128 FLORIDA DAYS.

in putting a great pine in such a position, it is,
so strong and so indifferent. There is a strange
and interesting thing about these trees which
no one has yet explained and the pines are
silent. When their forests are cut down for tim-
ber, there springs up instead of the pines, clean-
cut and virile, a whole undergrowth of bushy
young oaks! No one knows whence the acorns
came from which they sprang; there is often
not an old oak within miles, and the expanse of
sand had been covered with unbroken phalanxes
of pines.
 Sometimes in the barrens one comes across
a single log-house, standing beside trees which
give it neither sympathy nor shelter. True, the
occupants support themselves by the turpentine
which the pines supply. They cut with clean,
even gashes a deep oblong in the bark, being
careful not to girdle and kill their source of
income; but any kindly feeling for the trees is
not to be imagined.
 The lives of these people who collect the
turpentine, are very lonely and very vacant, but
their faces do not show that peace with vacancy