IN THE SUNNY SOUTH. 37 



I studied years ago how to get all the good out of life without paying its penalty, 

 and I think you did the same thing for both of us are phenomenal in health and 

 vigor. I have been a dutiful son of old Mother Nature, and the ancient lady has 

 treated me tenderly." He is still diligent in the U. S. land office at the age of 66. 



On one of our trips abroad Capt. Southgate's steamer Newberne, which ran 

 semi-monthly between Norfolk and Newberne, N. C., via Washington, he intro- 

 duced us to a venerable supervising inspector of steam vessels named Marshall 

 Parks, who lived on Freemason street, Norfolk, Va. He must have been eighty 

 years old then, and he died afterwards at ninety. He told us a story which modern 

 men of business who stand on their record have never heard how he and 

 Cornelius Vanderbilt were partners away back on Albermarle Sound and under- 

 taking to raise sweet potatoes, called "Harmon" (so named for the original 

 producer), and ship them to the New York and Baltimore markets when dug. 

 They owned a freighting vessel and were all ready to sail when a terrible storm 

 came up and closed in the inlet and shut them out of their tide-water trucking 

 business. As a shift Cornelius began running a large steam ferry from the New 

 York battery to Staten Island, made big money, and not long after went into rail- 

 roading. Somewhere about 1853 he got into possession of the New York Central 

 and ordered the nurses and baby wagons out of St. John Park, built up the entire 

 square with a freight depot and terminal down town, and warned the old knicker- 

 bockers to move up town. Rutherford Stuyvesant was included. He became a 

 stockholder of Forest and Stream about twenty years afterwards. So did A. 

 Augustus Low, the son of the great tea merchant; J. U. Gregory, of Quebec, and 

 Oliver Optic, of Boston. This is an interesting fact to readers of my reminiscences. 



Time was in the 70's and 80's up to 1885 when I was a good enough bell- 

 wether for sportsmen to follow when I gave any of them a cue, and tote them 

 to a high mountain, like Moses was led aloft to survey the surrounding forest. 

 There is no such a delectable elevation as Mt. Pisgah, which stands on George 

 Vanderbilt's demesne among the Appalachians. 



