Palmetto-Leaves
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Paperback
(TheClassics.us, Sept. 12, 2013)
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1873 edition. Excerpt: ... jHE little wharf at Mandarin is a tiny abutment into the great blue sea of the St. John's waters, five miles in width. The opposite shores gleam out blue in the vanishing distance; and the small wharf is built so far out, that one feels there as in a boat at sea. Here, trundled down on the truck along a descending tram-way, come the goods which at this point await shipment on some of the many steamboats which ply back and forth upon the river; and here are landed by almost every steamer goods and chattels for the many families which are hidden in the shaddows of the forests that clothe the river's shore. In sight are scarce a dozen houses, all told; but far back, for a radius of ten or fifteen miles, are scattered farmhouses whence come tributes of produce to this point. Hundreds of barrels of oranges, boxes of tomatoes and early vegetables, grapes, peaches, and pomegranates, here pause on their way to the Jacksonville market. One morning, as the Professor and I were enjoying our morning stroll on the little wharf, an unusual sight met our eye, -- a bale of cotton, long and large, pressed hard and solid as iron, and done up and sewed in a wholly workmanlike manner, that excited our surprise. It was the first time since we had been in Mandarin -- a space of some four or five years -- that we had ever seen a bale of cotton on that wharf. Yet the whole soil of East Florida is especially adapted not only to the raising of cotton, but of the peculiar, long staple cotton which commands the very highest market-price. But for two or three years past the annual ravages of the cotton-worm had been so discouraging, that the culture of cotton had been abandoned in despair. Whence, then, had come that most artistic bale of cotton, so well pressed, so...