ON THE ST. AUGUSTINE ROAD. 159 



Back and forth he went through the long 

 furrow after the patient ox, the hens and 

 chickens following. No doubt they thought 

 the work was all for their benefit. Farther 

 away, a man and two women were hoeing. 

 The family deserved to prosper, I said to 

 myself, as I lay under a big magnolia-tree 

 (just beginning to open its large white 

 flowers) and idly enjoyed the scene. And 

 it was just here, by the bye, that I solved 

 an interesting etymological puzzle, to wit, 

 the origin and precise meaning of the word 

 "bay gall," a word which the visitor often 

 hears upon the lips of Florida people. An 

 old hunter in Smyrna, when I questioned 

 him about it, told me that it meant a swampy 

 piece of wood, and took its origin, he had 

 always supposed, from the fact that bay- 

 trees and gall-bushes commonly grew in 

 such places. A Tallahassee gentleman 

 agreed with this explanation, and promised 

 to bring home some gall-berries the next 

 time he came across any, that I might see 

 what they were ; but the berries were never 

 forthcoming, and I was none the wiser, till, 

 on one of my last trips up the St. Augustine 

 road, as I stood under the large magnolia 



