THE OLD SUGAR MILL. 103 
ancient settlement of New Smyrna, but I 
had forgotten the fact, and was thankful to 
receive a description of the place, as well as 
of the road thither,—a rather blind road, 
my informant said, with no houses at which 
to inquire the way. 
Two or three mornings afterward, I set 
out in the direction indicated. If the route 
proved to be half as vague as my good lady’s 
account of it had sounded, I should probably 
never find the mill; but the walk would be 
pleasant, and that, after all, was the prin- 
cipal consideration, especially to a man who 
just then cared more, or thought he didyfor 
a new bird or a new song than for an indefi- 
nite number of eighteenth-century relics. La 
For the first half-mile the road follows 
one of the old Turnbull canals dug through 
the coquina stone which underlies the soil _ 
hereabout ; then, after crossing the railway, 
it strikes to the left through a piece of truly 
magnificent wood, known as the cotton-shed 
hammock, because, during the war, cotton 
was stored here in readiness for the block- 
ade runners of Mosquito Inlet. Better than 
anything I had yet seen, this wood answered 
to my idea of a semi-tropical forest: live- 
