Following the coast on our left, numerous reefs of large and very fat oysters continually obstructed our progress.  We gathered a bushel with our hands in a very few minutes; but as the wind commenced to blow most spitefully, and the heavy forests of palms on the low shore offered a pleasant shelter, we disembarked about sunset in a magnificent grove of palmetto-trees, spending a pleasant evening in feasting upon the delicious bivalves, roasted and upon the half shell.

The tempest held us prisoners in this wild retreat for two days, and during that time, if we had been the possessor of a dog, we might have supped and dined upon venison and wild turkey.  As it was, we were well content to subsist upon wild ducks and the fine oysters, with bread from fresh wheat-flour, baked in our Dutch oven, or bake-kettle, and coffee that never tastes elsewhere as it does in camp.

At last the gale went down with the sun, and we rowed in the evening thirteen miles up the bay to Apalachicola, and went into camp upon the sandy beach at the lower end of the town.  While sleeping soundly in our boats, at an early hour the next morning some one came “gently tapping at my chamber-door,” or, in sea phrase, pounding upon my hatch.  I soon discovered that my visitor was Captain Daniel Fry, United States Inspector of Steamboats.  His pretty cottage, environed with beds of blooming flowers, was perched upon the sandy bluff above us.  The captain, in a nautical way, claimed us as salvage, and we were soon enjoying his generous hospitality.  In this isolated town, once a busy cotton-shipping port, there was a population of about one thousand souls, among whom, conspicuous for his urbane manners and scientific ability, lived Dr. A. W. Chapman, the author of the “Flora of the Southern United States.”

While at New Orleans I had addressed a letter to the postmaster at St. Marks, Florida, requesting him to forward my letters to Apalachicola, but the request had not been noticed.  The mystery was, however, explained by Lieutenant N., of the Coast Survey schooner Silliman, who one day called upon me, and said that when he stopped at St. Marks for his mail, a few days previous to my arrival at Apalachicola, he saw about thirty letters addressed to me lying loosely upon the desk of the negro postmaster of that marshy settlement.  My letter of instruction had been received, but as the postmaster could not read, no notice had been taken of it.  The coast survey officer had kindly gathered my letters in one parcel, and had deposited them for safe-keeping with the postmaster’s white clerk.  The responsible position of postmaster was filled by an ignorant colored man, because his politics were those of the party then in power.