Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/301

Ortega Plantation, Florida, May 23. 

Again, my child, on a bank, but not in a steam-boat (our poor little Magnolia is said to be lying there still without any hope of getting off before the next full moon! melancholy!) but on a maize plantation belonging to relatives of the Mac I. family, where I am enjoying rest and refreshment with an amiable family, in a good and hospitable home. And very good it is to be able to rest after the fatigues and difficulties of the journey, which were not small by any means. There were indeed moments when I suspected that the first discoverers of these vast wildernesses could not have endured greater suffering than we did; baked as it were in an oven on our vessel, by the burning sun, and without water fit to drink. With Mr. Belle C. disappeared all our good, ice-cold water, and we then only discovered that the polite creole had allowed us ladies to enjoy the ice which he had brought from Cuba for his own use. There was now an end of that. Sarah Spalding had no supply of drinking water in her larder, and we were reduced to drink river-water, which was parboiled by the heat of the sun, and looked as if it were distilled from alligators. I could not drink it. But then the captain, at my request—a capital, good fellow, was that captain!—landed myself and co. in a wild orange-grove, and we there gathered whole sacks full of oranges, from which I brewed lemonade, and the whole company was refreshed thereby. That wild orange-grove was a wonderful sight. The captain and two of his men went on before with axes to cut a pathway from the shore. The wood itself was one wild tangle of thorny vegetation, fallen trees, and all kinds of bushes and plants. Within the orange-grove thousands of oranges lay on the ground, and on the slightest shaking of the trees, showers of others came