CRUISING ALONG SHORE. 207 



night, when, after keeping silent all day, he extended 

 his hand with the remark &quot;he guessed twas all right.&quot; 

 About fifty-five miles from Harvey s is Turkey creek, 

 where is the only banana plantation of any extent on the 

 river. The huge plants, with their broad green leaves 

 an d^ curiously formed fruit and flowers, were beautiful 

 and picturesque. They contrasted favorably with the 

 stunted, frost-bitten plants I had seen on the St. Johns 

 in December. This lagoon is ahead of all northern 

 Florida in everything fruit, climate and game. Oranges 

 grow here in three years from the seed ; ahead of St. 

 Johns by at least two years. There is almost no frost, 

 and no disease peculiar to the region, while game of all 

 descriptions line its shores. We spent two days and 

 nights wind-bound at St. Sebastian creek, during which 

 time we visited the coast near the place where, in 1710, 

 a fleet of Spanish galleons were driven ashore and lost. 

 We found no pistareens, which Eomans tells us were 

 washed up as late as 1770, but found plenty of deer and 

 bear tracks, and pelican and ducks upon the river side 

 without number. The sea grape and cocoa plum grow 

 here in profusion. The former is a stout shrub, rapidly 

 increasing in size as it nears the tropics, with a broad, 

 heart-shaped, satin leaf. The fruit of the cocoa plum is 

 about as large as the common plum, with a white flesh 

 and red skin. It has a pleasant taste. The high sand- 

 ridge, separating river from ocean, is less than three 

 hundred yards across here, and thickly covered with 

 scrub palmetto and gay colored flowers. Standing on 

 its highest portion I can trace the sparkling length of 

 Indian river and look upon the waters of the Atlantic 

 at the same moment. For seventy-five miles one can 

 hear the ocean surf as he sails upon the river. The high 



