LIFE OAK PLANTATION
come upon the footprints of a long-forgotten occupation. Sometimes it is still possible to trace the washed-out rooty banks of ancient rice dikes and to separate from the venerable woods of pine and live oak the squarely defined blocks of second growth springing from a tangled morass once cleared and fruitful.
Here one may realize the problem that confronted the earlier settlers, and marvel at the minds that conceived the plan of redeeming those miles and miles of submerged jungle, with no other tools than the African slave and the black-snake whip!
Where the ground is higher the careful eye may discover a cluster of ancient live oaks buried under the pines. These trees take systematic order, then align, to form a broad, straight avenue, all but lost in the later growth of pines and gums.
The moss hangs low in funereal festoons; beneath, the avenue is choked with underbrush, seedlings and saplings, palmetto and scrub oaks. The vista is obscured, but here and there where the open spaces coincide one may see far through and catch a glimpse of a solitary column clothed in cypress, or the black background beneath a marble arch.
Sometimes the outlines of the ancient mansion may be traced; by rooting, as have the wild hogs, under the carpet of leaves and mold, one may unearth the long English bricks, brought by shiploads long ago from far across the western ocean. Tombs there are of men who fought against the buccaneers—perhaps, who knows, beside them!
There are many such ruins, not of a single house and of its environments, but of acres and acres of what
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