July 1867 - February 1868, The thousand mile walk from Kentucky to Florida and Cuba Image 23

have been directed here by Providence. It is not often hereabouts that the joys of cool water, cool shade, and rare plants are so delightfully combined. Witnesses the most gorgeous sunset I ever enjoyed in the bright world of light. The “sunny South” indeed. Directed by very civil negro to lodgings for the night. (All the negroes here have been taught good manners.) Daily bread in this section means sweet potatoes and rusty bacon. 28th. The water oak abundant on stream banks and in damp hollows. Grasses becoming tall and cane-like, but do not cover the ground with their leaves as at the north. Strange plants crowding about me now, scarce a familiar face among all the flowers of a day’s walk. 29th. Today met a magnificent grass, ten or twelve feet in stature, with superb panicle of glossy purple flowers - its leaves too are of princely mould and dimensions. Its home is in sunny meadows, and the wet borders of slow streams and swamps.https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmj-all/1022/thumbnail.jp