house on the hill
above the little grist-mill, with the bright young Philadelphians who
have here cast in their lot; the abundant feast in the farm-house under
the orange trees, and the "old-time" stories of the after-dinner hour;
the pleasant days at Crystal Lake, where our first day's drenching
resulted so happily in a slight illness that detained us in that lovely
spot, and showed us, in the new colony lately settled on this and the
adjacent lakes, how refinement and cultivation, lending elegance to
rude toil and harsh privation, may realize even Utopian dreams.

The great farm on Geneva Lake was the first old plantation which we had
seen since leaving Kingsley's, and this lies on the outskirts of
Ekoniah Scrub, which has long been settled by native Floridians or
Georgians. "Hit ain't a farmin' kentry, above there on the sandhills,"
said our host of the thrifty old farm on Lake Geneva. "It's fine for
oranges an' bananas, but the Scrub's better for plantin'. Talk about
oranges! Look a' that tree afore you! A sour tree hit were--right smart
big, too--but four year ago I sawed it off near the ground and stuck in
five buds. That tree is done borne three craps a'ready--fifteen oranges
the second year from the bud, a hundred and fifty the third, and last
year we picked eight hundred off her. Seedlin's? Anybody mought hev
fruit seven year from the seed, but they must take care o' the trees to
do it. Look a' them trees by the fence: eight year old, them is. Some
of 'em bore the sixth year: every one on 'em is sot full now--full
enough for young trees.

"Yes, that's right smart good orange-land up there in the sandhills.
Forty year ago, when I kim yere, they was nothin' but wild critters in
that lake kentry, as the Yankee folks calls it: all kind o' varmints
they was--bears, tigers, panthers, cats and all kinds. Right smart
huntin' they was, and 'tain't so bad now. They's rabbits and 'coons and
'possums, sure enough, and deer too; and--Cats? Why, cats is plenty,
but they ain't no 'count.

"I niver hunted much myself, but I've heerd an old man tell--Higgins by
name. Ef you could find him and could get him _right_, he'd tell you
right smart o' stories about varmints, and Injuns too. I've heerd him
tell how he went out with some puppies one time to larn 'em to hunt
bear. He heerd one o' the puppies a-screechin', and kase he didn't want
to lose him he run up. The screechin' come from a sort o' scrub, and he
got clost up afore