having been trespassed upon; but to
his astonishment the incomprehensible offender stoutly affirmed that he
had logged fully five thousand acres, and at once settled the matter in
full by paying twenty-five hundred dollars, taking a receipt for the
same.

"When this enterprising business-man visited Jacksonville, his friends
rallied him upon confessing judgment to government for three thousand
acres of timber more than had been claimed by the agent. This true
_patriot_ winked as he replied:

"'It is true I hold a receipt from the government for the timber on
five thousand acres at the very low rate of fifty cents an acre. As I
have not yet cut logs from more than one-fifth of the tract, _I intend
to work off the timber on the other four thousand acres at my leisure_,
and no power can stop me now I have the government receipt to show it's
paid for.'"

The sloop and the canoe had left Columbus a little before noon, and at
six P. M. we passed Charles' Ferry, where the old St. Augustine and
Tallahassee forest road crosses the river. At this lonely place an old
man, now dead, owned a subterranean spring, which he called
"Mediterranean passage." This spring is powerful enough to run a
rickety, "up-and-down" saw-mill. The great height of the water allowed
me to paddle into the mill with my canoe.

At half past seven o'clock a deserted log cabin at Barrington's Ferry
offered us shelter for the night. The whole of the next day we rowed
through the same immense forests, finding no more cultivated land than
during our first day's voyage. We landed at a log cabin in a small
clearing to purchase eggs of a poor woman, whose husband had shot her
brother a few days before. As the wife's brother had visited the cabin
with the intention of killing the husband, the woman seemed to think the
murdered man had "got his desarts," and, as a coroner's jury had
returned a verdict of "justifiable homicide," the affair was considered
settled.

Below this cabin we came to Island No. 1, where rapids trouble boatmen
in the summer months. Now we glided gently but swiftly over the deep
current. The few inhabitants we met along the banks of the Suwanee
seemed to carry with them an air of repose while awake. To rouse them
from mid-day slumbers we would call loudly as we passed a cabin in the
woods, and after considerable delay a man would appear at the door,
rubbing his eyes as though the genial sunlight was oppressive to his
vision. It was indeed