Read Ebook: Palmetto-Leaves by Stowe Harriet Beecher

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 331 lines and 35167 words, and 7 pages

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

"FLORIDA FOR INVALIDS."

Little did we suppose when we met our good friend at Magnolia, apparently in the height of spirits, the life of the establishment, and head promoter of all sorts of hilarity, that, under all this delightful cheerfulness, he was contending with such dreary experiences as his article in "The Independent" would lead one to suppose. Really, any one who should know the doctor only from that article might mistake him for a wretched hypochondriac; whereas we saw him, and heard of him by universal repute at Magnolia, as one of the cheeriest and sunniest of the inmates, taking every thing by the smoothest handle, and not only looking on the bright side himself, but making everybody else do the same. Imagine, therefore, our utter astonishment at finding our buoyant doctor summing up his Florida experience in such paragraphs as these:--

"From what I have observed, I should think Florida was nine-tenths water, and the other tenth swamp. Many are deceived by the milder climate here; and down they come--to die. The mildness, too, is exaggerated. Yesterday morning, the thermometer was at thirty-six degrees. Outside, our winter overcoats were necessary; and great wood-fires roared within. Now and then the thermometer reaches eighty degrees at mid-day; but, that very night, you may have frost.

"Another fact of Florida is malaria. How could it be otherwise? Souse Manhattan Island two feet deep in fresh water, and wouldn't the price of quinine rise?

"I have no objection to the term 'sunny South;' it is a pretty alliteration: but I object to its application to Georgia and Florida in February. I wish you could have seen me last Friday night. We were riding two hundred and sixty miles through a swamp,--Okefinokee of the geographies. I was clad in full winter suit, with heavy Russian overcoat."

But a careful comparison of the incidents in his letter solves the mystery. The letter was written in an early date in the doctor's Floridian experience, and before he had had an opportunity of experiencing the benefit which he subsequently reaped from it.

We perceive by the reference to last Friday night, and the ride through Okefinokee Swamp, that the doctor was then fresh from the North, and undergoing that process of disenchantment which many Northern travellers experience, particularly those who come by railroad. The most ardent friends of Florida must admit that this railroad is by no means a prepossessing approach to the land of promise; and the midnight cold upon it is something likely to be had in remembrance. When we crossed it, however, we had a stove, which was a small imitation of Nebuchadnezzar's furnace, to keep us in heart. Otherwise there is a great deal of truth in our friend's allegations. As we have elsewhere remarked, every place, like a bit of tapestry, has its right side and its wrong side; and both are true and real,--the wrong side with its tags and rags, and seams and knots, and thrums of worsted, and the right side with its pretty picture.

It is true, as the doctor says, that some invalids do come here, expose themselves imprudently, and die. People do die in Florida, if they use the means quite as successfully as in New York. It is true that sometimes the thermometer stands at seventy at noon, and that the nights are much cooler; it is true we have sometimes severe frosts in Florida; it is true we have malaria; it is true that there are swamps in Florida; and it is quite apt to be true, that, if a man rides a hundred miles through a swamp at night, he will feel pretty chilly.

All these are undeniable truths. We never pretended that Florida was the kingdom of heaven, or the land where they shall no more say, "I am sick." It is quite the reverse. People this very winter have in our neighborhood had severe attacks of pneumonia; and undoubtedly many have come to Florida seeking health, and have not found it.

Yet, on the other hand, there are now living in Florida many old established citizens and land-owners who came here ten, twenty, and thirty years ago, given over in consumption, who have here for years enjoyed a happy and vigorous life in spite of Okefinokee Swamp and the malaria.

Undoubtedly the country would be much better to live in if there were no swamps and no malaria; and so, also, New England would be better to live in if there were not six months winter and three more months of cold weather there. As to malaria, it is not necessary to souse Manhattan Island under water to get that in and around New York. The new lands in New York will give you chills and fever quite as well as Florida. You can find malarial fevers almost anywhere in the towns between New York and New Haven; and it is notorious that many estates in the vicinity of New York and Philadelphia sell cheap on that very account, because they are almost as malarious as some Italian villas.

Florida is not quite so bad as that yet, although it has its share of that malaria which attends the development of land in a new country. But the malarial fevers here are of a mild type, and easily managed; and they are generally confined to the fall months. The situation of Florida, surrounded by the sea, and the free sweep of winds across it, temper the air, and blow away malarious gases.

In regard to consumptives and all other invalids, the influence of a Floridian climate depends very much on the nature of the case and the constitution of the individual.

If persons suffer constitutionally from cold; if they are bright and well only in hot weather; if the winter chills and benumbs them, till, in the spring, they are in the condition of a frost-bitten hot-house plant,--alive, to be sure, but with every leaf gone,--then these persons may be quite sure that they will be the better for a winter in Florida, and better still if they can take up their abode there.

But if, on the contrary, persons are debilitated and wretched during hot weather, and if cool weather braces them, and gives them vigor and life, then such evidently have no call to Florida, and should be booked for Minnesota, or some other dry, cold climate. There are consumptives belonging to both these classes of constitution; and the coming of one of the wrong kind to Florida is of no use to himself, and is sure to bring discredit on the country. A little good common sense and reflection will settle that matter.

Again: there is a form of what passes for consumption, which is, after all, some modification of liver-complaint; and, so far as we have heard or observed, Florida is no place for these cases. The diseases here are of the bilious type; and those who have liver-complaint are apt to grow worse rather than better. But there are classes of persons on whom the climate of Florida acts like a charm.

There are certain nervously-organized dyspeptics who require a great deal of open, out-door life. They are in comfortable health during those months when they can spend half their time in the open air. They have no particular disease; but they have no great reserved strength, and cannot battle with severe weather. They cannot go out in snow or wind, or on chilly, stormy days, without risking more harm than they get good. Such, in our Northern climate, are kept close prisoners for six months. From December to May, they are shut in to furnace-heated houses or air-tight stoves. The winter is one long struggle to keep themselves up. For want of the out-door exercise which sustains them in summer, appetite and sleep both fail them. They have restless nights and bad digestion, and look anxiously to the end of winter as the only relief. For such how slowly it drags! They watch the almanac. The sun crosses the line; the days grow a minute longer: spring will come by and by. But by what cruel irony was the month of March ever called spring?--March, which piles snow-storms and wind-storms on backs almost broken by endurance. The long agony of March and April is the breaking-point with many a delicate person who has borne pretty well the regular winter.

"'Since you have thus combined,' she said, 'My favorite nymph to slight, Adorning May, that peevish maid, With June's undoubted right,

The minx, cursed for your folly's sake, Shall prove herself a shrew; Shall make your scribbling fingers ache, And bite your noses blue.'"

Which she generally does.

So it is not really till June that delicately-constituted persons, or persons of impaired vigor, really feel themselves out of prison. They have then about five months at most in which they can live an open-air life, before the prison-doors close on them again.

Now, the persons who would be most benefited by coming to Florida are not the desperately diseased, the confirmed consumptives, but those of such impaired physical vigor that they are in danger of becoming so. An ounce of prevention here is worth many pounds of cure. It is too often the case that the care and expense that might have prevented disease from settling are spent in vain after it has once fastened. Sad it is indeed to see the wan and wasted faces, and hear the hollow death-cough, of those who have been brought here too late. Yet, in hundreds of instances, yes, in thousands, where one more severe Northern winter would have fastened disease on the vitals, a winter in a Southern climate has broken the spell. The climate of Florida is also of peculiar advantage in all diseases attended by nervous excitability. The air is peculiarly soothing and tranquillizing: it is the veritable lotos-eater's paradise, full of quiet and repose. We have known cases where the sleeplessness of years has given way, under this balmy influence, to the most childlike habit of slumber.

For debility, and the complaints that spring from debility, Florida is not so good a refuge, perhaps, as some more northern point, like Aiken. The air here is soothing, but not particularly bracing. It builds up and strengthens, not by any tonic effect in itself so much as by the opportunity for constant open-air life and exercise which it affords.

For children, the climate cannot be too much praised. In our little neighborhood are seven about as lively youngsters as could often be met with; and the winter has been one long out-door play-spell. There has not been a cough, nor a cold, nor an ailment of any kind, and scarce an anxiety. All day long we hear their running and racing,--down to the boat-wharves; in the boats, which they manage as dexterously as little Sandwich-Islanders; fishing; catching crabs, or off after flowers in the woods, with no trouble of hail, sleet, or wet feet. Truly it is a child's Eden; and they grow and thrive accordingly.

But merely to come to Florida, and idle away time at the St. James or the St. Augustine Hotel, taking no regular exercise, and having no employment for mind or body, is no way to improve by being here. It is because the climate gives opportunity of open-air exercise that it is so favorable; but, if one neglects all these opportunities, he may gain very little.

It cannot be too often impressed on strangers coming here, that what cold there is will be more keenly felt than in a Northern climate. Persons should vary their clothing carefully to the varying temperature, and be quite as careful to go warmly clad as in colder States. In our furnace-heated houses at the North we generally wear thick woollen dresses and under-flannels, and keep up a temperature of from seventy to eighty degrees. In the South we move in a much lower temperature, and have only the open fire upon the hearth. It is therefore important to go warmly clad, and particularly to keep on flannels until the warm weather of April becomes a settled thing.

In regard to the healthfulness of Florida, some things are to be borne in mind. In a State that has the reputation of being an invalid's asylum, many desperate cases necessarily take refuge, and, of course, many die. Yet, notwithstanding the loss from these causes, the census of 1860 showed that the number of deaths from pulmonary complaints is less to the population than in any State of the Union. In Massachusetts, the rate is one in two hundred and fifty-four; in California, one in seven hundred and twenty-seven; in Florida, one in fourteen hundred and forty-seven. Surgeon-Gen. Lawson of the United-States army, in his report, asserts that "the ratio of deaths to the number of cases of remittent fevers has been much less among the troops serving in Florida than in other portions of the United States. In the middle division, the proportion is one death to thirty-six cases of fever; in the northern, one to fifty-two; in Texas, one to seventy-eight; in California, one in a hundred and twenty-two; while in Florida it is one in two hundred and eighty-seven."

Such statistics as these are more reliable than the limited observation of any one individual. In regard to sudden changes of climate, Florida is certainly not in all parts ideally perfect. There are, at times, great and sudden changes there, but not by any means as much so as in most other States of the Union.

Sudden changes from heat to cold are the besetting sin of this fallen world. It is the staple subject for grumbling among the invalids who visit Italy; and, in fact, it is probably one of the consequences of Adam's fall, which we are not to be rid of till we get to the land of pure delight. It may, however, comfort the hearts of visitors to Florida to know, that, if the climate here is not in this respect just what they would have it, it is about the best there is going.

All this will be made quite clear to any one who will study the tables of observations on temperature contained in "The Guide to Florida," where they can see an accurate account of the range of the thermometer for five successive years as compared with that in other States.

One thing cannot be too often reiterated to people who come to Florida; and that is, that they must not expect at once to leave behind them all sickness, sorrow, pain, inconvenience of any kind, and to enter at once on the rest of paradise.

The happiness, after all, will have to be comparative; and the inconveniences are to be borne by reflecting how much greater inconveniences are avoided. For instance, when we have a three-days' damp, drizzling rain-storm down here, we must reflect, that, at the North, it is a driving snow-storm. When it is brisk, cold weather here, it is an intolerable freeze there. The shadow and reflection of all important changes at the North travel down to us in time. The exceptionally cold winter at the North has put our season here back a month behind its usual spring-time. The storms travel downward, coming to us, generally, a little later, and in a modified form.

Now for the North. A friend in Hartford writes, "I was awaked by the patter of snow and sleet on the window-pane. Not a creature could go out to church, the storm was so severe: even the Irish were obliged to keep housed. With all we could do with a furnace and morning-glory stove, we could not get the temperature of our house above fifty-five degrees."

In the latter part of the day, we at Mandarin had some rough, chilling winds, which were the remains of the Northern Easter storm; but we were wise enough to rejoice in the good we had, instead of fretting at the shadow of evil.

SWAMPS AND ORANGE-TREES.

March 25, 1872.

After a cold, damp, rainy week, we have suddenly had dropped upon us a balmy, warm, summer day,--thermometer at eighty; and every thing out of doors growing so fast, that you may see and hear it grow.

Spring is a glory anywhere; but, as you approach the tropics, there is a vivid brilliancy, a burning tone, to the coloring, that is peculiar. We are struck with the beauty of the cat-briers. We believe they belong to the smilax family; and the kinds that prevail here are evergreen, and have quaintly-marked leaves. Within a day or two, these glossy, black-green vines have thrown out trembling red sprays shining with newness, with long tendrils waving in the air. The vigor of a red young shoot that seems to spring out in an hour has something delightful in it.

Yellow jessamine, alas! is fading. The ground is strewn with pale-yellow trumpets, as if the elves had had a concert and thrown down their instruments, and fled. Now the vines throw out young shoots half a yard long, and infinite in number; and jessamine goes on to possess and clothe new regions, which next February shall be yellow with flowers.

Farewell for this year, sweet Medea of the woods, with thy golden fleece of blossoms! Why couldst thou not stay with us through the year? Emerson says quaintly, "Seventy salads measure the life of a man." The things, whether of flower or fruit, that we can have but once a year, mark off our lives. A lover might thus tell the age of his lady-love: "Seventeen times had the jessamine blossomed since she came into the world." The time of the bloom of the jessamine is about two months. In the middle of January, when we came down, it was barely budded: the 25th of March, and it is past.

But, not to give all our time to flowers, we must now fulfil our promise to answer letters, and give practical information.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet