h was less than
three miles from Rixford, the proprietors of which sent the canoe after
us on a wagon drawn by mules. The point of embarkation was the Lower
Mineral Springs, the property of Judge Bryson.

The Suwanee, which was swollen by some recent rains in Okefenokee Swamp,
was a wild, dark, turbulent current, which went coursing through the
woods on its tortuous route with great rapidity. The luxuriant foliage
of the river-banks was remarkable. Maples were in blossom, beech-trees
in bloom, while the buckeye was covered with its heavy festoons of red
flowers. Pines, willows, cotton-wood, two kinds of hickory, water-oak,
live-oak, sweet-gum, magnolia, the red and white bay-tree, a few
red-cedars, and haw-bushes, with many species not known to me, made up a
rich wall of verdure on either side, as I sped along with a light heart
to Columbus, where my _compagnons de voyage_ were to meet me. Wood-ducks
and egrets, in small flocks, inhabited the forest. The limestone banks
of the river were not visible, as the water was eighteen feet above its
low summer level.

I now passed under the railroad bridge which connects Live Oak with
Savannah. After a steady row of some hours, my progress was checked by a
great boom, stretched across the river to catch the logs which floated
down from the upper country. I was obliged to disembark and haul the
canoe around this obstacle, when, after passing a few clearings, the
long bridge of the J. P. & M. Railroad came into view, stretching across
the now wide river from one wilderness to the other. On the left bank
was all that remained of the once flourishing town of Columbus,
consisting now of a store, kept by Mr. Allen, and a few buildings.
Before the railroad was built, Columbus possessed a population of five
hundred souls, and it was reached, during favorable stages of water, by
light-draught steamboats from Cedar Keys, on the Gulf of Mexico. The
building of railroads in the south has diverted trade from one locality
to another, and many towns, once prosperous, have gone to decay.

The steam saw-mills and village of Ellaville were located on the
river-bank opposite Columbus, and this lumber establishment is the only
place of importance between it and Cedar Keys. This far-famed river, to
which the heart of the minstrel's darky "is turning eber," is, in fact,
almost without the "one little hut among de bushes," for it is a wild
and lonely stream. Even in the most prosperous times there w