Rensselaer Journal, Volume 12, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 February 1903 — A Boat Trip. [ARTICLE]

A Boat Trip.

Dear Journal:—The Tarpon struck a wind-squall of the Gulf on our first night out from Pensacola and as a sequence a complete divorce from our supper was given due effect. Sea sickness is not dangerous for Dr. Calm soon relieves the distress. Toward morning the contagion spread until of officers, crew and passengers but four were able to go to the morning meal. As we passed over the bar to St. Andrews Bay the wavesi ceased and for dinner all came up with la keen appetite. Around the bay are some five or six landings all without Ja railroad and having fish, oysters and lumber to trade for other things deemed necessary for the subsistence of the natives and to feed the tourists. Nearly every northern man (hath a rod and a gun but we found none who had found or caught any denizens of either forest or bay. In the evening we passed into the Gulf in time to stop the pangs of hanger without responding to the call forjsupper. The clouds passed away before midnight and we were ready for our fourth meal at Apalachicola. We made half hands at the festal board of the “Tarpon.” Our first and last cruise on the Gulf is one long to be vividly recollected. Apalachicola Is the county seat of Franklingcounty and has never heard the scream of the iron horse. In fixing a site for the court house and jail the commissioners determind in favor of the geometrical center of the town as hoped for and (some said) the fact that two of these owned a tract of land on which they were built had somewhat of an influence. The town did not spread and neither sidewalks nor shell paved streets add to its accessibility. The square is grown up with brush and weeds enlivened by a first class frog concert from the enclosed ponds. The cypress logs rafted down the river feed a first class lumber and wood work establishment. The oyster boats Supply two cove canneries. Strike out cypress and oyster and the city is the unrealized substance of things hoped for and the

weak evidence of things not seen. "Before the war” it was a cotton port. The waves have shallowed the entrance so that only boats of light draft can come in. This city is so clear a sample of a “has been” and of a finished boom that a rhyme might not be out of place. “Behold! right here is the city of Yawn On the banks of a river that’s slow. The “some time or other” shines like the dawn While the wait awhile and go easysgrow.” “It is placed on the flat of what's the use, In the province of let her slide. It is the hove of the listless “I don’t care” Where the put it offs all abide.” 8. P. Thompson. Apalachicola, Fla. February 5, 1903."