Читать книгу Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 12, No. 33, December, 1873 - Various - Страница 5

A DAY'S SPORT IN EAST FLORIDA

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Through these green tents, by eldest Nature dressed,

He roamed, content alike with man and beast.

Where darkness found him, he lay glad at night:

There the red morning touched him with its light.


R.W. EMERSON

On the 18th of February we arrived in the yacht off Mosquito Inlet about sunrise, and as the tide served our pilot took us in over the bar, which happened to be smooth at the time, and we anchored just above the junction of the Halifax and Hillsboro Rivers. Rivers they are called by the Floridians, but are long stretches of salt water lying parallel with the coast, and separated from the sea by a sandy beach of a mile in width, which is covered with a growth of pitch-pine and palmetto scrub. In New York and New Jersey such waters are called bays, and on the coast of Carolina they are sounds. They furnish a convenient boat-navigation for the people, who in consequence do most of their traveling by water.

Here we found lying at anchor a couple of large Eastern schooners: they were waiting for cargoes of live-oak, which was being cut by a large force of men in the employ of the Swifts, a firm that supplies all this timber for the American navy. A lighthouse is much needed here, the entrance being narrow, with only eight or ten feet of water at high tide. The Victoria followed us in, and we had not been long at anchor when a canoe came down the river under sail, and rounding to alongside, a tall young man in white duck jacket and trousers stepped on board, and accosted our pilot: "How are you, Pecetti? So you are taking up my trade?"

Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 12, No. 33, December, 1873

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