Journey To The Savage Planet Repulsive Tree

[Roxanna Fitting]

Ofthe people of the States that I have now passed, I best like theGeorgians. They have charming manners, and their dwellings are mostly largerand better than those of adjacent States. However costly or ornamentaltheir homes or their manners, they do not, like those of the New Englander,appear as the fruits of intense and painful sacrifice and training, butare entirely divested of artificial weights and measures, and seem to pervadeand twine about their characters as spontaneous growths with the durabilityand charm of living nature.

In particular, Georgians, even the commonest, have a most charminglycordial way of saying to strangers, as they proceed on their journey, "Iwish you well, sir." The negroes of Georgia, too, are extremely mannerlyand polite, and appear always to be delighted to find opportunity for obliginganybody.

Athens contains many beautiful residences. I never before saw so muchabout a home that was so evidently done for beauty only, although thisis by no means a universal characteristic of Georgian homes. Nearly allwell-to-do farmers' families in Georgia and Tennessee spin and weave theirown cloth. This work is almost all done by the mothers and daughters andconsumes much of their time.

The traces of war are not only apparent on the broken fields, burntfences, mills, and woods ruthlessly slaughtered, but also on the countenancesof the people. A few years after a forest has been burned another generationof bright and happy trees arises, in purest, freshest vigor; only the oldtrees, wholly or half dead, bear marks of the calamity. So with the peopleof this war-field. Happy, unscarred, and unclouded youth is growing uparound the aged, half-consumed, and fallen parents, who bear in sad measurethe ineffaceable marks of the farthest-reaching and most infernal of allcivilized calamities.

Since the commencement of my floral pilgrimage I have seen much thatis not only new, but altogether unallied, unacquainted with the plantsof my former life. I have seen magnolias, tupelo, live-oak, Kentucky oak,tillandsia, long-leafed pine, palmetto, schrankia, and whole forests ofstrange trees and vine-tied thickets of blooming shrubs; whole meadowfulsof magnificent bamboo and lakefuls of lilies, all new to me; yet I stillpress eagerly on to Florida as the special home of the tropical plantsI am looking for, and I feel sure I shall not be disappointed.

The same day on which the money arrived I took passage on the steamshipSylvan Shore for Fernandina, Florida. The daylight part of this sail alongthe coast of Florida was full of novelty, and by association awakened memoriesof my Scottish days at Dunbar on the Firth of Forth.

On board I had civilized conversation with a Southern planter on topicsthat are found floating in the mind of every white man down herewhohas a single thought. I also met a brother Scotchman, who was especiallyinteresting and had some ideas outside of Southern politics. Altogethermy halfway and night on board the steamer were pleasant, and carried mepast a very sickly, entangled, overflowed, and unwalkable piece of forest.

It is pretty well known that a short geological time ago the ocean coveredthe sandy level margin, extending from the foot of the Alleghanies to thepresent coast-line, and in receding left many basins for lakes and swamps.The land is still encroaching on the sea, and it does so not evenly, ina regular line, but in fringing lagoons and inlets and dotlike coral islands.

It is on the coast strip of isles and peninsulas that sea-island cottonis grown. Some of these small islands are afloat, anchored only by theroots of mangroves and rushes. For a few hours our steamer sailed in theopen sea, exposed to its waves, but most of the time she threaded herway among the lagoons, thehome of alligators and countless ducksand waders.

October 15.To-day, at last, I reached Florida, the so-called"Land of Flowers," that I had so long waited for, wondering ifafter all my longings and prayers would be in vain, and I should die withouta glimpse of the flowery Canaan. But here it is, at the distance of a fewyards!--a flat, watery, reedy coast, with clumps of mangrove and forestsof moss-dressed, strange trees appearing low in the distance. The steamerfinds her way among the reedy islands like a duck, and I step on a ricketywharf. A few steps more take me to a rickety town, Fernandina. I discovera baker, buy some bread, and without asking a single question, make forthe shady, gloomy groves.

In visiting Florida in dreams, of either day or night, I always camesuddenly on a close forest of trees, every one in flower, and bent downand entangled to network by luxuriant, bright-blooming vines, and overall a flood of bright sunlight. But such was not the gateby whichI entered the promised land. Salt marshes, belonging more to the sea thanto the land; with groves here and there, green and unflowered, sunk tothe shoulders in sedges and rushes; with trees farther back, ill definedin their boundary, and instead of rising in hilly waves and swellings,stretching inland in low water-like levels.

We were all discharged by the captain of the steamer without breakfast,and, after meeting and examining the new plants that crowded about me,I threw down my press and little bag beneath a thicket, where there wasa dry spot on some broken heaps of grass and roots, something like a desertedmuskrat house, and applied myself to my bread breakfast. Everything inearth and sky had an impression of strangeness; not a mark of friendlyrecognition, not a breath, not a spirit whisper of sympathy came from anythingabout me, and of course I was lonely. I lay on my elbow eating my bread,gazing, and listening to the profound strangeness.

While thus engaged I was startled from these gatherings of melancholyby a rustling sound in the rushes behind me. Had my mind been in health,and my body not starved, I should only have turned calmly to the noise.But in this half-starved, unfriended condition I could have no healthythought, and I at once believed that the sound came from an alligator.I fancied I could feel the stroke of his long notched tail and could seehis big jaws and rows of teeth, closing with a springy snap on me, as Ihad seen in pictures.

Well, I don't know the exact measure of my fright either in time orpain, but when I did come to a knowledge of the truth, my man-eating alligatorbecame a tall white crane, hand-some as a minister from spirit land-- "onlythat." I was ashamed and tried to excuse myself on account of Bonaventureanxiety and hunger.

Florida is so watery and vine-tied that pathless wanderings are noteasily possible in any direction. I started to cross the State by a gaphewn for the locomotive, walking sometimes between the rails, steppingfrom tie to tie, or walking on the strip of sand at the sides, gazing intothe mysterious forest, Nature's own. It is impossible to write the dimmestpicture of plant grandeur so redundant, unfathomable.

Short was the measure of my walk to-day. A new, canelike grass, or biglily, or gorgeous flower belonging to tree or vine, would catch my attention,and I would throw down my bag and press and splash through the coffee-brownwater for specimens. Frequently I sank deeper and deeper until compelledto turn back and make the attempt in another and still another place. OftentimesI was tangled in a labyrinth of armed vines like a fly in a spider-web.At all times, whether wading or climbing a tree for specimens of fruit,I was overwhelmed with the vastness and unapproachableness of the greatguarded sea of sunny plants.

Magnolia grandifloraI had seen in Georgia; but its home, itsbetter land, is here. Its large dark-green leaves, glossy bright aboveand rusty brown beneath, gleam and mirror the sunbeams most gloriouslyamong countless flower-heaps of the climbing, smothering vines. It is brightalso in fruit and more tropical in form and expression than the orange.It speaks itself a prince among its fellows.

Occasionally, I came to a little strip of open sand, planted with pine(Pinus palustrisorCubensis).Even these spots were mostlywet, though lighted with free sunshine, and adorned with purple liatris,and orange-coloredOsmunda cinnamomea.But the grandest discoveryof this great wild day was the palmetto.

I was meeting so many strange plants that I was much excited, makingmany stops to get specimens. But I could not force my way far through theswampy forest, although so tempting and full of promise. Regardless ofwater snakes or insects, I endeavored repeatedly to force a way throughthe tough vine-tangles, but seldom succeeded in getting farther than afew hundred yards.

It was while feeling sad to think that I wasonly walking on theedge of the vast wood, that I caught sight of the first palmetto in a grassyplace, standing almost alone. A few magnolias were near it, and bald cypresses,but it was not shaded by them. They tell us that plants are perishable,soulless creatures, that only man is immortal, etc.; but this, I think,is something that we know very nearly nothing about. Anyhow, this palmwas indescribably impressive and told me grander things than I ever gotfrom human priest.

This vegetable has a plain gray shaft, round as a broom-handle, anda crown of varnished channeled leaves. It is a plainer plant than the humblestof Wisconsin oaks; but, whether rocking and rustling in the wind or poisedthoughtful and calm in the sunshine, it has a power of expression not excelledby any plant high or low that I have met in my whole walk thus far.

This, my first specimen, was not very tall, only about twenty-five feethigh, with fifteen or twenty leaves, arching equally and evenly all around.Each leaf was about ten feet in length,the blade four feet, the stalksix The leaves are channeled like half-open clams and are highly polished,so that they reflect the sunlight like glass. The undeveloped leaves onthe top stand erect, closely folded, all together forming an oval crownover which the tropic light is poured and reflected from its slanting mirrorsin sparks and splinters and long-rayed stars.

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