Harriet Beecher Stowe's Palmetto-Leaves—Book
A book written by someone with firsthand information about something from the past is considered a primary source. Such books can help us understand a place, a topic, or an event in great detail. The passages below are from Harriet Beecher Stowe's book Palmetto-Leaves, which describes how she spent her winters in Florida. She published it in 1873, around the time of the early development of Florida tourism.
Primary Source
The Grand Tour Up the River.
The St. John's is the grand water-highway through some of the most beautiful portions of Florida; and tourists, safely seated at ease on the decks of steamers, can penetrate into the mysteries and wonders of unbroken tropical forests.
During the “season,” boats continually run from Jacksonville to Enterprise, and back again; the round trip being made for a moderate sum, and giving, in a very easy and comparatively inexpensive manner, as much of the peculiar scenery as mere tourists care to see….
Turning our boat homeward, we sailed in clear morning light back through the charming scenery which we had slept through the night before. It is the most wild, dream-like, enchanting sail conceivable. The river sometimes narrows so that the boat brushes under overhanging branches, and then widens into beautiful lakes dotted with wooded islands. Palmetto-hammocks, live-oak groves, cypress, pine, bay, and magnolia form an interchanging picture; vines hang festooned from tree to tree; wild flowers tempt the eye on the near banks; and one is constantly longing for the boat to delay here or there.
Excerpts from Palmetto-Leaves by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Gainesville, University of Florida Press, 1968, pp. 247–248, 257.
Background
Harriet Beecher Stowe is most widely known for writing Uncle Tom's Cabin. In that book, she told the story of the cruelties of slavery before the Civil War. Yet did you know that Stowe also wrote about Florida? In the 1860s, she and her husband bought a home in Mandarin, Florida, which is located on the St. John's River. Every winter, Stowe spent time taking boat trips on the river and exploring the land near her home. In 1863, she published a book about life in Florida called Palmetto-Leaves. In this work, Stowe describes Florida as a tropical paradise. When northerners read her book, they became very interested in traveling to Florida. Many people became eager to buy land there.
