canoe, bringing with him a deer, which he has killed. I have this moment
returned from a ramble with my host through a hammock, he looking for his
cows, and I, unsuccessfully, for a thicket of orange-trees. He is
something of a florist, and gathered for me, as we went, some of the
forest plants, which were in bloom. "We have flowers here," said he,
"every month in the year."

I have used the word hammock, which here, in Florida, has a peculiar
meaning. A hammock is a spot covered with a growth of trees which require
a richer soil than the pine, such as the oak, the mulberry, the gum-tree,
the hickory, &c. The greater part of East Florida consists of pine
barrens--a sandy level, producing the long leaved pine and the dwarf
palmetto, a low plant, with fan-like leaves, and roots of a prodigious
size. The hammock is a kind of oasis, a verdant and luxuriant island in
the midst of these sterile sands, which make about nine-tenths of the soil
of East Florida. In the hammocks grow the wild lime, the native orange,
both sour and bitter-sweet, and the various vines and gigantic creepers of
the country. The hammocks are chosen for plantations; here the cane is
cultivated, and groves of the sweet orange planted. But I shall say more
of Florida hereafter, when I have seen more of it. Meantime let me speak
of my journey hither.

I left Charleston on the 30th of March, in one of the steamers which ply
between that city and Savannah. These steamers are among the very best
that float--quiet, commodious, clean, fresh as if just built, and
furnished with civil and ready-handed waiters. We passed along the narrow
and winding channels which divide the broad islands of South Carolina from
the main-land--islands famed for the rice culture, and particularly for
the excellent cotton with long fibres, named the sea-island cotton. Our
fellow-passengers were mostly planters of these islands, and their