/ID^ Minter (Barben 



angle and curve of this Creole coast, from 

 Tampa around to Bay St. Louis, has its 

 story of strange arrivals and romantic 

 disappearances — a current of picturesque 

 legend doubtless strongly tinctured with 

 truth. 



One feature of our domain, rarely 

 observable elsewhere, is the blending of 

 savage nature with the most advanced re- 

 sults of landscape culture. Two hundred 

 years have sHpped back into shadow since 

 civilized man first appeared hereabout; 

 but before that, possibly for many 

 centuries, Indians had the good taste to 

 regard our airy white bluffs with favor, 

 coming in summer to camp all around 

 under the Hve-oaks, magnolias, and liquid- 

 amber trees, and to bathe in the salt surf. 

 Numerous plants not native to the spot 

 have been brought by white man and red 

 from afar and planted. Since then, dur- 

 ing periods throughout which the whole 

 coast was abandoned, these representa- 

 tives of an alien flora have slipped out of 

 the closes and crept away year by year 

 into the woods, across glade and marsh, 

 15 



