A FLORIDA SKETCH-BOOK. 
IN THE FLAT—WOODS. 
In approaching Jacksonville by rail, the 
traveler rides hour after hour through seem- 
ingly endless pine barrens, otherwise known 
as low pine-woods and _ flat-woods, till he 
wearies of the sight. It would be hard, he 
thinks, to imagine a region more unwhole- 
some looking and uninteresting, more poy- 
erty-stricken and God-forsaken, in its entire 
aspect. Surely, men who would risk life in 
behalf of such a country deserved to win 
their cause. 
Monotonous as the flat-woods were, how- 
ever, and malarious as they looked, — arid 
wastes and stretches of stagnant water flying 
past the car window in perpetual alternation, 
— I was impatient to get into them. They 
were a world the like of which I had 
never seen; and wherever I went in eastern 
Florida, I made it one of my earliest concerns 
to seek them out. 
