''what shall I EAT?" 193 



let us be understood as including every new-settled portion 

 of the State, either in the present or in the near future ; 

 for a Florida town, once properly started, does not retro- 

 grade, it keeps on improving just as our own particular 

 little town has done ; so that whenever a new-comer finds 

 some accustomed comfort missing he may take refuge in 

 the knowledge that it will soon turn up. 



Ten years ago there was only one weekly boat that 

 came steaming up the Ochlawaha from Jacksonville, and 

 carried all the groceries and varied stock for the stores 

 located all along the two hundred and fifty miles of its 

 route ; so you will readily see that no one town could hope 

 to monopolize any great portion of the freight of a small 

 boat on its weekly trip. That was one reason Leesburg 

 was not better supplied at that time ; in fact, the major 

 part of its stock in trade was hauled in wagons for thirty- 

 five miles over the sandy roads, Ocala being the main 

 depot of supply. Another reason we have given, why 

 should the stores keep what the people did not "call for?" 

 The large majority were of a class that had been used to 

 "roughing it;" they had come either from the northern 

 part of the State or else from other thinly settled portions 

 of the South; a few families of culture and education 

 were scattered here and there, the pioneers of the tide that 

 flowed in swiftly behind them, but they were too few in 

 number to make any change in the stores. 



One year later, however, "coming events cast their 

 shadows before," and instead of finding one in ten of the 

 articles desired, we mounted to four in ten. It became 

 possible to buy a spool of silk, to match skirt braid ; to 

 find currants, raisins, tapioca, Graham flour, buckwheat, 

 cheese, and like classes of goods, that the town had never 

 seen before. The weekly boat had become a tri-weekly 

 in the orange and cotton season, and a semi- weekly all the 



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