160 
AMEBIOAT^ AaEIOULTURIST, 
[April, 
Early Truck from Florida- 
IFE in the South has its peculiar 
attractions. A few years ago, while 
awaiting in a hotel near the river for 
the arrival of a steamboat at Jackson¬ 
ville, Fla., the writer amused himself 
by studying the company, made up of 
other travelers, of northern invalids 
settled in town, and natives of the 
soil. One of these was a lean, wither¬ 
ed old man, whose two remaining yel¬ 
low fangs were exposed every few 
moments by his mirthful cackle, 
his sense of humor being so 
strong that he 
laughed at every 
second rernark of 
the by-standers. 
He was airily at¬ 
tired in a faded calico shirt and canvas trousers, 
his left foot swathed in bandages; and in 
place of his right leg was a timber contrivance, 
mended with an iron in the middle where it had 
been broken. His hand gripped a tremendous 
twisted cane of grape-vine, with a crooked handle. 
One of the loungers having invited his party to 
drink, he stumped forward with the rest, and re¬ 
marked to the bartender as he set out the whiskey 
bottle, “a little quinine in mine, Joe.” Half a 
teaspoonful of white powder was dropped into his 
tumbler, which he drowned with whiskey and 
tossing it off, stumped back to his seat. My com¬ 
panion, a native of the place, remarked: “Shark 
Simple ” prefers quinine to sugar in his drink, 
considering it a preventive of ague, and they keep 
the quinine for his sole use. It is such a good ex¬ 
cuse for drinking, that he spends all of his time 
here, when not sleeping or taking his meals. 
You’d never think, to look at him, that that old 
fellow originated the business of sending truck to 
New York, would you ? But he did. He was a 
fisherman until he lost his leg by a shark when 
his boat was capsized. Then he settled on some 
fine land he owned and raised a great abundance 
of excellent vegetables. A Captain of his ac¬ 
quaintance happening to be returning to New 
York without a cargo, “ Shark Simple ” got him to 
load his schooner with his surplus truck. The 
The climate is specially favorable to this industry, 
being never very cold and seldom extremely hot. 
The warm days are cooled by the night breezes 
from the ocean and gulf. Occasionally frosts in¬ 
jure the orange harvest, but not the crops under 
ground or close to its surface. Spring and autumn 
are practically unknown; summer occupies two- 
thirds of the year, and the rainy season fills in the 
rest, giving renewed fertility to the earth. The 
crops are about two months earlier than in the 
vicinity of New York, and a supply for local con¬ 
sumption is raised the year round. The oldnegress’ 
cry of “ fresh strawberries ” has roused us on a 
Christmas morning, and on a New Year’s day walk 
we have seen the bare-footed field laborer in his 
shirt sleeves, mopping the sweat from his stream¬ 
ing brow.—While Florida is best known by its 
orange crop, the same forces that have given that 
industry its impetus, could be most profitably de¬ 
voted to truck-raising. As yet oranges, and in a 
lesser degree other tropical fruits, hold the place of 
honor, and truck-farming remains in lower esteem 
and is in less energetic and enterprising hands. 
The fertile soil is mainly in the northern and 
central sections, and as a rule back from the rivers, 
which are dark tortuous streams, flowing through 
drowned bottom lands, waste morasses, and cypress 
swamps, often lined with palisades of cane brake 
as impenetrable as the stockade of an African 
kraal. Back of the swamps, on the rising ground, 
the accumulated vegetable deposits of centuries 
have created spots of unsurpassed fertility. You 
might travel years on the sluggish tide of rivers 
like the St. Johns, amid the melancholy fens and 
forests coming down into and casting their dark 
shadows on the water on either side, without 
dreaming of the wealth in the soil but a little way 
off.—The natives classify Florida land as “ high 
hummock,” “low hummock,” “swamp,” “sa¬ 
vanna,” “pine barren,” “bottom land,” etc.— 
High hummock is timbered, and when cleared 
every inch can be farmed. Low hummock, also 
timbered, is liable to tidal overflow, but when 
dyked or drained, makes some of the best sugar¬ 
cane land in the State. The savanna is the meadow 
land along the smaller streams, needing drainage 
and protection against tides, but is very rich. 
Marsh savannas are usually drained for rice and 
sugar cane. The sandy soil of the coast and the 
SHARK SIMPLE. 
NEW tear’s DAT IN FLORIDA. 
Drawn and Engraved for the American Agriculturist. 
result justified his anticipations, and he is now well 
to do, little as his appearance suggests it.”—The 
business thus began has grown into an important 
Florida industry, and hundreds of farmers, who 
do not take quinine in their whiskey, contribute to 
New York’s luxuries, and fill their own pockets. 
When we once asked a Floridian what was the 
most important business of the State, his reply 
was : “ Well, next to boarding invalids, it is farm¬ 
ing early truck for you folks up North to eat.”— 
pine barrens of the interior, are valueless. Truck¬ 
farming is chiefly on the high hummocks. From 
these a small fleet of steamers now carry several 
sorts of vegetables to New York, six to eight 
weeks in advance of the home-grown—a striking 
contrast to “ Shark Simple’s ” little schooner load. 
He is dead now, but a small army of tillers follow 
his example. They commonly farm in a limited 
way, and there are few farms that we would con¬ 
sider of great magnitude ; but the extreme fertili¬ 
ty of the soil produces a large yield from a small 
area, with comparatively little labor, and that is 
cheap. The owner of a hundred cleared acres Is 
considered rich, as riches go in Florida. Instead 
of shipping to Northern brokers on individual ac¬ 
count, as formerly, the business is now systematiz¬ 
ed. Certain large New York houses have agencies 
in Florida, that take the stock at a fixed price from 
CHRISTMAS strawberries. 
the truckers who ship it to Jacksonville, or other 
points, and receive their pay of the agents, and 
have no further care or risk. Along the St. Johns 
river one sees queer old tumble down wharves in 
the most unexpected places, often in absolute soli- 
titude, sometimes with a dilapidated shed or 
miserable cabin near by. From one of these a 
road, soon lost among the oak trees bearded with 
streamers of gray moss, leads back to a truck-farm, 
often not a great distance, but sometimes a day’s 
journey away. At other points there is not even 
a wharf; the road ends at the water, the steamer 
receiving its freight over a gang plank. At these 
places, a boy perched in a look-out tree announces 
the coming steamer, whose smoke he can see at a 
long distance. At the wharves, a flag run up gives 
the notification.—The truck-farmer leads a dreary, 
uneventful life, varied only by hunting and an oc¬ 
casional trip to town. Where there is a stretch of 
good soil, quite a number cluster; but broken as 
the country is by swamps and sand barrens, such 
neighborhoods are not too numerous ; more fre¬ 
quently the tiller lives alone, with miles of hard 
travel between his house and the next neighbor. 
Working by day and sleeping by night is the mo¬ 
notonous programme year’s end to year’s end. 
During many years past, schemes have been pro¬ 
posed for draining the “Everglades ” in the south¬ 
ern part of the State—a vast mysterious swamp, 
almost one of the wonders of the world. There, 
over an area of three thousand six hundred square 
miles, the water is one to six feet deep, studded 
with islands ranging from a mere dot in the marsh, 
to hummocks of hundreds of acres, overgrown 
with thickets of vines and shrubs. These are 
astonishingly fertile, and the marsh itself is deep 
with the richest vegetable and alluvial deposits. 
If ever drained, this now waste expanse will sup¬ 
ply farming-land enough to flood the Northern 
markets with early truck, and make strawberries 
and green peas as common and cheap in mid-winter 
as they are now in summer—as common we may 
say, as oranges have already become. 
A glance at a recent map shows that railways are 
being rapidly extended through the interior of Flor¬ 
ida. These will bring many new truking regions 
into quick and easy communication with the ship¬ 
ping points, and very soon they will be about as 
near New York in point of time and freight expense 
as was southern New Jersey only a few years ago. 
Montreal may soon enjoy fresh winter garden 
products direct from our Southern Peninsula, 
