CHAPTER VIII

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If in America, we kiss each other on Christmas day, wishing each other a 'Merry Christmas", On New Years day, we just shake each other’s hand, saying: "A happy new year" faithful translation of our "heureuse annee".

After kissing no one, but having shook many, many, bony phalanxes, the evening of January 1st, I am leaving alone, not precisely in a venture, because my goal was determined, but without subjecting myself to a precise day or time.  I am going toward the sawmill, where I like to meet Vanier, this brave French Canadian that I left presiding over the evolution of the large circular saw with the majesty of a Roman emperor riding his chariot.

I load my buggy with camping gear, supply, guns and ammunitions, and I trust all this and myself to the wobbly legs of Monkey, an excellent horse the horse dealer told me. Quite a good animal, in fact needing so little that he did not even ask for trotting. Only a sweet violence equipped with whip lashes makes him lose his prudent attitude. Attitude he would eagerly go back to if with a terrible voice, which adds more to the horror of the forest, I wouldn't make all of his body quiver with those interpolation "Hue, Coquin!", "Hue, Coquin!", to what I sometimes translate to "Go on, rascal!" because he does not understand a word of French, proof of a defective education.

Well, to whip or to insult one’s own horse, to call one’s own dogs, that keeps one company in a buggy, in the middle of a desert, where the human voice only finds the echo to repeat it and not to answer it.  I make the trees of this "wild and sad uninhabited land" listen to the unknown ode of "gloomy forest" and other various tunes that they will never hear again after me. The mockingbird will never make fun of its exotic colleague lost in the virgin forests again. With an insolent whistle, it will never pursue "Madame Angot, Goutez, ames fervantes, La Marseillaise, Faust, La Belle Helene". Well, all the talent list!
Sometimes, in the civilized countries, we complain about the human being. Having suffered from him, we would like to escape deep in the woods to avoid meeting him. Well, having seen the virgin forests, listened to the streams wandering through the plains, there is surely something more depressing than the human being, it is the absence of man.

"What is a waterfall", said Chateaubriand about the Niagara," which fall eternally insensitive to the acts of the earth and the sky, if human nature is not there with its destiny and misfortunes? To go into this loneliness of water and mountains, and not knowing with whom to talk about this huge spectacle: streams, rocks, onrushes, woods for one alone! To give the soul a mate, and the hillside's happy array, and the waves fresh breathe, everything will turn beautiful; the daily trip, the sweetest rest of the day, spend it on the streams, sleeping on the moss, it will bring out of the heart its most deepest affection"

In this way of thinking, from Niagara to Florida, there is only one step. With which enthusiasm in the unpopulated woods you are looking for the trace of Human, what a joy when you find it! A rough trail, an axe slammed against a tree, any kind of rubble seems to be a fortunate find.

In the distance, through the tall pines, a fence meanders in a zigzag. Getting closer you can see two or three wood houses, log houses, from the first pioneer. Finally here is the man's work, himself maybe: Nobody! empty house, open doors, broken shutters, rotten fences, the plantation left behind, the silence, the death, pathetic stories with thousands of chapters!

This soulless settlement, where I go to rest my body, store my equipment and nestle my dogs, it has a history. Everything around me is telling me so. Those trees which left a stump behind two feet high, this cleared and now fallow land, the erection of these poorly built houses has condemned the prisoner to forced labor during one whole year, without any harvest. These orange trees, in the past grafted and now turned back to the wild, bestowing in vain to the birds in the sky who look down on them, a few bitter fruits, are portraying the missed and destroyed settler's reserve... those furrows have kept hidden during the second year of work, a seed which almost produced nothing, because as they say, unbroken land is proud.

"Our fathers," said the Swiss ballad, "where not afraid of the work to uproot the forest; they had many painful days before the land gave them back some fruits; the pickaxe and the hoe were for a long time all the tools of their trade"

The disuse of everything finally tells me that the third harvest year was very lean, because the work was less persistent, restlessly stopped by the necessity to go to the neighboring town to earn a few dollars, to replace the small savings spent to live, build, and fence ones self in. The discouragement came, the pioneer ran away, leaving everything there, in the middle of the silent woods, houses, plantations, and hope!

Him gone, the nature takes back her rights, destroying with her work the work of the man, recovering the land conquered on her. She unleashes bad weather over the house, filled in the well, and placed on the wind's wing the pine seeds, growing weeds, spreading without any goal the cotton tree and the palm tree.

This is the hostelry where I played at the same time the double role of the host and the guest.  Still very happy to find it and not have to sleep outside. I was deeply asleep in a corner, on a gorgeous mattress made of pine needles, higgledy-piggledy with Buck and Figaro, when an awful racket woke me up suddenly. For once in my life I believed in ghosts coming from beyond or from the new world. Thirty little black devils had burst into my house: It was a herd of piglets pursued by their owners, Negroes, teasing the dogs with their frightening and loud out cries.

The pursuit that Buck and Figaro gave to the intruders will be the most vigorous push, that in living memory of dogs and pigs, happened in Florida. At one point, I thought I would never see my loyal dogs again. Fortunately, the horseback riding trappers finally contained the wild games in the paddocks and seized them. Those pigs, small wild boars, without tusk, are released into the woods after being branded and live of deprivation until the day they will be hunted. They are sold at a low price, they are not worth more, the flesh of this kind of pig is notably tough.

These terrific hunts are always done during the night. An ugly custom in which the pigs are not the only ones to complain about it.

Peace came back at daybreak, I do not want to sleep anymore, and I go with my gun on my shoulder, with the intent to kill everything.

The ground where the pine tree grows is of very fine sand, real white on the surface, of a beautiful golden color when the lower layer is turned over. An endless number of small stacks, little golden caps, emerge from the ground pushed by a small animal which is not a mole, but a small salamander very fond of orange tree roots. I often saw its work, but never the worker himself, very shy and not liking to work in front of people. Hidden behind a pine tree, I was able to see its game. The salamander shapes a little mound strongly pushing the sand all around itself, soon finding itself in the middle of a crater that it ends up filling up always bringing the sand to the top. To see it closely, you had to kill it. It's a small animal, looking a little like a weasel, but shorter. Its fur is grey and very soft. It is called salamander, even though it is not possible to relate it to the batrachians genus. Its presence in a region is the proof, especially if the little mounds are very much golden, that the place is very good for orange trees: "good land for orange groves". Golden sand produces the golden fruit.

My dogs keep going at a big hole. They scratch with fury, send the sand between their hind legs, and suddenly stop to stick their nose into the bowels of the ground, swelling their nostrils. They back up sneezing, and start again to dig up with their paws. I hardly pull them from this fruitless work, of which from the bottom of its den, a turtle, huddled in its shell is making fun of them. The first time I saw this trick in Florida, I believed it was a rabbit, I was so young then.

I am more interested in the squirrels and even more in young partridges. Weird little birds! not quails, not partridges, with a falcon beak . In fact good mannered; soon they would follow the hunter like the chicken follow the poultry yard's lady. With two gun shots, I kill seven. The remaining of the flock stay put, and let me reload my rifle. With the second shot, some are laying on the sand, the others roost on a shrub at my hand's reach. Regardless, I could not catch one alive.

At the precise moment I am getting ready to transform two of those fowls into roast, a herd of deer is passing by. Hundred feet away, they stop surprised by my bonfire. Will the herd coming closer? no; they jump and passed by my two bullets disappearing into the bushes.

Its noon, we have to go back to the hostel. Monkey must be whining waiting for his oats; I'll then leave again to reach the sawmill, where I will be able to sleep.

Where am I? I made sure this morning to go in the right direction; I found out that the deserted settlement was in the direction of 20 degrees North-North-West. Let's walk toward that direction, with the compass in hand.

I am walking for 2 hours.... I should be there already! Would I be lost by any chance? ...And this endless forest which block the horizon? Not even a mound to question!.... Hey! up there! Vulture; lend me your wings so I will be able to glide above Florida! Why don't I have your sharp vision to find, in this ocean of pines, the little corner where Monkey is almost passing out with the rope around his neck and an empty stomach!

My compass! It is as lost as my head....I walk in vain to the direction it points me to, I must have missed the place!.... Where am I going? Must I go forward, backwards, tilt to the right or sneak to the left? Nothing is pushing me one way or another....Will there be no human being passing through this jail of pine trees! Black or white, I would follow him like a shadow!

"Yo-ho-hee! Yo-ho-hee!" The battle cry of the Indians dies with the echo!...Monkey doesn't even answer it with a neigh. It is for him that I am worrying, not for me. My hunting saves me against starving, but him, if my absence is too long, if I must spend my night wandering , he is going to die!...The night is coming, in fact.....Exhausted by tiredness and boredom, I stop and think.....My two dogs are looking at me with compassion. Who cares about your pity? Your instinct, that's what I need!...Did you never lead a blind?... I have eyes and do not see any trace that human souls ever lived in these desolate areas.....I fell asleep.....How long did I sleep? I don't know, but through the darkness of the night I see a light breaking in a distance. It's a relief! I will finally meet one of my fellows who are not lost, I walk toward the fire. I reach it in forty five minutes....Only marks of last nights camp!...The fire started by one of the hunters reached a large dry pine tree and turned it into a huge flaming torch. Fire, as they say keeps company. I decide to sit down next to this deserted bonfire, cook a squirrel and spend the rest of the night.

Around 2 o'clock in the morning, I feel soaked to the bones. A torrential rain, like the one falling in Florida, took me by surprise without any kind of shelter....So much rain! so much rain! lasting two hours!....And how do I dry myself before dawn's return?... Quickly I come to term with things. Like a skinned squirrel I spread my clothes on a few poles all around the huge flaming torch, while my dogs and I are drying our humanity. Clothes, animals and man, we are roasting with the fire and emit steam in the atmosphere.

The dogs do not exhale the smell of wet dogs anymore; my clothes and I feel sufficiently dry to end that moment of rest. Its time, the shadows of the night start to flee before the dawn of day, and, if the sun could surprise me, I would tailor myself in his rays, a coat from which Indian modesty would be the only one not be shocked of.

I am still worried about Monkey; I rack my brains to remember if horses can withstand one day without food and not die. He must be dead by now. My food pantry is empty, I have to restock it. Here are precisely two squirrels: bang! bang! my two shells miss, quick more shells with a little bit of powder. The water infiltrated my powder magazine. Here I am unarmed! If I don't take my new trapper trade seriously, I’m not only out of my way, but lost.  It is not only Monkey who will starve to death, it's me! It would be too dumb, and it will not be!  In the meantime, I am walking since five o'clock in the morning, it is now ten o'clock and nothing can show me some hope in the situation. I sit melancholic, exhausted, empty headed, with an empty stomach. In the distance walking in a single line is a herd of cows. In Europe, a young cowboy would accompany them, here the herds roam freely. Finally, something to clear my head. I am hungry, I will eat calf. I will grab one, knock him out like a bull, as I cannot kill him with a gunshot...Things easier said than done: if the French calves buck, jump, and frolic with their tails up in the air, you must see how the Florida ones are acting when they cross paths with a human and how the cows mothers are reacting. Without my dogs, I think I would have died gored in a stampede.

This failure suggested me a thought: How come this herd is on the move? Where is it heading instead of grazing? It seems to be aiming to a point, it seems it is a daily walk.....It is eleven o'clock and cows drink at noon....The herd is going to drink! Close to my lost hostel is a pond whose proximity is trampled on by the cows. I am going to follow the herd and will be saved! After walking half an hour, the leader of the pack enters into a beaten path. Skeletons of horned animals, scattered bones convince me that I am not mistaken; for centuries, cows have walked this path to reach the spring fed pond at precisely noon. From time to time an older animal laid down on the side of the trail only to never stand up again, and its skeleton left there without burial, to remind the herd of the nonexistent pasture. As fat as they are, it always ends with the last fever, then the over anatomic part fatigued by the ages.

As I was having those philosophical thoughts about this Appian way of the bovine kind, through the trees, I see fences!....I recognize my settlement! In the past Chateaubriand yelled:" I recognize the catacombs."

The compass is a wonderful instrument, but for it to be useful you have to be accompanied by a boat captain: pleasant thought, but not easy. It is easier to attach oneself to a calf and to be walked by his lead line.      

Oh happiness! I see Monkey standing!...He could get loose,...no, he tore down the barn!...How did he not get hurt by all those boards? He is still tied to the piece of wood that he dragged behind him out of his jail...How did you survive, my poor Monkey? A bag of oats ripped open, a one hundred pound bale of hay eaten half the way answers my questions in his place. You must be very thirsty? I lead him to the pond, where I join up with the herd of cows, my life savers. I would like to show them my gratitude by roping one cow. Lost cause; my cup of milk quickly runs away as fast as ones leg can carry one.

It is time to think of me and my dogs. We are fainting from starvation. Lacking any wild game, the three of us voraciously eat a can of corned beef and twenty cookies.

This place that I so often dreamed of, I cannot wait now to leave it to see a human being. In the late afternoon, around five thirty PM, a distant roar was reaching my ears: the huge saw was biting a large pitch pine witch was telling its pain to all the other pitch pines around. At six o'clock, the steam was blowing in a sustained whistle to which the steam from another sawmills whistle, located ten miles away, was answering. It's the end of the working day.

Blissful sawmill, at last! Here are my peers.

Vanier greeted me warmly. The best room in this place is for me: a bedroom, flanked by lattice like a crate, and furnished in the latest trends of the desert: bunk carved in the pitch pine draped with hessian for a bed frame, no mattress nor sheets; a small stepladder and a small table. Everything needed to write, sit down, eat and snore. Diogene would have still found something to complain about.

It was a Saturday evening. What a tasty meal I ate with Vanier in this woods palace!
         "What are you doing tomorrow, Sunday?- did he ask me.
        -Anything you like.
        -Well! We will take the mules and the wagon and we’ll go to Bayport."

At daybreak we were up. As we were getting ready, in the presence of George Beall, the coachman, and a young neighbor, Ross Kellish, fourteen years old, when it seemed to us, that those two American southerners were looking at our wagon with an expert eye. They were pretty sure it could carry two more people.

My offer to join us came just at the right time. It was received with the composure that, for American people, is the visible sign of enthusiasm.

"All right!" they said with a hollow voice. And there we went. It is thirteen miles to cover by walking, through sandy paths. Jack Ellis, our guide, assures us that we will need only three hours. On our way, we take pleasure in shooting vultures, even an eagle, killing squirrels and even teasing a cayman [alligator]. These noble hobbies add one hour to our trip.

Finally here is Bayport! Too bad is this pretty cove hiding a so poor port! If it was deep enough for the big boats, New Orleans would surely communicate with it, but instead it has to limit itself to the small sail crafts coming from Cedar Keys, a little bit North.

The landscape is charming, nice surprise:  a sea of palm trees with bears, great amateurs of cabbage-palm. Then, the prairie, the Gulf of Mexico, the horizon! It's the prisoner's joy to whom one opens wide all of his jail doors; no more pine trees: a huge green prairie with groups of huge palm trees, whose heads are lost in the blue sky.

The little town of Bayport includes about fifty houses from the wood ages, among which are two boarding-houses, a trading post, and a school; surprisingly, no church. A doctor settled his house on this spot; he is taking care of his patients and his vegetables, constantly devastated by the bears. Very kind man, Doctor Brunner, and well housed: but what a poorly balanced sheet every year!

Bayport is the property of only one man. The baron of Buttbigula of this port is named the Major John Parsons, pronounced: Medjo Passous.

For a moment, I was the attraction of the natives of this place, because I was carrying a rifle, and this rifle mechanism (Lefaucheux pinfire) was completely unknown of them, and also because Major Parsons forbid hunting on his estate. The Major's black subjects were surrounding me, caressing the carvings of our weapons, whispering to each other, making me as indifferent as a statue that one taps with a little irreverent knock to know if it is made from bronze or cast iron, solid or hollow, when suddenly a gun shot fired next to me, made me jump. A little negro, rascal of Bayport, pressed the trigger, and, ashamed of this wrongdoing, was looking at me imploring, wondering on what part of his ebony body I was going to assuage my retaliation, but I saw the Major Parsons coming, drawn by the deflagration.

Far from fining me, he approached me with courtesy, assures me that he likes French people, takes me into his home to show me his joy to finally be able to welcome one on his territory. He took me on a tour of his garden, where in the burning sand, regretfully grow a few European vegetables, shunned by the bears, and he gives me six oranges. Oh Medjo!

To the eyes of the natives, I was already a large land owner, a big cured meat merchant from my country at least. As the real French, I received with benefaction flattering whispers flying by, and around me.

Later on, when I will need these kind people, I will find them all ready to..........leave me.

He is very well set up, the Major! A very comfortable villa, nicely furnished, surrounded by an orange grove, as beautiful as it is possible to grow in Bayport, where they do not grow that well. Very uncommon thing in Florida, two old paintings, with some value decorate the living room. In a little display case, an array of Indian weapons, axes and silex arrowheads, tomahawks, and potteries collected by his only son, lately dead, at the age of twenty.

The major has two rocking-chairs brought out under the piazza. While rocking, we are talking about Bayport. The Major Parsons is not only the baron of Buttbigula, he is the king of the land, as he established a customs office in his sea port. Anyone who brings supply to Bayport has to pay him a royalty of so many percents, in default of payment, the supply will be locked up. As long as the railroad is not reaching Brooksville, all the traffic will keep passing through Bayport. As a result, the "Major’s-customs officer" is making a very nice benefice from his small kingdom. This is a quiet ingenious roundabout.

I asked, "Who would stop a smuggler to bring through Bayport, where the United States do not have any customs office, the foreign merchandises typically taxed by this protectionist system?"

He did not have any answer for this.

I am convinced that nothing would be easier than to defraud Uncle Sam, from whom we would avoid the humiliating defeats landing in the Uncle Parsons domain. As high as the levy he is charging, it is nothing compared to the very strict fees of the American customs. It may not be very honest, but we would have ample time to get rich before being exposed. The rueful and mortified smuggler could soon start again a little farther South on the gulf coast, where better creeks than Bayport are found, and where there would be no royalty to pay to another major.

Why is Sir John Parsons still described as Major? Could he have been a Major in the army, by any chances?

In all consideration, this title is more legitimate than those of colonel, captain, and major placed in front of some American names. At least Major Parsons did really command a regiment or battalion during the Civil War. This confederate regiment or battalion was, in fact, dragged away from the military operations, where he was torn to pieces, to come and stay in Bayport to guard Sir Parsons' lands, and protect with a big helping hand a huge cargo of cotton. This honor guard declared major the king of Bayport whom, in a patriotic excess, recently burned two or three of his vessels, loaded with cotton balls, so they would not fall into enemy hands. Thus I was not surprised when I did not find, among the Major’s Indian curios, neither his combat sword nor his helmet. Looking more closely, I would maybe find his cotton bonnet.

Except for a few acres sold by him in Bayport and where the buyers have built, the major owns all the houses in town, and he rents them at a very high price, particularly to niggers. Wooden structures that only cost him three hundred dollars are rented for five or six dollars a month. It is twenty percent without any taxes.
The major is not only the owner of Bayport and its surroundings, a few miles around, but he also owns plots of land on the way to Wikiwachee; and in Brooksville, a whole suburb and around ten houses including the Hernando hotel". He announces his intention to build a railroad from Bayport to Brooksville, about thirty two kilometers, most of the time the tracks will be built on his property. He also owns two buildings in Jacksonville. He spends his summers up North where he still has lots of assets.

The start of this wealth, evaluated at three hundred thousand dollars, goes back to the era when four million acres were conceded to the Disston society, for payment of one franc and twenty five cents per acre, which it sells back at the price of six francs and twenty five cents. The profit is apparent. The major sensed it, found a way to acquire the best and better located lots in those "prehistoric times". Today, these lots have a value, depending on their situation, often ten to two hundred francs, and even more.

The Disston Company should make deals as good as Major Parsons, but it is shamefully ripped off by its agents, who sell the lands, cashes the money, and does not report it.


If these kinds of hitches are harmful to its consideration towards the buyers, it does not in any way sully the agents's one. They pay their suppliers better than before: what argument could be better for them?

Major Parsons is at least seventy years old, and he only dreams about business news!  Death will take him by surprise, after swallowing too much whiskey, the day after the execution of a debtor who could not pay back the property loan at eight percent, legal rate, now his profit making specialty.

I would not depict him as an inflexible creditor. He brings in the exercise of his rights some character, and, while seeking only his own interest, with his assets do huge services in a country where the trader who sell you woolen clothes gladly accepts a bunch of little black piglets dressed with silk as payment.

I leave this Floridian lord to have lunch at one o'clock at the boarding-house kept by Mr. and Mrs. Wishenant. Excellent fried fish, rice and potatoes. The only meat, fillets of marinated deer meat, which I thought at first were diced artichokes. Meat served as appetizer, it's a little bit puzzling. Then comes the unavoidable cake, served with a cup of tea.

In front of me was Mrs Wishenant blessed with a pretty little American face. This little plump chick answers to the sweet name of Minnie, but keeps her lips closed. Her mother, who chats more easily, - there is no magpie in Florida-, tells me that Minnie had received the brightest education in Palatka, with the sisters of Saint Joseph. Showing me the beautiful diplomas she earned, she praises sister Josephine, this all mighty travel companion, so powerful that she manages to make the machine bringing us to Jacksonville, by mistake, go in reverse.

What are people living from in Bayport? I see only one single store, which survives with the residents, but the residents, where do they find money to buy at the store their life's necessities? How can the Wishenant-house and the rival Boarding withstand the lack of travelers? What is the trade, hidden to the tourist’s eyes, which help this whole population survive? Probably hunting and fishing: The sale of venison and fishes are the only means. Deer meat is five cents a pound, fish three cents, with those prices, apparently, one lives happy in Bayport, as a deer in the woods or as a duck takes to water

Advice to the geographers and others: Bayport is the end of the world, I made inquiries about it.

Our traveling companions eat abundantly from the supplies gathered in our wagon, except for Beall, affected by a sudden migraine, and who was point to me, two kilometers away in the bay, catching oysters, famed in the area.

Most certainly, it was a very strong migraine and fishing had to clear it up; however this sudden ache and this escape seemed to Vanier and me, too much at the right moment, not to be hiding some dark intention.

I had, in fact, foolishly talked about my intent to buy a small boat and sail up the Wikiwachee River by rowing. In my modesty, I thought I would provide Beall and the young Kellish with great fun by inviting them in this craft and working their biceps.

I was mistaken.
Beall suddenly fell sick.

The others, at the precise moment where I was taking them on board, put up an act which reminded me of the "Escamoteur" by Hamon, who only sees backs at the time he is passing the hat around. Ellis swore he had never rowed once in his life and Ross Kellis was afraid that we would never be able to reach our destination.

In every angle, out of the mouths of babes comes forth truth. Our truthful companions rejected the idea fearing that we would not make it! You are in trouble, we are leaving, an American characteristic.

Well, France and Canada, the two peas in a pod, we will make it all by ourselves!

We send all those deserters back by wagon, enjoining them to wait for us at the Wikiwachee spring. I jump aboard the craft with Vanier, my loyal Canadian, furious with our companions’ desertion.

There, I knew to what extent, French locutions were passed on from age to age in Canada. It looked like "Vert-Vert" on the boat which brought him back, but I knew it was no Greek.*  ( *Vert-Vert Is a poem written by Jean Baptiste Gresset and published in 1734.  It is the story of a parrot (Vert-Vert) took in by sisters in Nevers and living with them in a convent. He is talking a religious language. But sisters in a convent in Nantes ask for him. He is then entrusted to a boatman on the Loire for the journey. Of course, on the boat he learns the language of sailors and prostitutes. Arriving in Nantes, he swears like a bargeman. The sisters in Nantes are horrified and send him back to Nevers where it is very difficult to teach him Latin again, and he end up alone for the rest of his life.)

He was still angry with the major's black subjects, compared to what neither myself, nor three dollars, given to us for help, had had any valor. They would rather be lazy.

Proudly in front of our companions, we appeared like, one in front of the other, non smiling augurs, above all when after one hour we were still in view of Bayport, looking for the mouth of the Wikiwachee River and falling from one dead end to the forks of the Mud River.

It is four o’clock; we finally got into the Wikiwachee. What an enchantment! what a row of tropical nature paintings! gigantic palm trees, huge cypress, Magnolia Grandifloras, garlands of lianas above the river, plants and shrubs tangled in an graceful  or strange shape, dark nooks and crannies, countless fishes, caymans [alligators] running away in the common reeds, huge turtles, birds of every shape, every color, every size, foliage domes, water ponds, types of little lakes from which the sun lights the bottom with thousands of wonderful nuances, then small mystical creeks meander and in whose bends the strangest things must happen.

This is our two hour long journey, spell of every minute, reality of the most romantic fantasies.

The day starts to fade; soon the moment when poesy will not be necessary, will come. The night wraps us at once. A large felled tree blocks the river. Willy-nilly we proceed through its branches.

Another is of a meaner nature. Going into its arms, we are so strongly held up, that it is now impossible to go forward or backwards. What to do in this critical situation worsened by an exceptional tiredness? Taught by a recent experience, I had fortunately loaded the raft with abundant supplies, including two full bottles of coffee. This supper in that tree vaguely reminded me, I have to say, of the robins overhanging feasts in the trees, but this brought back vigor into our arms, exhausted by three hours of rowing, and enough quietness for our mind to debate this serious question: Should we spend the night between the cypress claws holding our boat as one holds a bug between his fingers, or should we fight by any means?


Unanimously it is decided then that only a virile resolution is worthy of us, and after half an hour one of the claws, cut, chopped, felled pitifully and lifeless into the water. We are free! free to go into the dark night and to ground ourselves on a sandbar, to come through only to throw ourselves into a tree, to free ourselves and be rushed against the other side of the  bank into another tree branch! Misled by sudden bends, we get entangled in lianas and reeds. Our boat is scratching its noose at the end of all those dead ends. A river whose stream one sails up is like a cat stroked the wrong way.

And no lantern, no moon; this star and I, what didn't we think about? If a lantern in hand and the moon in the sky were ever helpful, it was definitely to sail on the Wikiwachee River. With the glow of a match, I glanced at my watch: nine o'clock: five hours of boating!
       
        "We must be close, exclaimed Vanier.
        For sure, we are getting close but we are getting more and more hung on."
        Let's go with the Indian war cry;   
        "Yo-ho-hee! Yo-ho-hee! "
        Nothing! the spring is still too far. Our people cannot hear us.

We are rowing with rage, sending to hell the charms of the Wikiwachee. The marvelous colors of the river bed, the clearness of its waters, its monsters and its fishes, its colorful banks, we would give it all for the value, between nine and ten o'clock at night, by a moonless night, without a lantern and without a star, a river on which we slaved away for 6 hours, with blistered hands, broken backs and cotton legs!

We are constantly rowing and almost any hope to reach our destination. Didn't someone tell us that we needed four hours to sail up this diabolical river, and we are rowing already for six hours! Did we take a dead end junction?
       
        "We must be close, repeated Vanier.
        -Yo-ho-hee! Yo-ho-hee!
        I shout out twenty times, twenty times the echo of this unpopulated land sends them back to me
        without any human response.
        Splendid loneliness! Chateaubriand and his beautiful nights of the New World!
        Oh poets, before making rhyme, learn first to row.

My mind is wandering, my eyesight is blurry, it looks like my arms were replaced by two paddles which are getting longer and shorter. It looks to me like I am a magnificent creature, an automatic, a mechanical, driving force to the exclusive use of this boat. It looks like my legs are plunged into the water and rotate like a propeller. Vanier who is getting his breath back is the pipe through which I exhale my steam.
      
        "We should be close says a sepulchral voice coming from this pipe.
        -Yo-ho-hee! - Yo-ho-hee!".
        It looks like my voice does not have any reach: Are we entering another dead end?
        Fortunate dead end! It's the spring.
        With a few rowing strokes, we cross over a bend which makes it appear to our eyes.
        Our men are there, around a large fire, savoring oysters.
       
"They do not use any goodwill to hear us, I said; it is impossible that my last scream did not reach them.

-Of course, replied my Canadian; but they are unhappy to have waited, and above all furious with our success in spite of their desertion."

Upon this, I sing with my most beautiful voice, as if I had the strength:



We could not back up in front of America.

Eleven o'clock, seven hours of nightmares! Never in my life have I paddle so much.

The men's faces are displeased because the stomach is dissatisfied: they have only eaten a few oysters since noon. When annoyed, my good friends, diet is the best remedy.

The mules are quickly tacked to the wagon. I will finally lay down in the hay and sleep of a rower's sleep. Oh ache! I find myself limply stretched out on huge oysters! Talk about peach pits, those are rose petals compared to an oyster mattress! Woe to Beall, who introduced oyster farming in by bedding. Even covered with a light coat of hay, what a vague similarity with the good old wool; there is no shell which is worth it, especially with the jolts.
       
        Despite all, I am so dislocated, so toughened that the sleep is taking me away from those tender caresses.
        In my dream: I hear,
        "I bet you fifty dollars you are not on the right way!
        -I bet you one hundred dollars I am!"
        And the God dam! flying around.
       
It was not a dream, unfortunately! Beall and Ellis were arguing. Ellis was lost. Beall sends him to bed next to me on the oysters, one more oyster on the pile, and he takes the leadership. Nothing to help us as a landmark. Tree after tree with a desperate persistence. It feels like traveling under the columns of a portico without beginning or end.

Repeatedly Beall steps off the wagon and brings a match into the ruts to identify a clue. He is confused; and it seems that he recognizes those ruts. He feels the trees, he inspects them, looks for signs, Suddenly he yells: Eureka! Greek, here and now!

How could this strapping lad have found, by a dark night, a mark he made three month before and in this place which, for us, looks exactly like the other ones? It is his trapper’s instinct.




(Translated by Gataen Gasset, November 2008- Copyright © 2008- 2010 by Jeff Cannon)