Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/374

368 villages would be in other states: Camp Hammock, Hickory Hammock and Jack Hammock are familiar names in that region. They serve as camping places for men, and as shelters from the noonday sun for cattle. Some of them, when entered, are veritable fairy-lands: from the branches of the huge live oaks are festooned great masses of beautiful, gray, hanging moss, while here and there is stationed a stately palmetto, with its great head of green leaves, each leaf nearly twice as tall as a man. From the lower growth may project the gaunt, bare branches of a dead oak, on which a group of turkey-buzzards and carrion crows are likely to be seen.

The much smaller ground rattlers are also numerous on the prairie, but, on account of their small size, one to two feet instead of six to eight, they are not feared as are the diamond rattlers.

The monotony of the prairie is broken by an occasional clump of trees, known as a "hammock" (probably derived from "hummock"). These hammocks are sometimes composed merely of a small group of palm trees, called "cabbage palmettoes" from the edible, cabbage-like core at the tip; or they may cover several acres and contain moss-hung oaks and a dense undergrowth. The hammocks serve as landmarks and milestones for the traveler and cowboy, and many of them are named, just as streams, hills or