98 UP THE ST. JOIIXS RIVER. 



our day to a close. These hats arc being manufactured 

 and sold in immense numbers. One lady Madame 

 Oliveros who has the most extensive establishment, 

 employs fifty women, and her sales in one season, I was 

 told, amounted to seven thousand. 



We left St. Augustine with mixed emotions ; while 

 we had received the utmost kindness and hospitality 

 from private individuals, hitherto strangers to us, and 

 were delighted at the quaint old-fashioned town, and 

 charmed with the warm, pleasant climate tempered by a 

 bracing sea-breeze, we had nothing pleasant to remember 

 of those whose duty it was to look out for the comfort 

 of guests ; and W T C felt that until good hotels, large 

 enough and well enough conducted to furnish some 

 comforts, could be added to its present stock, and until 

 some method of getting there free from the discomfort, 

 anxiety, and danger of the Tocoi railroad can be de 

 vised, the invalid should avoid, and the pleasure-seeker 

 ilee from it. 



Our trip to Tocoi was made in the same comfortless 

 boxes, and a good hard rain was added to the previous 

 discomforts. We got over without serious accident, but 

 the pleasure of the rest of the trip was alloyed by the 

 illness of some of the more delicate, brought on by the 

 hardship of the trip. 



At Tocoi we found the Hattie awaiting us a small 

 steamer, but necessarily so, as the rest of our trip 

 was to be made in narrow streams and shoal water. 

 We were very comfortable on board of her. The table 

 Avas good, quarters clean, and the captain Charley 

 Brock a good fellow. Our first stopping place was 

 Pilatka, ten miles beyond, and here we remained until 

 some time in the night, to enable us to pass over the 



