a quiet, restful region, this great wilderness of
the Suwanee.

We passed Mrs. Goodman's farm and log buildings on the left bank, just
below Island No. 8, before noon, and about this time Major Purviance
shot at a large wild turkey (_Meleagris gallopavo_), knocking it off a
bank into the water. The gobbler got back to land, and led us a
fruitless chase into the thicket of saw-palmetto. He knew his ground
better than we, for, though wounded, he made good his escape. We stopped
a few moments at Troy, which, though dignified in name, consists only of
a store and some half dozen buildings.

A few miles below this place, on the left bank of the river, is an
uninhabited elevation called Rolins' Bluff, from which a line running
north 22 deg. east, twenty-three miles and a half in length, will strike
Live Oak. A charter to connect Live Oak with this region of the Suwanee
by means of a railroad had just passed the Florida legislature, but had
been killed by the veto of the governor. After sunset the boats were
secured in safe positions in front of a deserted cabin, round which a
luxuriant growth of bitter-orange trees showed what nature could do for
this neglected grove. The night air was balmy, and tremulous with
insect life, while the alligators in the swamps kept up their bellowings
till morning.

After breakfast we descended to the mouth of the Santa Fe River, which
was on the left bank of the Suwanee. The piny-woods people called it the
Santaffy. The wilderness below the Santa Fe is rich in associations of
the Seminole Indian war. Many relics have been found, and, among others,
on the site of an old Indian town, entombed in a hollow tree, the
skeletons of an Indian adult and child, decked with beads, were
discovered. Fort Fanning is on the left bank, and Old Town Hammock on
the right bank of the Suwanee.

During the Seminole war, the hammock and the neighboring fastnesses
became the hiding-places of the persecuted Indians, and so wild and
undisturbed is this region, even at this time, that the bear, lynx,
and panther take refuge from man in its jungles.

Colonel J. L. F. Cottrell left his native Virginia in 1854, and
commenced the cultivation of the virgin soil of Old Town Hammock. Each
state has its peculiar mode of dividing its land, and here in Florida
this old plantation was in township 10, section 24, range 13. The estate
included about two thousand acres of land, of which nearly eleven
hundred were under cultiv