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From "South Moon Under"
by
Marjorie
Kinnan Rawlings
The Florida scrub was
unique.The man Landry recognized it's quality for it's
remoteness.There was perhaps no similar region
anywhere.
It was a vast dry
rectangular plateau, bounded on three sides by two rivers. The
Ockawaka, flowing towards the north, bounded it on the west. At the
north-west corner of the rectangle the Ocklawaha turned sharply at
right angles and flowed due east. Joining at the north-east
corner the St. Johns river which formed the eastern
demarcation.
Within these deep
watery lines the scrub stood aloof, uninhibited through it's wider
reaches. The growth repelled all human living. the soil was a tawny
sand, from whose parched infertility there reared, indifferent to
water, so dense a growth of scrub pine-the southern spruce-that the
effect of the massed thin trunks was of a limitless, canopied
stockade.It
seemed impenetrable, for man-high growth of scrub oak, myrtle,
sparkleberry and titi filled the interstices. Wide areas, indeed,
admitted of no human passage.
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