THE OLD SUGAR MILL. 103 



ancient settlement of New Smyrna, but I 

 had forgotten the fact, and was thankful to 

 receive a description of the place, as well as 

 of the road thither, a rather blind road, 

 my informant said, with no houses at which 

 to inquire the way. 



Two or three mornings afterward, I set 

 out in the direction indicated. If the route 

 proved to be half as vague as my good lady's 

 account of it had sounded, I should probably 

 never find the mill ; but the walk would be 

 pleasant, and that, after all, was the prin- 

 cipal consideration, especially to a man who 

 just then cared more, or thought he did, for 

 a new bird or a new song than for an indefi- 

 nite number of eighteenth-century relics. 



For the first half-mile the road follows 

 one of the old Turnbull canals dug through 

 the coquina stone which underlies the soil 

 hereabout ; then, after crossing the railway, 

 it strikes to the left through a piece of truly 

 magnificent wood, known as the cotton-shed 

 hammock, because, during the war, cotton 

 was stored here in readiness for the block- 

 ade runners of Mosquito Inlet. Better than 

 anything I had yet seen, this wood answered 

 to my idea of a semi-tropical forest: live- 



