20 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 



the large house opening to view, across his immense plantation, 

 I anticipated a good dinner with as much pleasure as I ever 

 experienced. 



AU hands returned alive ; refreshments and good care have 

 made us all well again, unless it be the stiffness occasioned in 

 my left leg, by nearly six weeks of daily wading through 

 swamps and salt marshes, or scrambling through the vilest 

 thickets of scrubly live oaks and palmitoes that appear to have 

 been created for no other purpose but to punish us for our 

 sins. 



Readers of the following account who have visited 

 eastern Florida may conclude that Audubon was not a 

 good prophet, but probably at that early day no one 

 could have made a better forecast of the future : 



The land, if land it can be called, is generally so very sandy 

 that nothing can be raised upon it. The swamps are the only 

 spots that afford a fair chance for cultivation ; the swamps, 

 then, are positively the only places where plantations are to 

 be found. These plantations are even few in number; along 

 the coast from St. Augustine to Cape Carnaveral, there are 

 about a dozen. These, with the exception of two or three, are 

 yet young plantations. General Hernandez's, J. J. Bulow's, 

 and Mr. Durham's are the strongest, and perhaps the best. 

 Sugar cane will prosper, and doubtless do well ; but the labour 

 necessary to produce a good crop, is great ! great ! ! great ! ! ! 

 Between the swamps of which I now speak, and which are found 

 along the margin laying west of the sea inlet, that divides the 

 mam land from the Atlantic, to the river St. John of the in- 

 terior of the peninsula, nothing exists but barren pine lands 

 of poor timber, and immense savannas, mostly overflowed, and 

 all unfit for cultivation. That growth, which in any other 

 country is called underwood, scarcely exists ; the land being 

 covered with low palmitoes, or very low, thickly branched 

 dwarf oaks, almost impenetrable to man. The climate is of 

 a most unsettled nature, at least at this season. The thermom- 



