The system of “time-freights,” on railroads to the eastern Atlantic ports of Charleston and Savannah, had reduced the once promising city of St. Joseph to one shanty and a rotten pier.  Apalachicola also felt the iron hand of competition, and her line of steamboats lost the carriage upon her noble river of the cotton from the distant interior.  Railroads were rapidly constructed running east and west, and the rivers flowing to the south were robbed of their commerce.

Beyond St. Joseph city the scenery became almost tropical in its character, and palmettos grew in rank luxuriance on the low savannas.  The long narrow coast on the south side of the bay trended suddenly to the south, and terminated in Cape San Blas, while the sound was ended abruptly by a strip of land which connected the long cape to the main.  The system of interior watercourses here came to a natural end; and pulling our boats upon the strand, we landed by a large turtle-pen, near which was a deserted grass hut, evidently the home of the turtle-hunter during the “turtle season.”  Leaving the boats on the salt marsh, we entered the woods and ascended the sand-hills of the Gulf coast, when a boundless view of the sea broke upon us.  The shining strand stretched in regular lines four miles to the south, where the light-tower on the point of the cape rose above the intervening forest.  Greeting it as the face of a friend, we rejoiced to see it so near; and standing entranced with the beauty of the vision before us,- -the boundless sea, the most ennobling sight in all nature,—­we congratulated ourselves that we had arrived safely at Cape San Blas.

[Map Cape San Blas to Cedar Keys.]

[Map Cape San Blas to Cedar Keys.]

CHAPTER XI.

FROM CAPE SAN BLAS TO ST. MARKS

A portage across cape San Blas.—­ The cow-hunters.—­ A visit to the
light-house.—­ Once more on the sea.—­ Portage into st. Vincent’s
sound.—­ Apalachicola.—­ St. George’s sound and Ocklockony river.—­
Arrival at st. Marks.—­ The negro postmaster.—­ A philanthropist and
his neighbors.—­ A continuous and protected water-way from the
Mississippi to the Atlantic coast.

A portage now loomed in our horizon.  The distance across the neck of land was one-third of a mile only, but the ascent of the hills of the Gulf beach would prove a formidable task.  I proposed to Saddles that he should return to the boats, while I hurried down the beach to the point of the cape to find a man to assist us in their transportation from the bay to the sea.