they didn't have to work,--they were
provided for; Captain H.'s father "left it so in his testimonial." I
spoke of the purple martins which were flying back and forth over the
field with many cheerful noises, and of the calabashes that hung from a
tall pole in one corner of the cabin yard, for their accommodation. On
my way South, I told him, I had noticed these dangling long-necked
squashes everywhere, and had wondered what they were for. I had found
out since that they were the colored man's martin-boxes, and was glad to
see the people so fond of the birds. "Yes," he said, "there's no danger
of hawks carrying off the chickens as long as the martins are round."

Twice afterward, as I went up the road, I found him ploughing between
the cotton rows; but he was too far away to be accosted without
shouting, and I did not feel justified in interrupting him at his work.
Back and forth he went through the long furrow after the patient ox, the
hens and chickens following. No doubt they thought the work was all for
their benefit. Farther away, a man and two women were hoeing. The family
deserved to prosper, I said to myself, as I lay under a big
magnolia-tree (just beginning to open its large white flowers) and idly
enjoyed the scene. And it was just here, by the bye, that I solved an
interesting etymological puzzle, to wit, the origin and precise meaning
of the word "baygall,"--a word which the visitor often hears upon the
lips of Florida people. An old hunter in Smyrna, when I questioned him
about it, told me that it meant a swampy piece of wood, and took its
origin, he had always supposed, from the fact that bay-trees and
gall-bushes commonly grew in such places. A Tallahassee gentleman agreed
with this explanation, and promised to bring home some gall-berries the
next time he came across any, that I might see what they were; but the
berries were never forthcoming, and I was none the wiser, till, on one
of my last trips up the St. Augustine road, as I stood under the large
magnolia just mentioned, a colored man came along, hat in hand, and a
bag of grain balanced on his head.

"That's a large magnolia," said I.

He assented.

"That's about as large as magnolias ever grow, isn't it?"

"No, sir; down in the gall there's magnolias a heap bigger 'n that."

"A gall? What's that?"

"A baygall, sir."

"And what's a baygall?"

"A big wood."

"And why do you call it a baygall?"

He was stumped, it was plain to see. No