Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1901-04-04
CORRESPO GROWS ELo-
QuENT OVER ITS CHARMS.
NO MOSQUITOES OR SNAKES
Both Absent from Towns on High
Ground - Pecuiarities of the
Cracker Ground Appears a
Waste of Sterility But Shows Sur
prising Fertility.
Special Correspondence.

m6f mllQn6SS OF SOuln F1Oriud 10 d
matter OF some forty hours ride.
When one arrives here he knows why
Florida is thronged with tourists at
the present time, in greater numbers
than ever before. The trend OF travel
at present is down the east coast
with a run over to Cuba; but the mag
net that drew your correspondent III
another direction was d wife and
daughter in their cottage nome IN
this inland village.
The Florida special leaves Chicago
each week day at noon, and makes
Jacksonville in 80 hours. There you
change cars to the Plant system 10
Tampa. Or changing cars at Lake
land, you push further south to Punta
Gorda. On this route the writer
dropped southwark to the small sta
ton of Bowling Green, a dingy little
hamlet in the piney woods. Here, hlr-
ing a livery team Of diminutiYe Flor
ida horses, we strike Off eastward over
vast SAND plain covered with tall
pines The load way is splendid.
There is neither mud nor soft sand
and the ponies jog on merrily. De
scending into the hat woods Of the
| Peace river, the pine trees grow
taller and stand thickly and you seem
| surrounded by stOckade Of pine
! posts sixty or seventy feet high. Then
as an April shower overtakes you
and the mist fills the woods you SEER
surrounded by a striped fog. Inter.
| spersed among the pines tall cabbage
palm trees run up in straight trunks
some forty or more feet high and then
put out tuft of foliage, not unlike
cabbage head in shape, or like a
monster ostrich standing on one leg
The ground is covered with what are
called saw palms" kind Of fern
palm, great clumps Of which grow like
the brakes in New England hill pas
ture. With their rich green leaves a
foot or more long thev are the picture
of richness Of ver6ure, but in many
places where the cowboys had
burned them great blackened tubers
the size of a mans leg lay in heaps
above the ground corrugated or
ribbed like the transverse plates of
the alligator, and looking not unlike
litter Of this reptile of the southern
! swamps.
| Presently, We come into the forest
of pines that are scraped for the gath
ering of their pitch. We are now
near a mandatory of turpentine.
| Hundreds of thousands of trees are
| ''scraped' or tapped. A chip, say a
| foot square, is split out from one side
of the tree; at the bottom, it is cut
so as to leave a crescent-shaped cup
into which the pitch drips. When the
| cup is full the pitch is gathered and
taken to the works. much as sap is
| gathered in a sugar bush"
Here in the woods we come. every
| two Or three miles, to the home of a
| cracker The ''po white trash" of
Virginia, the ''low-down" of the Caro-
| linas, the sand hitler" of Georgia re-
joice in the name Of Cracker in
Florida. He lives in the meanest of
| novels, in the fat woods, surrounded
by herd of lean cattle and drove
Of raZOr-back hogs. But he is thrifty.
Invariably he has a fine orange grove
which he fertiliZes by "cow-penning -
He fences it off and pens up cattle
until by their droppings the sol is
enriched. The orange buyers pur-
chase his crop on the tree, and his
cattle sales and sales of pork bring
him an income. while his outgoes are
mainly for coffee and tobacco and a
few of the plainest and cheapest
clothes. They are kindly and hospit.
able folk, but if you steal hog or
''critter" from their herds which roam
through the woods at large, your life
only squares the account One of
them greets our driver, How are We,
Jim? burned eff ye don't look as
nat'ral as sack O. cow-peas." In
health, they are 'jes' tolable'' Ask
one of them if he can secure you the
rattles of snake, he will reply,
Law sakes. l never muss with them
things. But they will bring you
quail Or wild turkey or saddle of
venison for price that is unreason-
ably low.
About eighteen miles from the sta
ton we begin to lift out of the fiat
woods. The soil grows sander and
the sand whittier. Thousands of little
piles Of yellow sand dot the white.
You ask what makes these and are
told that it is the work of the "sala-
mander." This is a small gopher,
while the tortoise or mud turtle OF
our vocabulary ia here called a
gopher" For four miles the ascent
is gentle till We have climbed a hill
by an up grade of perhaps twenty
feet to the mile Here we find our !
selves on the backbone of the PENN |
sula, the divide" between the ocean |
and the gulf. From the eyes of a |
northern man the soil seems the poor
est that can be made, the
perfection OF sterility. But sur
pr1ses startle you on every
hand. Here Is an orange grove
loaded with the sweetest of oranges
and Of generous size. You enter a
garden and strawberries as large as
hens eggs gem the vines. Peas,
beans, onions and cucumbers are
abundant and now at their best #
planted in December. The proprietor
strikes the toes uf his shoe into the
ground and prizes out monster yam
Of the white variety, not unlike the
sweet potato which when boiled or
baked is not much inferior to the bet
Fr~J- +n+ 1