AT SAUFORD. 209 



the town, but they are now beginning to engage in 

 other enterprises and the place bids fair to soon re- 

 cover its wonted activity of the "days before the 

 freeze." 



While the steamer, which is two hours behind time, 

 is discharging and taking on freight, I take a stroll 

 about several of the streets. The sidewalks I note 

 are mostly of comminuted shells, and inquiry devel- 

 ops that they come from two shell mounds, each 

 about three miles distant, one near the head of the 

 lake, the other near the railway bridge above men- 

 tioned. The shells are seemingly all fresh water spe- 

 cies, mainly of the genera Ampullaria and Paludina. 



The small buzzards or "carrion crows" are com- 

 mon on the house-tops of Sanford, while ground 

 doves are almost as plentiful in the streets as are 

 English sparrows in the northern towns. 



The steamer takes on many immense bales of pal- 

 metto fiber, which has been separated from the trunks 

 of the cabbage palmetto by a large factory located in 

 Sanford near the river. Numerous barges are un- 

 loading at this factory sections of the upper fifteen or 

 twenty feet of the trunks of this tree. Leaving San- 

 ford the steamer makes its way across to Enterprise, 

 where, after discharging a miscellaneous lot of freight 

 and loading the household furniture of two or three 

 families of negroes, it starts on the return trip. 



At Blue Springs Landing, which is but twelve miles 

 from ISTew Smyrna, an important town on the Atlan- 



14 



