ON THE ST. AUGUSTINE ROAD. 159 
Back and forth he went through the long 
furrow after the patient ox, the hens and 
chickens following. No doubt they thought 
the work was all for their benefit. Farther 
away, a man and two women were hoeing. 
The family deserved to prosper, I said to 
myself, as I lay under a big magnolia-tree 
(just beginning to open its large white 
flowers) and idly enjoyed the scene. And 
it was just here, by the bye, that I solved 
an interesting etymological puzzle, to wit, 
the origin and precise meaning of the word 
“baygall,” —a word which the visitor often 
hears upon the lips of Florida people. An 
old hunter in Smyrna, when I questioned 
him about it, told me that it meant a swampy 
piece of wood, and took its origin, he had 
always supposed, from the fact that bay- 
trees and gall-bushes commonly grew in 
such places. A Tallahassee gentleman 
agreed with this explanation, and promised 
to bring home some gall-berries the next 
time he came across any, that I might see 
what they were ; but the berries were never 
forthcoming, and I was none the wiser, till, 
on one of my last trips up the St. Augustine 
road, as I stood under the large magnolia 
