Vilas County news. [volume] (Eagle River, Vilas County, Wis.) 1896-1927, 1901-04-08

tho bleak desolatlon OF Mdl Sn ~
oonsi, and drop down into the sunA
n,ildness of south Florida is q
o++or of some forty hours rlue'
1T1on one arrives here he knows why
1r1or;da is thronged with tourists d.
49, nrosent time, in greater NUMBERS
than ever before. The treno ol Law
Of nresent is down the east co0ee
With a run over to Cuba; but the mag
not that drew your correspondent =,
ano+bar direction was vile dnu
daughter in their cottage Aome -
this inland village.
The Florida special leaves Chlcage
Zach week day at noon, ana MAKES
Jacksonville in 80 hours. Tnere YOU
cbanoe cars to the Plant system TO-
Tampa. Or changing cars at Lake
land YOU push further south to PUMA
corda On this route the WRITER
dropped southwark to the smal s.a
tion Of Bowling Green, a dlngy At.le
hamlet in the piney woods. Here, mr.
tho q livery team of diminutlve FLOR
lido horses. we strike off eastward over
a vast sand plain covered Win Tau
mines. The road way is splenolu.
There is neither mud nor soft sano
and the ponies jog on merrily. De-
scending into the FLAT woods Oh the
Peace river, the pine trees gro"
taller and stand thickly and you seem
surrounded by a stockade OF pine
nosts sixty or seventy feet high. Then
as an April shower overtakes you
and the mist fills the woods you see1
surrounded by striped fog inter
spersed among the pines tall CABBAGE
palm trees run up in straight trunks
some forty or more feet high and then
mt out a tuft of foliage, not unlike
a cabbage head in shape, or ike
monster ostrich standing on one leg.
The ground is covered with what are
called "saw palms" a kind OF fern
palm, great clumps of which grow IKE
the brakes in New England hill pas
ture. With their rich green leaves
foot or more long they are the picture
of richness Of verdure, but in many
places where the cowboys mad
burned them great blackened tubers
the size of mans leg. lay in heaps
above the ground, corrugated or
ribbed like the transverse plates OF
the alligator, and looking not unlike
a 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
tscraped" or tapped. chip, say
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-
ioice in the name of cracker in
Florida. He lives in the meanest OF
novels, in the hat woods, surrounded
by a 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 soil 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 a hog or a
"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 we 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
NCn1oOA 1OA P4ASS IIAoC u1So0OA-
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 small gopher,
while the tortoise or mud turtle OF
our vocabulary is here called a
gopher" For four miles the ascent
is gentle till we have climbed 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