Гарриет Бичер-Стоу
Palmetto-Leaves

MAGNOLIA

Mandarin, Fla., March 6, 1872

MAGNOLIA is a name suggestive of beauty; and, for once, the name does not belie the fact. The boarding-house there is about the pleasantest winter resort in Florida. We have been passing a day and night there as guest of some friends, and find a company of about seventy people enjoying themselves after the usual fashions of summer watering-places. The house is situated on a little eminence, and commands a fine sweep of view both up and down the river. In the usual fashion of Southern life, it is surrounded with wide verandas, where the guests pass most of their time, – the ladies chatting, and working embroidery; the gentlemen reading newspapers, and smoking.

The amusements are boating and fishing parties of longer or shorter duration, rides and walks along the shore, or croquet on a fine, shady croquet-ground in a live-oak grove back of the house.

We tried them all. First we went in a row-boat about a couple of miles up a little creek. The shore on either side was ruffled with the green bonnet-leaves, with here and there a golden blossom. The forest-trees, which were large and lofty, were almost entirely of the deciduous kind, which was just bursting into leaf; and the effect was very curious and peculiar. One has often remarked what a misty effect the first buddings of foliage have. Here there was a mist of many colors, – rose-colored, pink, crimson, yellow, and vivid green, the hues of the young leaves, or of the different tags and keys of the different species of trees. Here and there a wild plum, sheeted in brilliant white, varied the tableau. We rowed up to shore, drew down a branch, and filled the laps of the ladies with sprays of white flowers. The sun beat down upon us with the power of August; and, had it not been for the fresh breeze that blew up from the creek, we should have found it very oppressive. We returned just in time to rest for dinner. The dining-hall is spacious and cheerful; and the company are seated at small tables, forming social groups and parties. The fare was about the same as would be found in a first-class boarding-house at the North. The house is furnished throughout in a very agreeable style; and an invalid could nowhere in Florida have more comforts. It is more than full, and constantly obliged to turn away applicants; and we understand that families are now waiting at Green Cove for places to be vacated here. We are told that it is in contemplation, another season, to put up several cottages, to be rented to families who will board at the hotel. At present there is connected with the establishment one house and a cottage, where some of the guests have their rooms; and, as the weather is so generally mild, even invalids find no objection to walking to their meals.

The house is a respectable, good-sized, old-fashioned structure; and, being away from the main building, is preferred by some who feel the need of more entire quiet. Sitting on the front steps in the warm afternoon sunshine, and looking across to the distant, hazy shores, miles away, one could fancy one's self in Italy, – an illusion which the great clumps of aloes, and the tall green yuccas, and the gold-fruited orange-trees, help to carry out. Groups of ladies were seated here and there under trees, reading, working, and chatting. We were called off by the making-up of a croquet-party.

The croquet-ground is under the shade of a fine grove of live-oaks, which, with their swaying drapery of white moss, form a graceful shade and shelter. We shared the honor of gaining a victory or two under the banner of a doctor of divinity, accustomed, we believe, to winning laurels on quite other fields in the good city of New York. It has been our general experience, however, that a man good for any thing else is commonly a good croquet-player. We would notify your editor-in-chief, that, if ever he plays a game against Dr. C – , he will find a foeman worthy of his steel.

In the evening the whole company gathered in the parlors, made cheerful by blazing wood-fires. There were song-singing and piano-playing, charades and games, to pass the time withal; and all bore testimony to the very sociable and agreeable manner in which life moved on in their circle.

Magnolia is about three-quarters of a mile from Green-Cove Springs, where are two or three large, well-kept boarding-houses. There is a very pleasant, shady walk through the woods from one place to the other; and the mail comes every day to Green Cove, and is sent for, from the Magnolia House, in a daily morning carriage. It is one of the amusements of the guests to ride over, on these occasions, for a little morning gossip and shopping, as Magnolia, being quite sequestered, does not present the opportunity to chaffer even for a stick of candy. Of course, fair ones that have been accustomed to the periodical excitement of a shopping-tour would sink into atrophy without an opportunity to spend something. What they can buy at Green Cove is a matter of indifference. It is the burning of money in idle purses that injures the nervous system.

There are no orange-groves on this side of the river. The orange-trees about the house are entirely of the wild kind; and, for merely ornamental purposes, no tree more beautiful could be devised. Its vivid green, the deep gold-color of its clusters of fruit, and the exuberance with which it blossoms, all go to recommend it. Formerly there were extensive orange-groves, with thousands of bearing trees, on this side of the river. The frost of 1835 killed the trees, and they have never been reset. Oranges are not, therefore, either cheap or plenty at Magnolia or Green Cove. Nothing shows more strikingly the want of enterprise that has characterized this country than this. Seedling oranges planted the very next day after the great frost would have been in bearing ten years after, and would, ere now, have yielded barrels and barrels of fruit; and the trees would have grown and taken care of themselves. One would have thought so very simple and easy a measure would have been adopted.

At eleven o'clock the next morning we took steamer for Mandarin, and went skimming along the shores, watching the white-blossoming plum-trees amid the green of the forest. We stopped at Hibernia, a pleasant boarding-house on an island called Fleming's, after a rich Col. Fleming who formerly had a handsome plantation there. There is a fine, attractive-looking country-house, embowered in trees and with shaded verandas, where about forty boarders are yearly accommodated. We have heard this resort very highly praised as a quiet spot, where the accommodations are homelike and comfortable. It is kept by the widow of the former proprietor; and we are told that guests who once go there return year after year. There is something certainly very peaceful and attractive about its surroundings.

But now our boat is once more drawing up to the wharf at Mandarin; and we must defer much that we have to say till next week. Phœbus, we are happy to say to our girl correspondents, is bright and happy, and in excellent voice. All day long, at intervals, we can hear him from the back veranda, shouting, "What cheer! what cheer!" or sometimes abbreviating it as "Cheer, cheer, cheer!"

Since we have been writing, one of those characteristic changes have come up to which this latitude is subject. The sun was shining, the river blue, the windows open, and the family reading, writing, and working on the veranda, when suddenly comes a frown of Nature, – a black scowl in the horizon. Up flies the wind; the waves are all white-caps; the blinds bang; the windows rattle; every one runs to shut every thing; and for a few moments it blows as if it would take house and all away. Down drop oranges in a golden shower; here, there, and everywhere the lightning flashes; thunder cracks and rattles and rolls; and the big torrents of rain come pouring down: but, in the back-porch, Phœbus between each clap persists in shouting, "What cheer! what cheer!" Like a woman in a passion, Nature ends all this with a burst of tears; and it is raining now, tenderly and plaintively as if bemoaning itself.

Well, we wouldn't have missed the sight if we had been asked; and we have picked up a bushel of oranges that otherwise somebody must have climbed the trees for.

Meanwhile the mail is closing. Good-by!

YELLOW JESSAMINES

Mandarin, Fla., March 14, 1872

THEY talk about Florida being the land of flowers: I'm sure I don't see where the flowers are."

The speaker was a trim young lady, with pretty, high-heeled boots, attired in all those charming mysteries behind and before, and up and down, that make the daughter of Eve look like some bright, strange, tropical bird. She had come to see Florida; that is, to take board at the St. James. She had provided herself with half a dozen different palmetto-hats, an orange-wood cane tipped with an alligator's tooth, together with an assortment of cranes' wings and pink curlews' feathers, and talked of Florida with the assured air of a connoisseur. She had been on the boat up to Enterprise; she had crossed at Tekoi over to St. Augustine, and come back to the St. James; and was now prepared to speak as one having authority: and she was sure she did not see why it was called a land of flowers. She hadn't seen any.

"But, my dear creature, have you ever been where they grow? Have you walked in the woods?"

"Walked in the woods? Gracious me! Of course not! Who could walk in sand half up to one's ankles? I tried once; and the sand got into my boots, and soiled my stockings: besides, I'm afraid of snakes."

"Then, my dear, you will never be a judge on the question whether Florida is or is not a land of flowers. Whoever would judge on that question must make up her mind to good long tramps in the woods; must wear stout boots, with India-rubbers, or, better still, high India-rubber boots. So equipped, and with eyes open to see what is to be seen, you will be prepared to explore those wild glades and mysterious shadows where Nature's beauties, marvels, and mysteries are wrought. The Venus of these woods is only unveiled in their deepest solitudes."

For ourselves, we claim to have experience in this matter of flowers; having always observed them in all lands. We were impressed more by the flowers of Italy than by any thing else there; yes, more than by the picture-galleries, the statues, the old ruins. The sight of the green lawns of the Pamfili Doria, all bubbling up in little rainbow-tinted anemones; the cool dells where we picked great blue-and-white violets; the damp, mossy shadows in the Quirinal gardens, where cyclamen grow in crimson clouds amid a crush of precious old marbles and antiques; the lovely flowers, unnamed of botany, but which we should call a sort of glorified blue-and-white daisies, that we gathered in the shadowy dells near Castle Gandolpho, – these have a freshness in our memory that will last when the memory of all the "stun images" of the Vatican has passed away.

In our mind's eye we have compared Florida with Italy often, and asked if it can equal it. The flowers here are not the same, it is true. The blue violets are not fragrant. We do not find the many-colored anemones, nor the cyclamen. Both can be planted out here, and will grow readily; but they are not wild flowers, not indigenous.

"Well, then, are there others to compensate?" We should say so.

The yellow jessamine itself, in its wild grace, with its violet-scented breath, its profuse abundance, is more than a substitute for the anemones of Italy.

If you will venture to walk a little way in the sand beyond our back-gate, we will show you a flower-show this morning such as Chiswick or the Crystal Palace cannot equal.

About a quarter of a mile we walk: and then we turn in to what is called here an oak-hammock; which is, being interpreted, a grove of live-oak-trees, with an underbrush of cedar, holly, and various flowering-shrubs. An effort has been made to clear up this hammock. The larger trees have some of them been cut down, but not removed. The work of clearing was abandoned; and, the place being left to Nature, she proceeded to improve and beautify it after a fashion of her own. The yellow jessamine, which before grew under the shadow of the trees, now, exultant in the sunshine which was let in upon it, has made a triumphant and abounding growth, such as we never saw anywhere else. It is the very Ariel of flowers, – the tricksy sprite, full of life and grace and sweetness; and it seems to take a capricious pleasure in rambling everywhere, and masquerading in the foliage of every kind of tree. Now its yellow bells twinkle down like stars from the prickly foliage of the holly, where it has taken full possession, turning the solemn old evergreen into a blossoming garland. Now, sure enough, looking up full sixty feet into yonder water-oak, we see it peeping down at us in long festoons, mingling with the swaying, crapy streamers of the gray moss. Yonder a little live-oak-tree has been so completely possessed and beflowered, that it shows a head of blossoms as round as an apple-tree in May. You look below, and jessamine is trailing all over the ground, weaving and matting, with its golden buds and open bells peeping up at you from the huckleberry-bushes and sedge-grass.

Here is a tree overthrown, and raising its gaunt, knotted branches in air, veiled with soft mossy drapery. The jessamine springs upon it for a trellis: it weaves over and under and around; it throws off long sprays and streamers with two golden buds at the axil of every green leaf, and fluttering out against the blue of the sky. Its multiform sprays twist and knot and tie themselves in wonderful intricacies; and still where every green leaf starts is a yellow flower-bud. The beauty of these buds is peculiar. They have little sculptured grooves; and the whole looks as if it might have been carved of fairy chrysolite for a lady's ear-drop. Our little brown chambermaid wears them dangling in her ears; and a very pretty picture she makes with them. Coal-black Frank looks admiringly after her as she trips by with them shaking and twinkling to his confusion, as he forgets for a moment to saw wood, and looks longingly after her. No use, Frank. "Trust her not: she is fooling thee." Her smiles are all for lighter-colored beaux. But still she wears yellow jessamine in her crapy hair, and orders Frank to bring her wreaths and sprays of it whenever she wants it; and Frank obeys. That's female sovereignty, the world over!

In this same hammock are certain tall, graceful shrubs, belonging, as we fancy, to the high-huckleberry tribe, but which the Floridians call sparkleberry. It is the most beautiful white ornamental shrub we have ever seen. Imagine a shrub with vivid green foliage, hanging profusely with wreaths of lilies-of-the-valley, and you have as near as possible an idea of the sparkleberry. It is only in bud now, being a little later than the jessamine, and coming into its glory when the jessamine is passing away.

The regular employment now of every afternoon is to go out in the mule-cart with old Fly into the woods, flower-hunting.

It is as lovely an afternoon-work as heart could wish; the sky is so blue, the air so balmy, and at every step there is something new to admire. The coming-out of the first leaves and tags and blossom-keys of the deciduous trees has a vividness and brilliancy peculiar to these regions. The oak-hammock we have been describing as the haunt of yellow jessamine is as picturesque and beautiful a tree-study as an artist could desire. There are tall, dark cedars, in which the gray films of the long moss have a peculiarly light and airy appearance. There is the majestic dome of the long-leaved Southern pine, rising high over all the other trees, as in Italy the stone-pine. Its leaves are from twelve to eighteen inches long; and the swaying of such pines makes a susurrus worth listening to. The water-oak is throwing out its bright young leaves of a gold-tinted green; and the live-oak, whose leaves are falling now, is bursting into little velvety tags, premonitory of new foliage. Four species of oaks we notice. The live-oak, the water-oak, and a species of scrub-tree which they call the olive-leaved oak, are all evergreens, and have narrow, smooth leaves. Then there are what are familiarly called black-jacks, – a deciduous oak, which bears a large, sharply-cut, indented leaf, of a character resembling our Northern ones. Besides these, the prickly-ash, with its curiously knobbed and pointed branches, and its graceful, feathery leaves, forms a feature in the scene. Underneath, great clumps of prickly-pear are throwing out their queer buds, to be, in turn, followed by bright yellow blossoms.

To an uninstructed eye, the pine-woods in which we ride look like a flat, monotonous scene. The pines rise seventy, eighty, and a hundred feet in the air, so that their tops are far above, and cast no shade. This is a consideration of value, however, for a winter's ride; for one enjoys the calm sunshine. Even in days when high winds are prevailing along the river-front, the depth of these pine-woods is calm, sunny, and still; and one can always have a pleasant walk there. When the hotter months come on, the live-oaks and water-oaks have thick, new foliage, and the black-jacks and hickory and sweet-gum trees throw out their shade to shelter the traveller. Every mile or two, our path is traversed by a brook on its way to the St. John's. The natives here call a brook a "branch;" and a branch is no small circumstance, since all the finest trees and shrubbery grow upon its banks. You can look through the high, open pillars of the pine-trees, and watch the course of a branch half a mile from you by the gorgeous vegetation of the trees which line its shores.

We jog along in our mule-cart, admiring every thing as we go. We are constantly exclaiming at something, and tempted to get out to gather flowers. Here and there through the long wire-grass come perfect gushes of blue and white violets. The blue violets are large, and, of necessity, are obliged to put forth very long stems to get above the coarse, matted grass. The white are very fragrant, and perfectly whiten the ground in some moist places. There is a large, fragrant kind, very scarce and rare, but of which we have secured several roots. We are going this afternoon to the "second branch" after azaleas. We stop at a little distance, when its wall of glossy verdure rises up before us. There is no accomplishment of a mule in which Fly is better versed than stopping and standing still. We fancy that we hear him, in his inner consciousness, making a merit of it, as we all do of our pet virtues. He is none of your frisky fellows, always wanting to be going, and endangering everybody that wants to get in or out with prances and curvets, – not he! He is a beast that may be trusted to stand for any length of time without an attempt at motion. Catch him running away! So we leave Fly, and determine to explore the branch.

The short palmettoes here are grown to the height of fifteen feet. Their roots look like great scaly serpents, which, after knotting and convoluting a while, suddenly raise their crests high in air, and burst forth into a graceful crest of waving green fans. These waving clumps of fan-like leaves are the first and peculiar feature of the foliage. Along the shore here, clumps of pale pink azaleas grow high up, and fill the air with sweetness. It is for azaleas we are come; and so we tread our way cautiously, – cautiously, because we have heard tales of the moccasin-snake – fearful gnome! – said to infest damp places, and banks of rivers. In all our Floridian rambles, we never yet have got sight of this creature; though we have explored all the moist places, and sedgy, swampy dells, where azaleas and blue iris and white lilies grow. But the tradition that such things are inspires a wholesome care never to set a foot down without looking exactly where it goes. "The branch," we find, is lighted up in many places by the white, showy blossoms of the dogwood, of which, also, we gather great store. We pile in flowers – azalea and dogwood – till our wagon is full, and then proceed with a trowel to take up many nameless beauties.

There is one which grows on a high, slender stalk, resembling in its form a primrose, that has the purest and intensest yellow that we ever saw in a flower. There is a purple variety of the same species, that grows in the same neighborhoods. We have made a bed of these woodland beauties at the roots of our great oak, so that they may finish their growth, and seed, if possible, under our own eye.

By the by, we take this occasion to tell the lady who writes to beg of us to send her some seeds or roots of Florida plants or flowers, that we have put her letter on file, and perhaps, some day, may find something to send her. Any one who loves flowers touches a kindred spot in our heart. The difficulty with all these flowers and roots sent North is, that they need the heat of this climate to bring them to perfection. Still there is no saying what a real plant-lover may do in coaxing along exotics. The "run" we have been exploring has, we are told, in the season of them, beautiful blue wisteria climbing from branch to branch. It does not come till after the yellow jessamine is gone. The coral-honeysuckle and a species of trumpet-creeper also grow here, and, in a little time, will be in full flower. One of our party called us into the run, and bade us admire a beautiful shrub, some fifteen feet high, whose curious, sharply-cut, deep-green leaves were shining with that glossy polish which gives such brilliance. Its leaves were of waxen thickness, its habit of growth peculiarly graceful; and our colored handmaiden, who knows the habits of every plant in our vicinity, tells us that it bears a white, sweet blossom, some weeks later. We mentally resolve to appropriate this fair Daphne of the woods on the first opportunity when hands can be spared to take it up and transport it.

But now the sun falls west, and we plod homeward. If you want to see a new and peculiar beauty, watch a golden sunset through a grove draperied with gray moss. The swaying, filmy bands turn golden and rose-colored; and the long, swaying avenues are like a scene in fairyland. We come home, and disembark our treasures. Our house looks like a perfect flower-show. Every available vase and jar is full, – dogwood, azaleas, blue iris, wreaths of yellow jessamine, blue and white violets, and the golden unknown, which we christen primroses. The daily sorting of the vases is no small charge: but there is a hand to that department which never neglects; and so we breathe their air and refresh our eyes with their beauty daily.

Your cold Northern snow-storms hold back our spring. The orange-buds appear, but hang back. They are three weeks later than usual. Our letters tell us frightful stories of thermometers no end of the way below zero. When you have a snow-storm, we have a cold rain: so you must keep bright lookout on your ways up there, or we shall get no orange-blossoms.

We have received several letters containing questions about Florida. It is our intention to devote our next paper to answering these. We are perfectly ready to answer any number of inquiries, so long as we can lump them all together, and answer them through "The Christian Union."

One class of letters, however, we cannot too thankfully remember. Those who have read our papers with so much of sympathy as to send in contributions to our church here have done us great good. We have now a sum contributed with which we hope soon to replace our loss. And now, as the mail is closing, we must close.

P. S. – We wish you could see a gigantic bouquet that Mr. S – has just brought in from the hummock. A little shrub-oak, about five feet high, whose spreading top is all a golden mass of bloom with yellow jessamine, he has cut down, and borne home in triumph.

What an adornment would this be for one of the gigantic Japanese vases that figure in New-York drawing-rooms! What would such a bouquet sell for?