndensed milk, Mutchler butter (brought from home) and other things too numerous to mentijn. Our cooking outfit consists of a frying pan and a Dutch oven, which is a heavy cast spider set up on legs about two inches long and has a heavy cast cover. To bake in it we build a fire under it and on the lid too. To boil or stew a fire under only is needed. We also have a coffee pot, a tomato can for a teapot and a covered crysolite quart pail for cocoa. .One never knows how few things are really necessary unless he spends a winter in Florida. One man said that the only drawback to Florida as an ideal place to live was the fact that palmetto cabbage were not good cooked with fish. The fish were so easy to get and the cabbage only waiting to be cut down, if only they were a good combination people could exist with nothing else. Their motto here is not how much they can grasp but how little they .pan get along on, and the most of them—and the happiest ones—have got that down to a fine point

MYERS & MYERS.