144 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH. 



" Then it will be love," said Poke, with his blandest 

 bow to the lady in question. 



" More likely hate," said the planter's daughter, her 

 dark skin flushing at the Doctor's speech. " Tell us a 

 tale of woman ; we have the chase in reality every day." 



"As you will woman forever. Throw on another 

 log, boys." 



The fire belched up a million sparks to the deep sky. 

 The flames started out afresh, and Jackson, putting his 

 pipe in its buckskin cover, and drawing himself up by his 

 elbows to the convenient support of a log, where he could 

 face the whole of his auditors, in a rough, though deep, 

 voice, and with occasional gesture, as he warmed with 

 his theme, spoke in the following romantic and poetical 

 style: &!,' 



" Three times, since the Spaniard came to this country, 

 has a century rolled its wheel over the Floridas, each 

 time burying a generation of oaks, that mature and fall 

 once in a v hundred years, each time obliterating two 

 generations of man more transient than the trees of the 

 hummocks. 



" Now, the land is a common, every-day reality. The 

 planter eats his corn-bread in his cabin ; the negro toils 

 at his daily task ; the Indian hunts in the pine-land, at 

 peace with the settler ; and if there is anything of the 

 poetry or romance of life in the land, it is to be found ha 

 the tropical luxuriance of vegetation, and the beautiful 

 life of the everglade, and not in the noble daring of man. 



" Then, in the Floridas, there was romance in thought 



