Alexandria Gazette & Daily Advertiser

Darien, May 31.
FROM EAST FLORIDA.
We have conversed with a respectable
citizen of Darien, who left St. Augustine
last Tuesday, and learn that the animosities
occasioned by the cession of the province
are fast wearing away among the people,
excepting renegade Americans, and individuals
in the service of Spain; and that
a memorial is in preparation soliciting the
president to appoint general Jackson as
governor so soon as a transfer shall have
been effected, and another beseeching the
general to accept the appointment should
it be offered him. Our informant went as
far south in the peninsula as Mosquito
and Indian rivers, and southwestwardly to
Spring Garden, near Lake George. His reception
among the Seminoles was civil and
friendly, being always taken by the hand
and offered victuals, which, though none
of the best, seemed to be abundant. The
savages amounting to three or four hundred,
were busily engaged in fishing, hunting,
and planting corn in the old fields opened
by the English before and during
the revolutionary war. Many of the impetuous
young warriors, he understood,
had declared they would never come to
terms with the United States, but the
greater portion of the nation, having learnt
to bend to circumstances, and knowing
the union of the province with this country
would cut off all communication with foreigners,
expressed the greatest desire to
enter into a treaty with our government—
They were only deterred from sending a
deputation for that purpose to some of the
frontier posts, by the apprehension that
the "crackers" (by which term they mean
the provincialists living between the St.
John's and St. Mary's as well as the frontier
Georgians) would murder their deputies.
Our informant communicated this intelligence
to Maj. Bird, commanding Fort
Alert, on the St. Mary's who requested him
desire them, that should any delegates reach his station, they would be protected while they remained, and furnished with an escort on their return; and at the same time wished him to advise them to get some respectable white person to accompany their ambassadors on the advance, a measure that would add much to their security. Our informant, however, finding that his own business would not allow him to convey the message in person, requested several Indian traders to state to the Indians the assurances of major Bird, which they no doubt did.

Their corn being last year nearly all destroyed by our troops at Suwannee and elsewhere, they use a root called coontie, as a substitute. It is usually about eighteen inches long and from three to four inches in diameter, and is indigenous in all the southerly part of the peninsula. They beat it in a mortar until the fibrous particles separate from the farinaceous: when the latter is washed, dried and made into soup, which is said to be very nutritious, but insipid to the taste of a stranger. Some of the whites make the farina into bread, and the negroes often subsist on it for months, bartering their corn for venison, bear flesh, &c.

The Indians have as much game as they can consume.