208 WALKS ABOUT TALLAHASSEE. 
the country, coincident with a change in the 
nature of the soil, from white sand to red 
clay ; a change indescribably exhilarating to 
a New Englander who had been living, if only 
for two months, in a country without hills. 
How good it was to see the land rising, 
though never so gently, as it stretched away 
toward the horizon! My spirits rose with 
it. By and by we passed extensive hillside 
plantations, on which little groups of ne- 
groes, men and women, were at work. I 
seemed to see the old South of which I had 
read and dreamed, a South not in the least 
like anything to be found in the wilds of 
southern and eastern Florida; a land of cot- 
ton, and, better still, a land of Southern 
people, instead of Northern tourists and set- 
tlers. And when we stopped at a thrifty- 
looking village, with neat, homelike houses, 
open grounds, and lordly shade-trees, I 
found myself saying under my breath, “ Now, 
then, we are getting back into God’s coun- 
try.” 
As for Tallahassee itself, it was exactly 
what I had hoped to find it: a typical South- 
ern town; not a camp in the woods, nor an 
old city metamorphosed into a fashionable 
