W. David so ■ iimiHwiii Class _F"3j_(= GopightN" eOPKKIGHT DEPOSIT )' THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY A GUIDE FOR TOURISTS AND SETTLERS BY JAMES WOOD DAVIDSON, A.M. AUTHOR OF " THE LIVING WRITERS OF THE SOUTH " ; ''A SCHOOL HISTORY OP SOUTH CAROLINA" ; "THE CORRESPONDENT" "the POETRY OF THE FUTURE," ETC. WITH MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS NEW YORK APPLETON AND COMPANY 1889 Copyright, 1888, By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. L^- r> CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. History . . . 7 Discoveries 1 Settlement .... 12 Cession to Great Britain . 15 Ketrocession to Spain. IT Cession to the United States 17 Territory of Florida . 17 Seminole Wars . 18 State of Florida 25 Secession . 26 Reconstruction 26 Restoration 26 11. Geography . 38 III. Climate 33 Temperature 33 Humidity . 35 IV. Divisions 41 First, North Florida . 42 Second, Semi-tropical Florida 43 Third, Subtropical Florida . 43 V. Health .... 52 Malaria .... 52 Tornadoes .... 58 VI. Geology .... 59 Industrial Features . 63 Mineral Waters . 67 4 CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE Soils o . . 68 Drainage 69 VII. Travel ......... 72 Ocean Routes 72 Overland Routes 73 Jacksonville 76 From Jacksonville 80 Indian River ........ 88 Lake Worth 90 Biscayne Bay . 91 Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades . . . .94 Key West 94 Cape Sable. . . 96 Tampa 97 Tallahassee 97 Cedar Keys .98 Pensacola 99 Appalachicola 100 Wakulla Springs 100 Silver Spring 100 The Ocklawaha River 101 The Suwannee River 103 The Caloosahatchee River 103 The Homosassa River . . . . . . 104 Mounds 105 VIII. Population 108 Peoples 108 Old Residents 108 Northern and Foreign Immigrants . . . .110 Negroes 113 Indians 117 IX. Education 127 X. Productions . 130 Oranges 130 Lemons 136 Limes 138 Other Citrus Fruits . 140 CONTENTS. Cocoanuts Pineapples. Bananas . Pears Grapes and Wine Grand Possibilities Yet other Fruits . Tobacco Cotton Silk . Lumber Rice . Sugar. Grains Cattle Sheep Goats Other Stock Poultry Gardening Opium Honey Out of the Waters XI. Sporting Fishing Hunting XII. Pests. . Insects Reptiles Land-Shark? PAGE , 141 . 144 . 148 . 151 . 152 . 154 . 164 . 178 . 182 . 183 . 186 . 192 . 193 . 194 . 195 . 196 . 196 . 198 . 198 . 199 . 203 . 204 . 205 . 309 . 209 . 21Y . 223 . 223 , 225 . 226 Appendix : Railway Routes . River Routes List of Hotels . 229 231 236 MAPS AND ILLUSTEATIOlsS. PAGE Map of Florida Facing title Map of Divisions 41 The Banana 51 Street Scene in Jacksonville 78 Street in St. Augustine 83 Ponce de Leon Hotel 85 Looking across Indian River 89 A Hammock 92 A Scene on the Ocklawaha Eiver 103 Orange 181 Orange-Trees 132 Lemon 137 Lime-Tree 188 CoGoanut-Grove 142 The Banana and the Pineapple 149 Guava 156 Mango 158 The Date-Palm . " . . . . • . . . .165 A Cypress-Shingle Yard 188 A Hunter's Camp 218 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. HISTOEY. The early history of Florida — its discoveries, conquests, reconquests, cessions, and retrocession — is as varied and spirited as a romance. Discoveries. — It is agreed generally among the historians that Ponce de Leon was the first of the several discoverers. This romantic and enterprising adventurer, hunting the phantasmal Isle of Biraini — one writer calls it Boiaca — with its precious fount- ain of yoath, failed indeed to find that, but reached the coast of Florida just north of where St. Augus- tine now is, on Easter-Sunday, the 27th of March, 1512. He landed the 2d of April, and named the country, known to the Indians as Cautio, Florida, from Pascua Florida, the day of his discovery. Mr. Fairbanks, however, states that the discovery was made on Pahn-Suudaj. Ponce de Leon did little 8 TEE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. else on that occasion than to land, erect banners, and baptize the fair land of flowers. Florida was next discovered by Miruelo in 1516. He got, it is said, some pieces of gold from the na- tives, which, on his return to Cnba, the general base of operations for the Spaniards at that early date, created great excitement among the gold-hnngry ad- venturers of that day. The next year, 1517, De Cordova led an expedi- tion of Spaniards to the new El Dorado ; but he was speedily driven off, and returned to Cuba to die of his wounds. The same year Alaminos came with three ships, landed twice, found no gold, and was soon driven away. In 1521 Ponce de Leon made another invasion of Florida ; but he found no gold, was baffled and wounded, and returned to Cuba to die, as De Cor- dova had done. Seven years later the Spanish fortune-hunters began to discover and to invade Florida on the western side. De ISTarvaez, in April, 1528, led an expedition of about four hundred men and eighty horses, which landed in Clear Water Bay. He landed with three hundred men and the horses, and marched northward along the Gulf- shore, hav- HISTORY. 9 ing ordered liis vessels to coast along apace with his marching troops. The arrangement was a fail- ure. The ships lost sight of the troops, and, baffled in every effort to find them, months afterward re- turned to Cuba. The three hundred troops were all, in one way or another, destroyed, except four. These four remained seven years in the El Do- rado, became " medicine-men " among the Indians, and finally worked their way back, crossing the Mississippi Kiver, to the Spanish settlements in Mexico. One of these, Cabega de Yaca — the veri- table discoverer of the Mississippi River — wrote an account of these stirring events. While the ships were yet lying at Clear Water, a Spaniard, Juan de Ortiz, rashly ventured ashore, and was left there a prisoner among the Indians, known then as Mari- annes. He remained there eleven years — until the next discoverer came along — and had a sort of John Smith experience with a Floridian Pocahontas and Powhatan. The name of the interesting heroine of this adventure seems to have perished, but the Powhatan was named Hirrihigua. In 1539 De Soto, with a thousand men and three hundred and fifty horses, landed in what is now Tampa Bay, which he christened Espiritu Santo. Upon landing, he found De Ortiz, men- 10 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. tioned above, who acted as his guide ; but, as it turned out, he knew almost nothing about the country. De Soto was in quest of reported " great store of crystal, gold, and rubies, and diamonds," that lay somewhere to tlie northward. He sent his vessels home, and set out overland to the region of treasures, wherever that might be. He reached Chicora, or Chicola — South Carolina, perhaps — then turned westward, and passed beyond the Mississippi River, which had been discovered years before, and named Rio Grande, by De Yaca. De Soto returned to that river, died there, and was buried beneath its paternal waters. Just three hundred and eleven of his thousand men finally reached Mexico. In 1545 a treasure- ship , sailing from Mexico for Spain, was wrecked on the eastern coast of Florida, and about two hundred persons escaped to the land, and thus unwittingly discovered Florida again. The most of these were murdered by the gentle Stoics of the woods, and the rest were enslaved. About twenty years later one of these slaves made his way to Laudonniere's settlement, at the mouth of the St. John's River, and a few others reached the colony of Menendez at St. Augustine. In 1549 four Franciscan friars landed at Tampa Bay, with the idea of evangelizing the stoical abo- HISTORY. 11 ngines, but the noble savages tomahawked three of them, and thns convmced the fourth brother that tliat kind of a conquest of Florida was impractica- ble — at that time. Ten years later, De Luna set out from Yera Crnz with fifteen hundred adventurers and a large number of zealous priests ; the former to pick np fortunes, and the latter to preach the gospel of peace to the cut-throat barbarians. He landed at the Bay of Pensacola, then called Santa Maria, pitched a camp there, marched into the interior, accomplished the loss of a good many men, and was ordered home. In 1562 Ribault came from France with two vessels and a colony of Huguenots, and made land near St. Augustine ; thence coasted northward, dis- covered the St. John's River, which he christened the May, and erected a monument of stone engraved with the arms of France. He soon re-embarked, and proceeded to make a settlement at Port Royal, South Carolina. In 1564 Laudonniere brought a still larger col- ony of Huguenots, landed where St. Augustine now stands, but promptly re-embarked and sailed to St. John's Bluff, and there built Fort Caroline. This colony struggled on for a year, and, becoming dis- 12 THE FLORIDA OF TO-BAY. heartened, were preparing to return to France, when, in Angust, 1565, Eibault arrived with about six hundred and fifty other Huguenots, some hav- ing families. Settlement. — The same year brought Menendez, who arrived in July, 1565, at St. Augustine. Upon his arrival he heard of Eibault and his Huguenots at Fort Caroline, and promptly pursued his vessels, but without success. He then returned to St. Au- gustine, and built solid fortifications. Ribault ral- lied quickly, and set out to capture Menendez before he could complete his defenses ; but the French were driven south, and finally wrecked near Matanzas. Menendez was equal to the occasion, and, taking advantage of the situation, attacked and captured Fort Caroline. He hanged a number of his French prisoners upon trees, and put this in- scription over their hanging bodies : " I^on jpoi' Franceses^ sino jpor Luteranosr The victor re- christened the fort San Mateo, returned to St. Au- gustine, there first heard of Eibault' s shipwreck, hastened down to Matanzas Inlet, captured Ei- bault's straggling party, and, under the banner of the cross, butchered them to a man. This closed the efforts of the French to hold a colony in Florida proper. HISTORY. 13 Menendez held liis post at St. Augustine, and this doubtless was the first permanent settlement of Europeans in the United States. In 1567 a gallant Frenchman, De Gourgues, got up an expedition to avenge the brutal massacre and insult of his compatriots bj the Spaniards at Fort Caroline. With three small vessels and a hun- dred and eighty-four men he came to Florida, adroitly secured the co-operation of the natives, and with these combined forces he surprised Fort San Mateo — the old Fort Caroline — and captured the entire garrison. He turned the merciful aborigines in upon the Spaniards, and a few survived. These De Gourgues hanged upon the same trees that Me- nendez had used for the Huguenots, and on a pine board over the corpses he wrote, " I do this, not as to Spaniards, nor as to outcasts, but as to traitors, thieves, and murderers." The avengement was complete. St. Augustine, meanwhile, was held continu- ously by the Spaniards; but holding was about all they did, except fighting off Indians. In 1647 the city contained three hundred families. It was twice captured and burned down — once by Sir Francis Drake, who was returning from a freebooting expedition in the Spanish Main, 14 TEE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. and once, in 1665, bj Captain John Davis, a buc- caneer. Spain claimed that Florida embraced all the ter- ritory as far north as Virginia and westward to the Mississippi Eiver — in those early Spanish days known as the Rio Grande. Accordingly, when the English and Scotch began to colonize the Carolinas, the Spaniards began to fight them as intruders ; and the Indians joined whichever side promised them the most blood. Under this feeling, in 1676, the Sjoaniards sent a force to wipe out the English set- tlement at Charles Town, on the Ashley River ; but the expedition failed utterly. Again, in 1678, an- other Spanish force was sent for the same purpose ; and this one murdered many of the English colo- nists, pillaged a few plantations, and did a deal of petty damage. In 1696 the Spaniards, under D'Arriola, made a settlement where Pensacola is ; and, where Fort Barrancas now stands, they built their Fort Carlos, a church, and some dwellings. In 1702 the English Governor Moore, of South Carolina, captured and burned St. Augustine, but failed to reduce the fort ; and in 1703 he laid waste the Indian towns in Middle Florida which were under Spanish protection, so called. HISTORY. 15 The Pensacola settlement was destroyed by the French in 1718 ; and the Spaniards, in 1722, built on Santa Rosa Island, where Fort Pickens now stands, and rebuilt Pensacola. These alternations of colonizing, building, capt- uring, rescuing, burning, rebuilding, reburning, and so on, were kept up between the Spaniards and French in animated style for several years. Indeed, nothing else seems to have received any attention. The banner of the cross of peace waved over the land, and the tomahawk kept the soil moist with blood. St. Marks was settled by the Spaniards in 1718. Spanish Florida had three aggressive and troub- lesome enemies — the English in Carolina and Geor- gia on the north, the French in Louisiana on the west, and the aboriginal tomahawks all around them. In 1713 the English Governor Oglethorpe, of Georgia, invaded Florida, and offered battle under the walls of St. Augustine ; but the Spanish adelantado Montiano, declined to go out, and Ogle- thorpe declined to go in — so there was but little bloodshed. Cession to Great Britain. — The treaty of peace of 1718 between Great Britain and Spain closed these 16 TEE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. alternating forays and filibusterings. When this treaty was broken by the war of 1762, the British captured Havana; and in the treaty following, in 1763, Great Britain gave Cuba to Spain in exchange for Florida. Thus Florida became a British posses- sion, and enjoyed a rest from Spain's magnificently little conquests of empires that had been going on so long. The Spaniards, during their two hundred and fifty years of occupancy, had achieved little beyond their numerous ostentatious conquests of nothing, much bloodshed and brutality, and a profound igno- rance of the country and its resources. At the date of the cession the European population of the terri- tory was about six thousand five hundred ; and of these many left the country at the transfer. The first British Governor, James Grant, took steps promptly to develop the country. Eoads were cut, colonization encouraged, and bounties offered for indigo and other productions. Dr. Turnbull and Sir William Duncan brought into the territory about fifteen hundred Minorcans and Greeks, and made a settlement near l!^ew Smyrna, in Yolusia County. Florida took no part in the war of secession in 1776 known as the American Ke volution, and was HISTORY. 17 a place of refuge for thousands of loyalists from the battling States, as it was later for fugitive slaves from the adjacent States. Upon the breaking out of war between Great Britain and Spain in 1779, the Spanish Governor of Louisiana invaded Florida and captured Pensacola in 1781. Retrocession to Spain. — In 1783, upon the close of the war, Great Britain exchanged Florida for the Bahama Islands, owned by Spain, and thus Florida returned to Spanish rule. The British settlers promptly moved out, and Spanish lethargy settled over the country again. In 1814, during the late war, the British sent a fleet to Pensacola and captured the forts there ; and General Jackson was sent to oust them. He stormed the forts and destroyed them. In 1818 General Jackson again invaded Florida, in order to check and chastise the Seminoles. Cession to the United States.— In 1819 a treaty between Spain and the United States was concluded, and ratified in 1821, by which Florida was ceded to the latter power. Territory of Florida. — In 1822 the Congress of the United States established the Territory of Flor- ida, with its capital at an old Indian settlement or 2 18 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. camp called Tallahassee, although the first Legisla- tive Council met at Pensacola, and the second at St. Augustine. The Territorial Governors, with the beginnings of their terms, were : Andrew Jackson, 1821 William P. Duval, 1822; John W. Eaton, 1834 R. K. Call, 1835 ; Robert Raymond Reed, 1839 R. K. Call, 1810 ; John Branch, 1811. Seminole Wars. — It was mainly during the terri- torial period that the worst of the Seminole wars occurred. These wars were full of stirring and tragic events, and but little variety relieved their bloody monotony. A detailed account of them is wholly unnecessary here. Speaking of the earlier Indian conflicts at the beginning of the eighteenth century — up to about 1Y20 — ^Mr. Fairbanks makes this comparison : " In every IS'ew England house- hold the story of the sufferings of the Williams fam- ily, of the Dustins, and of Miss McCrea, excited the most tender emotions of pity. The history of the Southern colonies presents hundreds of such in- stances." If it was hundreds then, it is thousands now. It is within reason to say that the history of Florida itself, as a Territory and as a State — 1821 to 1860, say — can give a score of such tragedies for every one so graphically told in the school-books of HISTORY. 19 all the ]^ew England States. But these have not yet been celebrated in song and story. Many have not been written at all, and are thus far recorded only in the hearts and memories of this silent South- ern people. Peace with these Indians is perhaps an impossi- bility, and had never really existed ; but the most important outbreak, known as the Seminole War, be- gan with the Dade massacre in South Florida in 1835, and closed with the so-called treaty of 1842. But there has been much fierce fighting outside of that period both before and after. The word mas- sacre fitly describes the destruction of Major Dade's battalion in Sumter County. After the last man had fallen, Mr. Fairbanks states, " the Indians then rushed into the breastwork, headed by a heavy painted savage, who, believing that all were dead, made a speech to the Indians. They then stripped off the accoutrements of the soldiers and took their arms, without offering any indignity, and retired in a body." The story closes with these words : " Soon after the Indians had left, about fifty ne- groes galloped up on horseback and alighted, and at once commenced a horrible butchery. If any poor fellow on the ground showed signs of life, the negroes stabbed and tomahawked him. Lieutenant 20 TEE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. Basinger, being still alive, started up and begged the wretches to spare his life ; thej mocked at his prayers, while they mangled him with their hatch- ets nntil he was relieved by death. After stripping the dead, the negroes shot the oxen and burned the gun-carriages." One man, by something like a miracle, escaped to tell the story. There have been several causes assigned for the Indian's hostility to the white man — encroachments of the whites, individual wrongs to property, espe- cially cattle, etc. ; but the great underlying and essential causa causans has been the innate blood- thirst of the savages. The killing is sweet to them. This has shown itself ever since the Easter-Sunday in 1512 when De Leon, the fountain-hunter, first sighted the blooming shores of Cautio. During these wars the savages have times and again made agreements and treaties so called, only to gain time or to put the whites off their guard, and then resume hostilities whenever and wherever they could find a white throat convenient to cut. And yet the whites trusted them again and again. Gov- ernor Heed, in 1839, in his message to the Legisla- ture, said : " The close of the fifth year will find us struggling in a contest remarkable for magnanimity, forbearance, and credulity on the one side, and HISTORY. 21 ferocity and bad faith on the other. We are waging war with beasts of prey. The tactics that belong: to civilized nations are but shackles and fetters in its prosecution. We must fight tire with fire." Gallant officers with brave soldiers were sent to quell the brutal work of Indian murder and pillage — Jackson, CKnch, Dade, Macomb, Belknap, and others — and all were bafl^led. Some of them fought well, and had edifying talks, and secured excellent treaties ; but the Seminole was master of the situa- tion practically, until General Worth went in 1841. Our forces had captured Coacoochee, a chief, and several of his braves, and they were en route for the West, when General Worth sent to JSTew Orleans and had the party returned to him at Tampa. The interview between the general and Coacoochee took place on a transport in Tampa Bay, on the morning of the 4th of July, 1841. The general and his staff were seated, and the chief and his companions came forward heavily ironed, and sat do^vn on the deck. General Worth advanced, and, taking the chief by the hand, said to him : " Coacoochee, I take you by the hand as a warrior, a brave man. You have fought long, and 22 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. witli a true and strong heart, for jour country. I take your hand with feelings of pride. You love your country as we do. Coacoochee, I am your friend; so is your Great Father at Washington. What I say to you is true. My tongue is not forked like a snake's. My word is for the happi- ness of the red man. You are a great warrior. The Indians throughout the country look to you as a leader; by your- counsels they have been governed. This war has lasted five years. Much blood has been shed — much innocent blood. You have made your hands and the ground red with the blood of women and children. This war must now end. You are the man to do it; you must and shall accomplish it. I sent for you, that, through the exertions of yourself and your men, you might induce your entire band to emigrate. I wish you to state how many days it will require to effect an interview with the Indians in the woods. You can select three or five of these men to carry your talk. Name the time — it shall be granted; but I tell you, as I wish your relatives and friends told, that, unless they fulfill your demands, yourself and these warriors now seated before us shall be hung to the yards of this vessel when the sun sets on the day appointed, with the irons upon your hands HISTORY. 23 and feet ! I tell jou this, that we may well under- stand each other. I do not wish to frighten you, you are too brave a man for that ; but I say what I mean, and I will do it. It is for the benefit of the white and the red man. The war must end, and you must end it!^'' The wily chief made a diplomatic reply, and evidently counted on making his escape. Conclud- ing, he said : " I wish now to have my band around me and go to Arkansas. You say I m.%ist end the war ! Look at these irons ! Can I go to my warriors? Coacoochee chained! JSTo ; do not ask me to see them. I never wish to tread upon my land unless I am free. If I can go to them unchained, they will follow me in ; but I fear they will not obey me when I talk to them in irons. They will say my heart is weak, I am afraid. Could I go free, they will surrender and emigrate." General Worth knew his man. He told him that he could not go free, and reminded him that he had not proposed anything of the kind. He closed by saying : ''I say to you again, and for the last time, that unless the band acquiesce promptly in your wishes, to your last wish, the sun, as it goes down on the last day appointed for their 24 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. appearance, will shine upon the bodies of each of you hanging in the wind." Coacoochee understood aright this time. He accepted the inevitable. He selected five of his men to carry his talk to his band in the swamps. The five went accordingly, and they returned with the entire band of about two hundred Coacoochean Seminoles. They all went West. This policy of General Worth's availed some- thing. But it w^as arrested midway by another treaty^ by the provisions of which nearly three hun- dred savages are yet allowed to linger in Florida — almost powerless for serious ill, but a nuisance and annoyance, without any compensating advantage. The heroes, so called, of this mongrel race, counting back a hundred years or so, are many — Secoffee, Pascoft'er, Osceola (As-se-se-ha-ho-lar, Black Drink), Jumper, Micco, Sam Jones, Micanopy, Alligator, Black Dirt, Arpeika, Chitto-Tustenug- gee, Coacoochee or Wild Cat, Emathla, Otulkee, Halleck-Tustenuggee, Aleck Ha jo, Tiger-Tail, Tal- lahassee, Billy Bowlegs, Hospetarkee, and so on to a hundred, each and all distinguished for some- thing. One is crafty and silent ; another, bold and talkative ; another, vigilant and far-seeing ; another, ambitious and boastful ; another, skillful and busy ; HISTORY. 25 another, vulpine ; another, feline ; another, snaky ; and another, tigerj — but all blood-hungry and revengeful. These Seminole wars have cost perhaps twenty million dollars, and over thirty thousand soldiers have seen service in them, of whom about fifteen hundred lost their lives. In IS^ovember, 1843, General Worth estimated the whole number of Indians in Florida as fol- lows : of warriors, Seminoles, forty-two ; Micco- sukies, thirty-three : Creeks, ten ; and Tallahassees, ten ; making ninety-four warriors ; and, including women and children, three hundred in all. These were under Holatter Micco as head -chief, and Assinwar and Otnlko-Thlocko as sub-chiefs. In 1845 Captain Sprague estimated the aggregate at three hundred and sixty. To-day, they are reck- oned to be two hundred and sixty-nine — statement given elsewhere — so that the race is not self-sus- taining. State of Florida. — Florida was organized as a State and admitted into the Union in 1845. The State Governors prior to the war of seces- sion were : W. D. Moseley, 1846 ; Thomas Brown, 1848; James E. Broome, 1852; Madison Perry, 1856 ; John Milton, 1860. 26 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. Secession. — An ordinance of secession from tTie Federal Union was passed by a State Convention on tlie 10th of January, 1861 ; and the State joined the Confederate States in the struggle for State sovereignty in the war of secession, bearing its part bravely and well. At the close of the war a State Convention repealed the ordinance of secession. In 1865 there w^ere three Governors — A. K. Allison, acting Governor; William Marvin, mili- tary Governor; and David S. Walker, elected by the people, served until 1868, when reconstruction, so called, was regularly ushered in. Reconstruction. — Under a new Constitution, adopted in 1868, a new line of Governors was inaugurated. Beginning with that date, the follow- ing have been the Governors, wdth their dates : Harrison Eeed, 1868; O. B. Hart, 1873; M. L. Stearns, 1873 ; George F. Drew, 1877 ; William. D. Bloxham, 1881; Edward A. Perry, 1885. Restoration.-— The election of Governor Drew in 1877 marks the new era of prosperity in Florida. From 1868 to 1877 the reconstruction regime ob- tained. During that period party politics seemed to be the main pm^suit of those having the State in charge ; and other industries were dwarfed by mis- HISTORY. 27 directed legislation or overborne hj onerous taxa- tion. The upward and forward impulse given all industrial pursuits bj the election of Governor Drew, in 1877, was well sustained and increased successively by Governors Bloxham and Perry. The extent of the rebound from the reconstruc- tional depression, or rather prostration, is clearly shown by Governor Perry in a communication of the 30th of March, 1888. He says : " I am glad to be able to say for my State that its agricultural interests are marvelously improving, that the num- ber and amount of farm mortgages and liens on crops are decreasing, and that farmers are more prosperous generally. Their lands are yearly in- creasing in value, and their general advancement is marked." The assessments for taxation for the years 1870, 1879, and 1887 bear ample testimony to the material advancement of the State during the period in question : For 1870 $29,700,022 For 1879 32,794,383 For 1887 86,265,662 GEOGEAPIIY. Florida is the largest in area of the States east of the Mississippi River, and it has an area of culti- vable land greater than that of the six 'New Eng- land States. The political, judicial, and congressional divis- ions of Florida are not matters of special interest to the traveling public ; and, in view of the State as a place to visit or to settle in, thej are not important. In a general way, again, the State is divided into West, Middle, East, and South ; but this division is both vague and arbitrary, and comparatively mean- ingless. To the l^orthern as to the European read- er's mind the State is pretty much a unit ; and from this misconception has arisen much of the confusion of thought, conflicting opinions, the seesaw of vili- fication and overpraise, and the general wholesale inaccuracy^ that has been so lavishly written about Florida for the last twenty years. For the purposes of these pages — to give a cor- GEOGRAPHY. 29 rect idea of the country in its salient and diverse features, and to picture it as it is to-day — the sec- tions of the State are three, which for convenience may be called I^orthern Florida, Semi-tropical Florida, and Subtropical Florida. The basis of this division is climate ; and the three Floridas will be discussed as separate in future pages. The physical features of this State, like its eventful early history and its manifold industries, are varied and diverse. The highest point in the State is Table Mountain, in Lake County; and though the barometric measurements have not been very close, a presumption is established that the sum- mit is nearly five hundred feet above the sea-level. Louisiana is the only State with a less elevation. The highest point in the United States is Mount Whitney in California, 14,898 feet. Florida is a land of water. In addition to its 1,148 miles of salt-water coast, it has, scattered all over its surface, certainly 1,200 fresh-water lakes. These vary in size, from Okeechobee (the word is said to mean Eig Water), with its thousand square miles of area, to the picturesque little lakelet — for there are lakelets both large and small — with less than a hundred square feet. These lakes and lake- lets are nowhere stagnant and unseemly with scum ; 30 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. but are of waters fresh, clear, bright, smiling, and wholesome, often good enough for general use, and even for drinking. Even the Everglade waters are pure and drinkable. This clearness and health-qual- itj appear as well in the chalybeate and the sulphur springs that are found in many parts of the State. The word " spring," in this connection, has great lati- tude of meaning; and some of the so-called springs are very large, as Silver Spring, in Marion County, two hundred yards in diameter, whose brook is a thoroughfare for a line of steamers, and the Blue Springs in Yolusia County, with a basin seventy feet in diameter and forty feet deep. Of this latter a State official gives the following description : A huge bowl, from the center of which a column of blue-tinted water presses upward with such force that the center of the surface is convex to the ex- tent of perhaps ten inches, and it is impossible to put or keep a boat on this summit, such is the force of the hydraulic pressure upward and laterally. The stream which this gigantic spring feeds is about fifty feet wide and of an average depth of ten feet, with a current of about five miles an hour. The Indian name of the St. John's River is Wee-la- ha^ meaning a chain of lakes. The following are a few of the largest lakes : Okeechobee, Kissimmee, GEOGRAPHY. 31 Tohopokaliga, Istokroga, Monroe, Apopka, Eiistis, George, Crescent, Orange, Miccasnkee, lamonia, De Funiak, Santa Fe, and Buffum. The heights of these lakes vary a good deal, Buffum, in Polk County, being 138-26 feet above sea-level ; Ejs- simmee, 59*06 feet ; and Okechobee, 20*24: feet. About Okeechobee, and mainly southward of it, extend the Everglades, in the counties of Dade, Monroe, and Lee, with an aggregate area of fully seven thousand ^yq hundred square miles — nearly as large as the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The Everglade waters are, like all the waters of Florida, pure and clear, and vary in depth from a few inches to several feet, rarely more than ten. Tall grass, as high sometimes as eight or ten feet, is very common, with shrubs, vines, trees, moss, and all sorts of tangle and roots. Islands lie here and there, with trees and vines on them — cypress, pine, oaks, palmettoes, magnolias, and a score at least of other subtropical trees. Fish in infinite variety abound everywhere. The immense extent of sea-shore, almost encir- cling the State, is dotted with islands — islands of all sizes, from Santa Eosa Island and Key Largo, thirty to fifty miles long, to a dot big enough only to sun a turtle. Beginning at the mouth of the St. 32 TEE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. Mary's Kiver, at Fernandina, with Amelia Island, twenty-two miles long, on wMch that city stands, we have an unbroken chain — An astasia, opposite which St. Augustine stands ; scores of islands and islets along Hillsborough, Halifax, and Indian Rivers ; on down to the Florida Keys, numbering hundreds, of which Key Largo is the largest ; on to Key West and the Dry Tortugas ; thence northward up the Gulf coast, taking in the Ten Thousand Islands on the coast of Monroe ; and so on by Charlotte Har- bor, Tampa Bay, and Cedar Keys, to the island- dotted coast of Franklin County ; and on to the largest of all, Santa Rosa Island ; and finally on to Perdido Point. The rivers of the State are numerous, frequently serpentine, sluggish, and shallow, but rarely if ever stagnant. The principal streams are the St. John's, Suwannee, Kissimmee, Caloosahatchee, Withlacoo- chee, Apalachicola, Ocklawaha, St Mary's, Wakulla, Chipola, Peace, Manatee, Alafia, Homosassa, St. Mark's, Miami, Ocklokonee, and Ocilla. There are nineteen rivers navigable by steamers, to the aggre- gate distance of over a thousand miles. III. CLIMxVTE. The climate of Florida, considered as one, is ex- ceptional. It is, in some important respects, the finest in tlie world. Dr„ Baldwin, a prominent physician of Jackson\^ille, maintains that the State occupies a most favorable position in regard to cli- mate ; for the many modifying influences in oper- ation have produced, he shows, " a climate that for equability has few if any equals and do superior." Temperature. — As regards temperature, contin- ued observations in various parts of the State show that it is not excessive in either direction during the entire year, the range between winter and sum- mer temperature being only about 20°. The an- nual mean is 70° ; that of spring, 71° ; summer, 80° ; autumn, 71° ; and winter, 60°. The following is the Weather Bureau's official statement of the temperature at Jacksonville, for the year 1837 : Annual mean 6S"1 Maximum lOO'S Minimum 21-9 3 34 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. This maj be accepted as applicable for tbe northern part of semi-tro2)ical Florida, and approximately for the whole orange belt. The following table presents results given by the Signal Service. The figures for Florida are pre- sumably those for Jacksonville, for there are parts of the State where 105° has not been felt for a hun- dred years. The figures are degrees Fahrenheit, and the table shows the one point of comparative equability : PLACE. Maximum. Minimum. DifiFerence. Florida 105 105 105 105 100 105 105 110 105 110 105 110 105 115 110 110 115 115 10 — 05 -10 -20 -20 -25 -20 —80 -25 -35 -30 -35 — 30 —45 -45 -45 —50 95 105 Mississippi 110 Alabama 115 West Virginia 120 Georgia . 125 Ohio 130 Kansas 130 Connecticut 135 135 Illinois 140 Nebraska 140 New York 140 Idaho 145 Colo''ado 155 Dakota 155 California 160 Montana 165 As the public mind naturally expects, and as the California press have demanded, a comparison of the two States in the matter of temperature, the fol- CLIMATE. 35 lowing figures are given from the montlilj weather review^ of the Signal-Service Bureau, for August, 1885: In Florida. D3g. Limona 98 Jacksonville 94 Sanf ord 94 Key West 94 Merritt's Island 94 St. Augustine 93 In California, Deg. Fall Brook 115 College City 114 Murietta Ill Red Bluff 108 Los Angeles 106 Sacramento 105 For September, 1885, the figures from the same review are these : In Florida. Deg. Limona 97 Key West 92 Merritt's Island 89 St. Augustine 89 Jacksonville 89 In California. Beg. Fall Brook 110 Los Angeles 109 Murietta 107 Poway 103 These two tables answer the question whether California is warmer in midsummer than Florida. Humidity. — As to the humidity about which so much extravagant nonsence has been written, and which hasty writers have pronounced excessive and therefore objectionable, Dr. Baldwin insists, and with conclusive reasons, that it is one of the fortunate and favorable features, when consid- ered in the light of science. " Let it be remem- 36 TEE FLORIDA OF TO-BAY. bered," lie writes, " tliat the term relative humidity as used by meteorologists is not the same as absolute humidity " ; and then proceeds to show how this is true, in the following way : Absolute humidity de- termines the exact amount of vapor in the air when condensed into water ; while relative humidity has relation to the amount of vapor in the air when it will be condensed after the point of saturation is reached, and this point of saturation depends on the temperature and tension or force of vapor determined by the barometric pressure at the time of taking the observation. In relative humidity, the point of saturation is marked 100, and the figures in the column below 100 are the percentage of that quantity as existing at the time under a spe- cific degree of temperature and tension of vapor. Therefore, the point of saturation is variable ; as, for instance, when the thermometer is 50° and the barometer marks 30 inches pressure, a cubic foot of air then contains four grains and a fraction of water at the point of saturation, 100. When the tempera- ture is 75° and the barometer the same as before, a cubic foot of the atmosphere then contains nine grains and a fraction where the air is saturated, but still marked 100. At the temperature of 100°, pressure as before, the cubic foot of air at the point CLIMATE. 37 of saturation will contain twenty grains and a frac- tion. Thus we see that the amount of moisture in the air at different temperatures varies in quantity. Therefore, the percentages given of 100 and the different temperatures must also vary, so that the same figures, although they may be correct percent- ages of 100, do not indicate to us the absolute amount of moisture in the atmosphere, unless we know the temperature which regulates each point of saturation. Time and space will not permit a more extended exposition of this interesting subject. Professor Henry, of the Smithsonian Institution, in an article on meteorology, says : '' It is not upon the actual amount of vapor which the air contains at a given time or place that its humidity depends ; but upon its greater or less degree of saturation. That air is said to be dry in which evaporation takes place rapidly from a surface of water or moistened substance. Hence, if relative humidity shows a small percentage of 100, the point of saturation in a climate where the absolute moisture is great, its effect in producing evaporation is the same as where the absolute humidity is less at the same percentage of 100, indicating saturation there." Accordingly, so far as Florida is concerned, it, with its so-called excessive humidity, is in that 38 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. respect not less favorably conditioned than those places which boast of their dry climates, because their absolute humidity is less, and therefore more conducive to health. But the absolute humidity of this climate is productive of benefit in modifying its temperature. Yapor in the atmosphere regulates radiation of heat from the earth into the voids of space, thus preventing refrigeration and sudden changes of temperature, so inimical to the comfort of mankind, and so destructive to vegetation and the ripening of fruits. Professor Tyndall says : " The observations of the meteorologists furnish important, though hith- erto unconscious, evidence of the influence of vapor on the atmosphere. Whenever the air is dry, we are liable to extremes of temperature. By day in such places, the sun's heat reaches the earth unimpeded, and renders the maximum high ; by night, on the other hand, the earth's heat escapes unimpeded into space, and renders the minimum low. Hence, the difference between the maximum and the minimum is greater where the air is driest. Wherever drought reigns, we have the heat of the day forcibly contrasted with the chill of the night. In the Sa- hara itself, when the sun's rays cease to impinge on the burning sands, the temperature runs rapidly CLIMATE. 39 down to freezing, because there is no vapor over- head to check the calorific drain." Professor Tjndall states the phenomena in ques- tion with further illustration, but the above is enough for this purpose. Dr. Baldwin calls atten- tion to the fact that the cool nights of the sum- mers in Florida, so highly appreciated by all that have experienced them, attest the fact that the (so-called excessive) moisture in the air does not prevent radiation. And again, during many winters when excessive cold has characterized the weather of the North, and the cold polar waves have been pre- cipitated upon these latitudes, the moisture-bearing breezes from the south meet them, and the moist- ure overhead is condensed into clouds that prevent severe radiation and protect them and their orange- groves from tlie intense cold that otherwise they should experience. But if, as has recently been their sad experience, those intensely cold winds, re- duced to a temperature below zero, be driven as northers down upon Texas and the Gulf and there reflected across to this State, the passage of them across the warm waters of the Gulf, although modi- fying their temperature, will still leave them cold enough to be destructive in their effects. But these pre-refrigerated storms of a foreign origin are rare 40 THE FLORIDA OF TO DAY. visitors to this clime, and do not count as indige- nous elements to this enjoyable climate. To put this matter of relative humidity in yet another light, the following table, taken by Dr. C. J. Ken worthy from official Signal- Service sources, compares Florida with several other States, and with two Mediterranean watering-places : Mean Relative Humidity. 2 Novem- ber. Decem- ber. Janu- ary. Febru- ary. March. Mean tVir five m'mhs. Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. Per ct. Jlcntone & Cannes 3 71-8 74-2 72-0 70-7 73-3 72-4 Nassau, N. P 1 76-1 72-0 77-0 72-6 68 4 73-2 Atlantic City, N.J. 5 '76-9 791 80-6 77-3 76-8 78-1 Breck'nridge,Minn 5 n&'^ 83-2 76-8 81-8 79-5 79-6 Duluth, Minn 5 74-0 721 72-7 73-3 71-0 72-6 St. Paul, Minn... 5 10-Z 73-5 75-2 70-7 67-1 71-3 Punta Rassa, Fla. 5 72-7 73-2 74-2 73-7 69-9 72-7 Key West, Fla. .. 5 77-1 78-7 78-9 77-2 72-2 76-8 Jacksonville, Fla. 6 71-9 69-3 70-2 68-5 63-9 68-8 Augusta, Ga 5 71-8 72-6 73-0 64-7 62-8 68-9 Bismarck, Dak. . , 1 76-6 76-4 77-4 81-6 70-6 76-5 Boston, Mass. . . . 1 68-0 61-8 60-6 68-2 63-7 65-6 IV. DIVISIONS. y^'^''y\ :Sorthem Florida ^T^ Semi tropical " I ] Sub-tropical " But in fact there are three Florid as, three cli- mates, and three hygi- enic problems involved. In defining these three Floridas, the lines of lati- tude are not the divid- ing lines. The east and the west sides of the peninsula differ in temperature more than a degree, the east or Atlantic side being to that extent warm- 42 THE FLO BID A OF TO-DAY. er in winter. Professor A. H. Curtiss, while en- gaged in a botanical exploration of the State sev- eral years ago, was the first to call attention to this interesting and important fact. He found that in its flora Cedar Keys on the west corresponded with Fernandina on the east ; and in the same way cor- responded Tampa with Daytona, Charlotte Harbor with Cape Canaveral, Cape Eomano with St. Lncie, and Chnkaluskee with Lake Worth. Lines con- necting these places respectively, may be called isofloral lines. Professor Curtiss concluded fur- ther that " Cape Romano on the western coast and Cape Canaveral on the eastern may be considered the points of demarkation between the temperate and the subtropical vegetation." In the light of these and other similar facts since developed, it seems fair to divide the State into three Floridas, as above intimated, basing the division upon climatic conditions. These three are (1) JSTorthern, (2) Semi-tropical, and (3) Subtropical. Taking these in this order, severally, there are : First, Northern Florida, lying north and west of a line from Cedar Keys to Fernandina, or perhaps better the tortuous line of the Suwannee, Santa Fe, and St. Mary's rivers — a region whose climate may be designated as southern. DIVISIONS. 43 Second, Semi-tropical Florida, lying south of the above-designated line and extending to a line from the month of the Caloosahatchee River to Indian River Inlet — a reg^'on whose climate is semi-tropi- cal^ and which may be appropriately designated as the Orange Belt ', and, Third, Subtropical Florida, or all the region lying south of the semi-tropical orange belt above defined, embracing the Florida Keys. These three Floridas are distinct in general featm-es, chmates, and productions; but the divid- ing lines are in no sense sharp. These Floridas run into one another, and varying seasons press their lines northward or southward, and many conspicu- ous floral features extend over all. But the general demarkation is distinct, well defined, and easily noted. In climate the three are distinctly dissimilar. In Northern Florida the extremes — approximately stated, for illustration— are, maximum, 105°, mini- mum, 20° ; in Semi-tropical Florida, 100° and 25° ; and in Subtropical Florida, 95° and 30°. This in- crease of equability or decrease of range as we go south is at one with the scale covering greater dis- tances ; as, New York, Virginia, Florida — the ex- tremes always coming nearer as we go south. This 44 THE FLORIDA OF TO-BAY. difference is the natural result of the decreased length of the midsummer day at points farther south. The difference between I^orthern Florida and Semi-tropical Florida — apart from and in addition to the difference of latitude — ^is largely due to the greater elevation of the former, and the distance of the Gulf Stream from it. The waters of the Gulf of Mexico attemper the immediate coast line in this region, but their effect does not extend far inland; and the obliquity of the dividing line is due mainly, if not wholly, to the warming influence of the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic. The GuK Stream is an immense factor in the climate of both the peninsular divisions. Coming directly from the Cuban waters northward through the Strait of Florida, pressed close to the shore along Dade County by the Bahama banks, it flows northward — this vast body of deep-blue water, a thousand times the volume of the Mississippi Eiver, thirty miles wide, and two thousand feet deep, with a velocity of fully -Q.ve miles an hour — the year round. The temperature of this enormous ocean- river is about 84:° all the time, and thus creates a constant stratum of warm air that floats over the land. The temperature of the Gulf Stream is fully DIVISION'S. 45 nine degrees above that of the ocean- waters through which it flows, and it loses but one degree every five degrees of latitude. Sir Philip Brooke reported the temperatare of the stream as 80° at the point where the ocean-water was 32°. The stratum of warm air is borne westward across the land by the trade-winds which blow constantly from the east- ward — at least nine tenths of the time — summer and winter. The stream flows directly along the Florida coast from the point of contact — about 25° 20^ — to Jupiter Inlet, 27°, at which point it leaves the land, getting gradually farther out to sea. Of course, its influence on the climate of Florida grad- ually decreases as it passes northward, but never ceases entirely. From the Indian River Inlet — the southern boundary of Semi-tropical Florida — north- ward to Fernandina, the whole coast is made both milder and greatly more equable than the Gulf coast in the same degree of latitude ; and this, as elsewhere stated, to the extent of more than one degree. And purity accompanies equability on the wings of these eastern winds. They strike the land of Florida fresh from the Atlantic, absolutely pure, and sweep across the peninsula, bearing with them whatever of malaria escapes dilution, absorption, and dissipation, thus putting the Gulf coast to a 46 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. disadvantage so far as these influences extend. How far thej extend has not been determined, but certainly not verj far. Long moss is much scarcer along the Atlantic coast than in most other places in Florida. Thus it will be seen, and why, Semi-tropical Florida enjoys an equability decidedly greater than does ]^orthern Florida. This climate is that of I^orthern Florida with its extremes softened a little. This is the part of the State best known at the J^orth. The St. John's Eiver region has been so fully and so frequently written up and written down that readers can not need, here and now, to hear more of this beautiful orange belt. The popu- lar mistake is to confound this favored region with the two other Floridas — the [N^orthern and the Sub- tropical — while the difference is considerable. But the phenomenal effects of the Gulf Stream and the trade-winds are to be found on the Atlantic coast south of Indian River Inlet; and especially south of Jupiter Inlet, where the shore trends west- ward and the Gulf Stream bears rather eastward, making for a passage around Hatteras. It is this separation of the Gulf Stream and the shore that really marks the northern boundary of the sub- tropics. In this eastern side of Subtropical Flor- DIVISIONS, 47 ida are found the four equalizing agencies at their greatest ; to wit, the Gulf Stream, the trade-winds, the Everglades, with water-surface preventing the land-breeze and its corresponding sea-breeze, and the zone of high barometric pressure. These agencies conspire to increase the mere latitudinal difference between Semi-tropical and Subtropical Florida. Here the midsummer heat that might otherwise be 95°, say, is reduced to something like 88° ; and the midwinter chill that might otherwise be, say, 30°, is warmed up to something like 40°. The trade-winds, in bringing to the Subtropics the breath of the Gulf Stream, hurry off all incipient malaria into the Everglades, and thus keep pure the air of that eastern coast. The absence of Spanish moss from this region proves the purity of its atmosphere ; for, as a rule, in this latitude, if moss does not mean malaria, it at least raises an uncomfortable doubt in the premises. Here, also, as nowhere else on the earth except in the Island of Formosa, are to be found the most marked results of these exceptional climatic agencies — an equability greater than is to be found anywhere else in either of the grand divisions of the Ameri- can continent. As Florida considered as a unit is more equable, temperate, and healthy than any other 48 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. State in the Union, so Subtropical Florida stands, at least in equability, in favorable contrast with the northern divisions of the State. In summary, then : The climate of Northern Florida, while its range of temperature is the greatest of the three Floridas, is still more equable than are the Southern States generally. Its greater range has its special charm to many, and its enjoyableness depends upon indi- vidual tastes. For those coming to Florida from higher latitudes, it is naturally the most attractive part of the State. The frosts are always light, but they mark definitely the seasons and destroy the insects, clearing the way for a new spring. Ice is formed every winter, and snow has fallen but once in forty years, and then barely an inch deep. This one snow extended over a considerable portion of the orange belt. This is the land of the Le Conte pear, as Semi-tropical Florida is the land of the orange, and the subtropics are of the pineapple. The semi-tropical fruits, almost all, including the typical orange, can be grown here in E'orthem Florida, and especially near the southern line ; but they do not attain the degree of excellence here that they do in their habitat, either in size or in quality. The influence of the Mexican Gulf water is consid Divisioys. 49 erable on the sontliern border, bnt, as tbe Gulf Stream does not reach those waters, the influence is merely that of an ocean-frontage. There are, however, the dailv ahernating land and sea breezes which render grateful effects. Xorth of the range and reach of these breezes, the different elevations of land, with lakes, rivers, and springs, give pleas- ing variety in warm weather, and produce a most attractive Southern climate ; a climate vastly supe- rior to most of the written-up and classic resorts of the Old World. Messrs. Eeasoner, perhaps the best-infoi-med nurserymen in Florida, publish a very carefully prepared and scientific catalogue of fruits for this State. They give, as suiting farther north than the semi-tropical fruits, the following among many : Pears of several kinds, including the Le Conte and the Keiffer, pecan, Japan plum, and grapes. These all have Northern Florida as their habitat. The climate of Semi-tropical Florida, or the orano^e belt, is that of Xorthem Florida, modified by more water frontage, by the partial influence of the Gulf Stream, especially on the eastern side, and by the slight difference in latitude. The highest point in the State is well south in tliis division, and the number and variety of lakes in this 50 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DA K mid-Florida lake region— there are three or four lake regions in the State — tend to make this one of great variety and numberless attractions. All these and many other delectable features have been given to the public again and again. This re- gion is the Florida of the legions of writers that in the last twenty years have lavished their praises and their abuse for the entertainment or the infor- mation of the Northern public. The fruits of the subtropics will many of them grow and mature here ; but the trees of such are smaller and the fruit inferior. The Reasoner Brothers, of Manatee, in their list of trees called semi-tropical have these : The whole citrus family — orange, lemon, shaddock, grape-fruit, and lime — fig, Cattley guava, pome- granate, and jujube. The climate of Subtropical Florida is that of Semi-tropical Florida, modified by a still greater proportion of water-frontage, by the full influence of the Gulf Stream, and by the slight difference in latitude. It is the most equable in the State. The authorities named above mention these tropical fruits as suitable for Florida, and it is perfectly fair to as- sume that they can not grow to anything like perfection anywhere north of the subtropics, and some of them even there are a little too far north : DIVISIONS. 61 The anonas, such as the cherimoja, guanabena (sour-sop), custard-apple, sugar-apple, the pineapple, sapodilla, cocoanut, niaugosteen, mammee, mammee sapota, Spanish lime, mango, aguacate or alligator pear, guava, ti-es, tamarind, and almond. The Banana. V. HEALTH. Geneeal health depends largely — indeed, almost wholly — upon climate. Almost all the writing abont Florida health — and of the popular kind it has been voluminous — has been about that part of the State elsewhere in these pages defined as Semi-trop- ical Florida ; and a patient public that has read Dr. Kenworthy on the " Climatology of Florida," Dr. Logan on " Climate-Cure," Dr. Blodget on-'' Clima- tology," and the more or less able papers of Drs. Baldwin, Lawson, Deuison, Lente, Lee, Johnson, Jacques, Wilson, and the rest, can hardly care to have the matter treated here with any fullness. A brief summary will suffice. Malaria. — A good deal has been written and said about the picturesque long or Spanish moss as an in- dicator of malaria. It doubtless indicates the pres- ence of certain elements — moisture and heat, say — that are often present where malaria prevails ; and it must be confessed that, other things being equal, HEALTH. 53 the probabiKties of perfect healtbfulness are rather against the places wherein this banner of the marshes abounds. But there are many places in Florida entirely free from this moss, notably along the Atlantic coast quite near the ocean, as between 26° and 27° ; and there are many places where the moss abounds that are free from the effects of malaria. Malaria seems to be the great bugbear of the partly - informed. The character and quality of malaria can both be ascertained, approximately at least, by finding the nature and prevalence of the diseases caused by it. These diseases are well known. Even in these, Florida stands better than any of the other States — better as to frequency of malarial fevers, and vastly better as to the severity of such cases. The fevers that are reckoned as arising from this cause are always milder, and yield more readily to treatment, than in most other places where they are found, and are almost never fatal or even very severe. A drainage company has been operating with thirty to forty hands, all white, since 1881, in the heart of the Everglades, where malaria is imagined to abound ; and James M. Kreamer, the chief en- gineer and general superintendent, in 1885, after 54 TEE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. four years of work there, in his official report, sajs : '' One of the best attested records as to the contin- ued healthfulness of this portion of the State is shown bj the reports respecting the condition of the force employed by the Okeechobee Drainage Com- pany, which has been operating on the line of the rich bottom-lands since the year 1881. Our em- ployes come from almost every State in the Union and foreign countries. During this interval [till 1885], and after a continuous service, without in- termission, during tlie summer months, there has never been a death from any cause whatever ; and a physician in a professional capacity has never vis- ited our work. The health of our men, not only, but of the residents throughout this district, is un- impaired at this time." Surgeon-General Lawson, U. S. A., some years ago, in his official report, after making a detailed mention of the comparative health-merits of various places occupied by the army, gives this pointed summary : "As respects health the climate of Florida stands pre-eminent. That the peninsular climate of Florida is much more salubrious than that of any other State in the Union is clearly .established by the medical statistics of the army. Indeed, the HEALTH. 56 statistics of this bureau demonstrate the fact that diseases that result from malaria are of much milder type in the Peninsula of Florida than in any other State in the Union. These records show that the ratio of deaths to the number of cases of remitting fever has been much less than among the troops serving in any other portion of the United States. In the Middle Division of the United States the proportion is one death to thirty-six cases of remit- ting fever ; in the J^orthern Division, one to fifty- two ; in the Southern Division, one to fifty-four ; in Texas, one to seventy-eight ; in California, one to one hundred and twenty-two ; in '^&w Mexico, one to one hundred and forty-eight ; while in Florida it is but one to two hundred and eighty -seven. In short, it may be asserted, without fear of refutation, that Florida possesses a much more agreeable and salu- brious climate than any other State or Territory in the United States." The sanitary qualities of the Florida climate are important. The best informed medical advisers send at least two classes of patients to this State — consumptives, or those suffering from some disease of the respiratory organs, and those broken in health without any well-defined special fonn of disease. 56 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. Upon the former class of these — consumptives — the United States census reports give the facts embodied in the following table : Deaths from Consum2:)tion in 1,000 Deaths from all Causes. Maine 258 New Hampshire 222 Yermont 202 Rhode Island 201 Massachusetts 199 Delaware ; . . 190 Connecticut 1*79 Ohio Ill West Virginia 174 Kentucky 1*74 Maryland 172 New Jersey I7i Michigan 169 New York 168 Tennessee 166 Indiana 164 Pennsylvania 142 California 188 Yirginia 138 Iowa 137 Minnesota 133 Wisconsin 131 North Carolina 117 Illinois 108 Louisiana 97 Missouri 97 Kansas 90 South Carolina 90 Mississippi 76 Alabama 71 Arkansas 70 Georgia , 68 Texas 63 Florida 58 This table is better than a volume of arguments and laudatory generalities, especially when consid- ered in view of the patent fact that something like fifty per cent of the deaths from consumption in Florida are imported cases — cases sent thither, too often, when the patients were so far gone as to be beyond the hope of recovery. It is safe to add that cases of this class originating here are almost inva- riably inherited. HEALTH. 57 Upon the other class of cases benefited by Flor- ida's sanatory climate — ^broken health, or brain-fag — a few words from Dr. Kenworthy, a man thor- oughly acquainted with Florida's sanitary and sana- tory features, may sufiice : " In this active business country we find many persons who have been over- worked and present a breach in the chain of those vital processes whoso continuity constitutes health — a condition popularly known as ' broken health.' In Florida, the worn-out man of business, suffering from ' broken health,' will find the necessary relax- ation from ' brain-fag,' opportunities to take out- door exercise, plenty of sunshine, pure and bracing air, and other necessary adjuncts to relieye a condi- tion affecting the many. In this connection I can not refrain from referring to what I consider an im- portant fact. From my observations in the United States and in foreign lands, and in hospital as well as in private practice, I have been forced to notice the infrequency of chronic disease and broken health in Florida. In my visits to various portions of this State I have met with many persons, old and young, who live from year to year on improper food, and who drink water from shallow holes, near marshes, and yet, singular to say (although such persons are somewhat ansemic), they do not present 58 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY, any manifest diseased condition. In cities, to^vns, villages, and rural districts, where residents are sup- plied with proper food and drink pure water, a case of chronic disease or broken health is seldom met with. And if we have a climate in which these conditions rarely occur, are we not justified in concluding that it will exert a powerful influence in restoring the invalid to health ? As most of you are aware, I have at various times visited many portions of the State, and have been surprised to meet so many persons who have settled in it as in- valids, and have been restored to health or compara- tive comfort by the climate — a large proportion of them having been sufferers from pulmonary dis- eases." Tornadoes. — In the light of meteorological ob- servation during the past decade or two, it is per- fectly safe to assume that Florida as a whole is as safely out of the line and sweep of tornadoes and hurricanes as any State in the Union, and rather more so than some of the I^orth western States and Territories. So much for the climate of Florida as a unit. GEOLOGY. The geology of Florida is full of interest, mainly prospective, although no general survey has yet been made. Dr. J. Kost, the iirst and present State Geologist, has issued one report of results, and the public await with profound interest the further prosecution of the work. A preliminary inspection is all that has been thus far accomphshed, but that has afforded glimpses of rich treasures in the fields of both mineralogy and paleontology. Dr. Kost finds the geological formations of Florida to be '' the equivalent of the Tertiaries of the Paris basin in France and the vale of the Thames in Eng- land." He reports fossil remains, not only of the mastodon, zeuglodon, and carcharodon, but also of the rhinoceros, hippopotamus, llama, peccary, leop- ard, tiger, hyena, lion, camel, and elephant; and "a species of bimana." One of the three mastodon skeletons found is of exceptional size and will be 60 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY, set up for the State Museum ; and it will be " the largest one of a mastodon on record ; and, next to that of the whale, the largest known of any animal.*' The mineralogical scope is also considerable. Dr. Kost finds lime, iron, and sulphur widely dis- tributed ; with silicon galore, and potassium, so- dium, magnesium, aluminum, and phosphorus. Oth- er authorities report lead. Agates of chalcedony and opal are reported as found near Tampa. E'othing has been discovered, it appears, lower than the Tertiary period ; but this is abundantly and fully represented in all its subdivisions. The Eocene is of considerable depth ; the Miocene and the Pleiocene, less ; while over nearly all lies a heavy spread of Pleistocene or Post-tertiary. The doctors disagree sadly as to the formative agencies that made this peninsula and their pro- cesses. Some years ago^ such men as Agassiz and Joseph Le Conte, after examining the Atlantic side, told us that this southward-pointing land was un- derbuilt by corals and upraised in successive tiers. Later, Heilprin explored the Gulf coast, and failed to find any confirmation of the coral-reef theory. He confidently asserts : " On the contrary, the ex- istence of the heavy fossiliferous deposits about Tampa, on the Manatee, along the tributaries of the GEOLOGY, 61 Big and tlie Little Sarasota Bays, and more particu- larly those exposed on the Caloosahatchee, conclu- sively proves that a coral extension to the Southern United States, such as has been theoretically set forth, does not exist in fact." Of the coral, he maintains, the structure is limited and local. Dr. Kost thinks it almost absurd to venture upon any statements concerning the principles of the geologi- cal formation of the State. He adds, however, that when the Eocene rocks were in course of deposit, the Tertiary was reposing at the bottom of the sea, from one hundred to several hundred feet deep, and was, for a time at least, sinking slowly — that is, at a pace correspondent to the continuous building of coral reefs. This Eocene deposit, though new geo- logically, is in secular chronology very old, be- cause it dates back to a time anterior to the up- heaval of the lower half of the Eocky Mountains. In course of time, the bottom of the sea began to rise, at first slowly. During this period occurred the Oligocene deposits. Later, the dry land ap- peared, and the Miocene deposits were made ; and, in the after-age, the land was submerged again, the submergence embracing not only Florida but also Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, and parts of Tennessee, Arkansas, and Texas — the whole to 62 THE FLORIDA OF TO-BAY. emerge a second time, and to rise to its present level. The State Geologist finds, further, that *' an extensive anticlinal, of an axis parallel with that of the peninsula, trends centrally through the penin- sula." There are to-daj indications, especially on the eastern side, of a rise of the land now in prog- ress. Dr. J. Dabney Palmer finds the origin of this peninsula in the changes wrought by the " rise of the Appalachian Mountains," which diverted tbe Gulf Stream from its former channel up the Mis- sissippi Yalley. This caused an eddy south of the then land ; and sand-bars resulted and sediment and coral insects followed. " And thus it has been go- ing on for ages — sand-bar and deposit, and coral reef. And thus the building and extension of the peninsula continue to this day. The gradual up- heaval of the land has lifted the northern and cen- tral portions of the peninsula far above the sea-level. This elevation will probably increase, and the Ever- glades become dry, even if not assisted by artificial means. The digging of wells, etc., has disclosed this great variety of formations throughout the State. It is not infrequent that as beautiful de- posits of coral are disclosed high up in the peninsula and Northern Florida as are to be found on the reefs south of Cape Sable. Should these causes GEOLOGY. 63 continue, the deep channel of the Gulf Stream may be closed, Cuba annexed by natural causes, the val- ley of the Mississippi be extended, and the Gulf of Mexico become a fertile plain." The indications, along both the Atlantic and the Gulf side, are con- firmatory of the theory that the land is still rising slowly — more slowly, it is confidently believed, than the operations of the Atlantic Coast and Canal Com- pany's dredging corps. Industrial Features. — The industrial arts find some valuable mineral deposits among these roch materials. Dr. Kost states that several localities have been found to have large deposits of rich phosphates, deposits quite as rich in phosphoric acid as are the phosphate rocks on Cooper and Ashley Elvers in South Carolina, from which im- mense revenue has been derived. These Florida beds show phosphates of lime, of silica, of alumina, and of iron. They are indicated by phosphoric-acid- bearing rocks in the counties of Wakulla, Alachua, Marion, Hillsborough, and Manatee. In Wakulla the State Geologist finds a triple phosphate of lime, iron, and alumina, indicating exceedingly valuable beds, the samples analyzed showing in one instance 23'85 per cent in phosphoric acid, equivalent to 59 '05 per cent bone phosphate of lime (Ca3P208). 64 THE FLORIDA OF TO-BAY. Shell marl of marine deposit is found in nearly all parts of the State, and inexhaustible fertilizing marl-beds underlie the soil almost everywhere. Limestone is to be found in nearly all parts of the State ; a large proportion of which, however, will not yield a first quality of lime. The rock is generally too silicious, and slacks poorly ; yet Pro- fessor Pickel, of the State College, found by analy- sis 98*67 of carbi3nate of lime, being equivalent to 5246 per cent of quicklime. Clays exist, especially in l^orthern Florida, of which passably good bricks are made; but the presence of too much either of lime or of sand often prevents the best results in this direction. Clays sufficiently fine and pure for pottery are to be seen at various points, in lower strata, where coarser varieties occur. Kaolin has been found in numerous localities; but thus far little is known of its quality or quan- tity. Iron-ore is found in l^orthern Florida, and in Jackson County a "rather extensive deposit" is reported ; but nobody seems to believe that it exists anywhere in paying quantities. The ore is of the liraonite variety, and is not the best. It is to be found in all parts of the State. There are seve^-al GEOLOGY. 65 chalybeate springs whose medicinal qualities have been tested. Dr. Kost thinks that a large propor- tion of the running water of wells and springs is of the chalybeate character ; in springs and wells these are commonly called sulphur-waters, because of the presence of sulplmreted hydrogen occasioned by chemical action. JSTearly all the clays are stained by " oxides of iron." Coal is present. Lignite has been unearthed in Northern Florida. Dr. Kost discovered, in Santa Rosa County, a vein about thirty inches thick. This Tertiary coal is similar to that found along the ]N"orthern Pacific Railroad and used on that road. An artesian well, sunk during the present year in Marion County, it is stated, passed through a vein of coal some fifteen to eighteen feet thick, at a depth of nearly six hundred feet. Limestone, quarried for building purposes, exists in Northern Florida. It is, however, for the most part, soft, porous, and liable to imbibe moisture ; but the Union Bank building at Marianna, in Jack- son County, built of this material, has stood now some forty years, and is to-day in a good state of preservation. Chimneys are frequently built of it. It has been pretty extensively used in Hernando County for both building- walls and chimneys. eQ THE FLOPJDA OF TO-DAY. Flint-rock is available for rough walls, and will last till the end of time. This is found as far south as Sumter County, in Semi-tropical Florida. Arrow-heads, spear-points, and rude knives were made of this flint bj the Indians or their prede- cessors. In j^orthern Florida it abounds along the line of the railroad in Suwannee and Alachua Coun- ties. Dr. Kost says: "This rock was evidently deposited from solution by presence of lime and potash, with the silica in the waters of the later Ter- tiary, as the shell remains of the echinoidea, pecten, etc., appear with their own shell tissue, often m full integrity." Sandstone occurs in many places. It is soft, its cementing principle being impaired "by diffusion of aluminous materials previously oxidized." Marble, of stalactite and stalagmite varieties, is to be found in the caves of Jackson County and some other localities. Ceilings, floors, and walls of the caves are covered with this marble. It is in some instances beautifully white and translucent. Coquina — a shell limestone, as the name im- plies — exists in many places along the Atlantic coast. The texture of the rock. Dr. Kost writes, is very interesting, from the integrity of the shell ma- terial. It dresses moderately well, leaving a corru- GEOLOGY. 67 gated surface of rather agreeable aspect. It is very durable, as is proved bj the integrity of the walls of St. Augustine, those of the old Spanish Fort San Marco, and of the old cathedral at the same place — some of these a matter of two centuries old. Coralline is abundant, especially on the Atlantic coast south of the coquina region. But concrete — of sand, shells, and lime or, better, cement — is more easily managed than either coquina or coralline, cheaper, and doubtless equally durable ; so that its use is likely to supersede both the other hitherto favorite building materials. It has been used extensively in several places, notably at Cedar Keys ; and, more recently, in a modified form in the erection of the palatial hotels at St. Augustine. Miueral Waters. — The great variety and abun- dance of mineral deposits in Florida naturally give numerous mineral springs. The mineral waters are in the main solutions of lime, alumina, and iron ; but magnesia, soda, sulphur, and potash occur fre- quently, and iodine and bromine somewhat rarely. Ponce de Leon's Fountain of Perpetual Youth has been discovered a score of times, pretty much all over the State, and the modern wonder is that that grandiose Adelantcido himself could not find it, 68 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. when it is so numerous to-daj. Among the mineral springs conspicuous are the JSTewport Springs, on St. Mark's Eiver, in "Wakulla County ; the Hamp- ton Springs, of Taylor County ; the White Sul- phur Springs, of Hamilton County ; the Suwannee Springs, of Suwannee County ; and the Green Cove Springs, of Clay County. Soils. — The soils are usually classed as first, sec- ond, and third rate pine or sand lands, high and low hammocks, and swamp lands. Of the pine lands Dr. Kost says : " The sand deposits of Florida lands are very generally mis- judged. They are generally estimated by the tour- ist by what he has been conversant with in deposits of ' sand-banks ' in l^orthern localities, distant from the sea, which are generally wind-drifts or drifts from fresh-water bays or lakes, and the sand is quite liable to be clean and free from earthy or saline mixture. But here in Florida the accumulations are from salt-water bays or sea-coasts, and they are never free from marine salts, or more especially hav- ing the presence of the dust of marine shells, in the form of carbonate of lime from organic forms or shells of mollusca. Hence the sands of Florida are far more productive as compared to others than are those not of recent marine derivation. It happens. GEOLOGY. 69 therefore, that tourists who have opportunity to in- spect growing crops on the ' sandy harrens ' are not a little astonished to see respectably good crops grown on such lands. Similar sand deposits else- where — that is, in the adverse circumstances — com- monly are found to be almost completely barren." Humus is the general need of the sand lands. Hammocks may be defined as hard-wood lands, the high being either alluvial or clay, the low being of infinite variety both as to wetness and to material. Swamps are either sand or low hammocks in process of formation. Drainage. — Germane to the matter of soils is the reclaiming of lands. In Subtropical Florida espe- cially there is much overflowed land, and a drain- age company has undertaken to reclaim lands on shares around Okeechobee as a center. Here are, it is estimated, about eight million acres of water- covered land — Lake Okeechobee, of a thousand square miles, and the Everglades, more than ten times that area. The company began operations in 1881. In 188Y the Legislature sent a committee to examine and report results. They first visited Lake East Tohopekaliga, and their report states : " We find the lake eight feet two inches below its origi- nal level, with a handsome beach of firm white sand 70 THE FLO BID A OF TO-DAY. three or four hundred feet wide, hard and level, where formerly was seven or eight feet of water. We find the surrounding marshes and cypress swamps are dry and ready for the plow. . . . All these lands are in the highest state of cultivation, with handsome crops of sugar-cane, corn, potatoes, and various vegetables, all vigorous and thrifty. The lands are exceedingly fertile, and though but recently freed from two to four feet of standing water, are now dry and fit for all crops of a tem- perate or subtropical climate. . . . Sixty-five tons of cane, seventy bushels of corn, seventy bushels of rice, have been raised per acre on these lands." All this is en couleur de rose certainly. Toward the draining of Okeechobee directly the Drainage Company cut one canal forty-six feet wide and ten feet deep from the lake connecting it with the Caloosahatchee River, which fiows into the Gulf of Mexico. The company seems to have published no report of recent results of this part of its work ; but Mr. John B. Hickey, of Fort Myers, on the Caloosahatchee River, writes that Lake Okee- chobee is now three feet below its normal level. Tiie immediate friends of this enterprise appear very hopeful of early and complete success. Many others are less hopeful. As Okeechobee is 20*44: GEOLOGY. 71 feet above sea- level, and as tlie Everglades-level at Lake Worth is sixteen feet above that lake, and as the Everglades-level at Miami is 5*5 feet above that of Biscay ne Bay, it does not seem impossible that at least a great part of these Everglades waters may be drained off. It seems to be a question mainly of canal capacity. Writers on hygiene maintain that the condi- tions above given — removal of water from exten- sive areas of rich alluvial lands and cultivation of the same — must evolve malaria. The healthfulness of this reclaimed region, however, is vouched for, at least for the first four years of the Drainage Company's operations — up to 1885 — as appears in its report quoted elsewhere in these pages in treat- ing of malaria. It kept nearly forty white men at work summer and winter for three or four years, and had not a single case of malarial fever. This report goes far to prove that malaria is not as prevalent as is popularly believed, at least in that Everglade-lake region. What future developments are to bring forth remains to be seen ; and it is pos- sible that these very operations may change things in that regard ; but, to-day, assuredly there is no great reason to be alarmed about malaria. A very few more years of draining will settle that question. VII. TRAVEL. Teavel to Florida is increasing from year to year. Health, pleasure, and profit are the three guiding stars. These motives extend and increase with the development of the country ; and health, pleasure, and profit seekers rapidly become immi- grants and home-seekers. Over sixty thousand tourists visited the State during the past season. How to reach Florida is the tourist's first in- quiry. From 'New England, the adjacent States, and Canada, excursionists for Florida should make JS^ew York city their common point of departure. In that city all the great railway and steamship lines have ofiices, where full information may be got ; and tickets bought not only for Fernandina or Jack- sonville, but for numerous other points in interior Florida. Ocean Routes. — Of the water ways, the Mallory Steamship Line is an exc3llently appointed one and TRA VEL. 73 very popular. Four iirst-class steamers ply between JN'ew York and Fernandina, Florida, leaving ]^ew York every Friday. These steamers are large, safe, and comfortable, bnilt of iron, three thousand tons capacity each, with deep draught and full power. Clyde's l^ew York, Charleston, and Florida Steamship Line, ]^ew York, has also four first-class steamers, two going to Fernandina and two direct to Jacksonville ; all of them generally stopping en route at Charleston. They leave New York on Tuesdays and Fridays. The Ocean Steamship Company have a full out- fit of steamers sailing regularly from Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, to Savannah, where they connect with the Savannah, Florida, and Western Eailway — the Waycross Short Line, which leads to Jacksonville. These vessels are large, convenient, safe, and first class in every way. They sail from New York three times a week, and from Boston on Thursdays. Overland Routes. — Eailway travel facilities are exceptionally fine. The Atlantic Coast Line is the shortest one from the East and North to Florida. The line runs three express trains daily each way, the time between New York and Jacksonville be- 74 THE FLORIDA OF TO-LAY. ing about thirty hours, and by express train less than twenty-four. In addition to these rare facilities of speed and frequency, this line has during the present year taken some important steps in advance of ordinary travel. The recent vast increase of pleasure-travel has produced two coincident results— fine hotels in Florida and sumptuous means of travel to the State. The tide of fashionable touring and resort-seeking southward has set in within the past year or two ; and the health and pleasure resorts have been made to meet the demands of that class. The summer resorts of IS^ewport, Saratoga, Bar Harbor, Long Branch, . and Cape May are beginning to reappear with at least some of their features and hahitaes at St. Augustine, Pablo Beach, Rock Ledge, Tampa, Tarpon Springs, and Key West, as winter resorts in Florida. In response to the increase of this class of travel of late, the Atlantic Coast Line has put on regularly running Pullman vestibuled trains be- tween Boston and Jacksonville. These trains con- sist exclusively of drawing-room cars, containing each a library, reading-room, smoking-room, dining- cars, and sleeping-cars. The cars of these trains are so connected by means of vestibules that each train is practically one continuous car, with the conven- TEA YEL. 75 iences of a well-ordered hotel. The trains through- out are lighted with electric lights depending from the ceilings. The traveler on these trains may breakfast in New York one day and dine in Jack- sonville the next. The Piedmont Air-Line has its advantages as an all-rail route between the North and the South. It runs double daily trains, with Pullman buffet and Mann boudoir cars, between Atlanta and Jackson- ville, making regular and close connections at At- lanta with Northern trains. The route from the North lies through the great battle-fields of Yir- ginia, the Shenandoah Yalley, the beautiful broken rolling country of the Piedmont region, which pre- sents some of the finest landscape scenery in Amer- ica. This connects also with the East Tennessee, Yirginia, and Georgia systems of railway. Cincinnati is the starting-point from the North- west region of St. Paul, Chicago, and Indianapolis ; and from that point there run through sleeping- cars and double daily trains of the Cincinnati Southern Railway and of the East Tennessee, Yir- ginia and Georgia Pailroad, connecting with the Savannah, Florida and Western Pailway to Florida, making the time between Cincinnati and Jackson- ville only twenty-eight hours. 76 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. St. Louis is a fit starting-point from the great North-lS'orthwest, embracing Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, Dakota, Oregon, and the Territo- ries thereabout. From that point the Louisville and Nashville Railway runs two trains a dav, passing through the mountain-regions of Tennessee and Alabama, and connects, by way of Pensacola, witli the Florida Railway and Navigation Company's road, passing through Tallahassee and the great tobacco and cotton region of Florida. New Orleans is the starting-point for the South- west — Mexico, California, Texas, Arkansas, Louisi- ana, and Mississippi. There the traveler may take the Louisville and Nashville Railway, to River Junction on the Chattahoochee River ; thence, by the Savannah, Florida and Western Railway, through Thomas ville and Way cross ; or by the Florida Rail- way or Short Line, which passes several points of interest — the Olustee battle-ground, the Suwannee River, and other attractive scenery in Western and Middle Florida. Jacksonville. — Having reached this travel-cen- ter, the metropolis of the State, whether by rail or water, the tourist will pause to consider the outgo- ing conveyances from this point. Jacksonville itself is altogether familiar to the TEA YEL. Y7 reading public, and on tliat account needs but brief mention here. It has a population of 25,000, and is both progressive and aggressive ; has all the modern appliances of comfort — fine hotels and many of them, gas and electric lights, telegraph and telephone, daily newspapers, street cars, etc. The settlement was originally known by its abo- riginal name, Wacca Pilatka, which means Cow's Crossing-over — Cowford — Oxford — Bosporus ; but it became a whiteman's town in 1816, and in 1822 received its present name in honor of Andrew Jackson. It is largely a Northern city in its spirit and methods ; at least not essentially Southern in any characteristic sense. The city has recently become representative of the State of Florida, by the establishment of the Subtropical Exposition, a permanent institution, there. It is to be kept open every winter season, and is to exhibit the products and resources of Florida and the most valuable and attractive exhib- its that can be obtained from the Bahamas, West Indies, Mexico, and South America. Such an ex- position is new in the United States, and, when it is fully organized and equipped as designed, will be without a rival in the world. The intention is to increase its scope, variety, and quality every year. 78 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. -SCENE IN Jacksonville Last season's exhibits were eminently successful, and prove the entire feasibility of the general idea. By this means the visitor to Jacksonville is, in a way, a visitor to all parts of the State, Suitable TEA VEL. 79 buildings were erected, and these must be extended from year to jear. The main building is three hundred and twentj-five feet six inches in length, including towers — twenty feet — at the front end. Its width, including the towers or minarets — twen- ty feet — is one hundred and fifty-two feet. En- gine, dynamos, and other machinery are provided. An annex, of sixty-four by eighty-eight feet, two stories high, is for an art-gallery, restaurant, and other suppletory compartments. Germane to the spirit, aim, and iinal cause of the Subtropical Exposition, is the Florida Immigra- tion Association, with headquarters at Jacksonville. This Association, representing all parts of the State, in the same way that the Exposition will ultimately do, was organized for the purpose of furnishing full, authentic, and trustworthy information to those that are looking toward the State with conditional view to making a home there. To carry out this object there has been established at Jacksonville a general agency for the purj)Ose of inviting correspondence. Prompt attention will be given to inquiries relating to any section, locality, or feature of the State. It is the purpose of this Association to deal only in facts, and to avoid exaggerated praise, which ulti- mately does the State more harm than unjust de- 80 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. traction. The general agent is E. B. Yan Deman, Jacksonville, Florida. From Jacksonville. — Tliere are four general directions by railway from Jacksonville: one west- ward, reaching Pensacola; one southwestward, reaching Cedar Keys; one southward, reaching Punta Gorda on Charlotte Harbor in the Gulf of Mexico ; and two southward, reaching St. Augus- tine on the Atlantic coast and Titusville at the head of Indian Eiver. These routes are controlled by five companies. Seven years ago there were 537 miles of railroad in the State, whereas to-day there are 2,180 miles. The five companies are — the Florida Eailway and JS^avigation Company, extending westward 209 miles to the Appalachicola River and to Cedar Keys, and southward to the Wilhlacoochee River, Tavares, etc. ; the Plant System, which reaches southward to Tampa and Punta Gorda ; the Jacksonville, Tampa, and Key West Railway, which extends to Sanford, Tavares, Titusville, on Indian River, St. Augustine, and De Land ; the Florida Southern Railway, from Palatka to Brooksville and Pemberton Ferry; and the St. Augustine and Palatka Railroad, connecting St. Augustine with Tocoi and Palatka, Jacksonville, Mayport, and Pablo Beach, Pensacola with Mill- TEA VEL. 81 view, Blue Springs on the St. Jolin's with Hills- borough on the Atlantic, and Monroe with Tarpon Springs. The steamboat line — De Barj and People's Line — from Jacksonville up the St. John's River to Sanford and Enterprise, runs passenger-boats every day except Saturday. From Jacksonville, accordingly, the traveler can readily reach any point of interest, and these abound in all directions. Excursions of a few hours may be made to— 1. Pablo Beach, sixteen miles from Jackson- ville by rail. It is a sea-side resort of growing popularity, on the Atlantic shore, eight miles south of the mouth of the St. John's Kiver. The beach at this point is one of the finest on the Atlantic coast, being straight, sandy, shelving gently, smooth, and free from rocks and pit-holes. The bathing is perfectly safe. A handsome but irregular little town has sprung up within the last few years, hav- ing now a first-class hotel known as Murray Hall, with pavilions, restaurants, and other conveniences and comforts — an establishment as fine as any on the Atlantic coast, not surpassed at Long Branch, Ocean Grove, or Cape May. 6 82 TEE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. 2. St. Aitgiistine, the oldest city in the United States, is thirtj-six miles by rail from Jacksonville. The city— population, about 8,500 — is noted for its picturesque beauty ; its crumbling old city gates ; its odd streets, ten to twenty feet wide, without sidewalks ; its coquina-built houses ; its overhanging balconies, with a scent of days gone by over all ; its governor's palace ; its unique sea-wall ; the hoary ramparts of its year-laden San Marco ; its mediaeval- looking Moorish cathedral ; and the finest and most striking hotel in the world. Lady Hardy, in her admirable book of travels, "Down South," a few years ago, of this gaudily solemn old city felicitously writes : " It is like an old-fashioned beauty who has been lying in state through these long years, pranked in all her finery of feathers, furbelows, paint, powder, and patches, and now wakes up and walks and talks w^ith us in the quaint, stilted phraseology of old days." There is not a step nor a turn in this grand old ruin of other days that is not interesting. The very ocean seems to roll in an antique sort of a way ; and the trade-winds that sweep through the picturesque date-palms, magnolias, and oleanders, seem to be whispering in Spanish, or howling in the Cautio vernacular S23oken there four centuries ago. TRAVEL, 83 Street in St. Augustine, 84 TEE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. Tlie ancient San Marco is now Fort Marion. It was begun probably in 1565, and is like the pyra- mids of Egypt in being the work of slaves ; and it is a most interesting fossil of a foreign civilization, restored by numerous later touches. The moat is now dried up and overgrown ; but there are still the drawbridges, the massive arched entrance, the gray barbacan, the dark nnder-ways, the sullen bastions, and the crypt-like dungeons. The princely hotel recently built, the Ponce de Leon, has an annex or supplementary house, the Alcazar ; and the two, a magnificent unit, unite the old and the new, the past and the present, with wonderful splendor and effect. The Alcazar is unfinished. The Ponce de Leon revives the style of three hundred years ago, and enriches it with all the luxuries of to-day. It is built in the style of the early Spanish Renais- sance, with its decided flavor of the Moresque. The material is shell concrete, and the great build- ing is a stupendous monolith, and w^as molded, not built. The general complexion is a light mother- of-pearl, with bright salmon terra-cotta ornamenta- tion. The greatest turret height is a hundred and fifty feet. The building is five hundred feet long and covers nearly five acres. A thousand guests can be accommodated and seated in the dining-room, TRAVEL. 85 »*~«^ 86 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. and this hall is one of the marvels of this immense establishment. The grand parlor is one hundred and four bj fifty-three feet, but is practically divided into five rooms by arches, portieres, and screens. The drawing-rooms on the first fioor surpass in number and style everything of the kind ever presented to the public. Besides all these there are splendid courts, fountains, lakes, tennis-courts, bowling-alleys, bars, billiard-rooms, bazaars, and arcades ; but more sumptuous than all are the luxurious Roman, Turk- ish, and Russian baths. From these access is had to the unrivaled plunge-baths of sea- water, covering nearly half an acre of varying depths from two to six feet. Back of these is the sea-bath proper which may be described as a stupendous cave of solid concrete, one hundred and eighty-four feet by eighty-four feet, and from four to thirty feet dee23, altogether maldng a bath without a precedent in all history. The electric lighting of the building is something plienomenal, and is in keeping with the splendor of the whole. The outlay for this com- pleted main building — the Ponce de Leon proper- is reported as two and a half million dollars ; and the Alcazar, it is predicted, will equal the other in both splendor and cost. During the past season, this immense hotel was crowded for full two TRA VEL. 8T months, Laving a thousand guests frequently ; the gross income being stated at over five thousand dollars a day. There are at St. Angustine yet other fine hotels — the new Hotel Cordova, as unique and in most respects as fine and as well appointed as the Hotel ; the San Marco, the Magnolia, the St. Augustine, and half a dozen minor houses. 3. Fort George Island, at the mouth of the St. John's, has fine tropical scenery, charming walks and drives, and a good hotel. 4. Mayport, on the south side of the mouth of the St. John's, is a pleasant little town of perhaps a hundred cottages, many of these being summer residences for business men in Jacksonville, The St. John's was called May by the French, and thence the name of May port. Already popular as an excursion resort, it is growing in popularity. 5. Besides the above there are, within easy excursion distance of Jacksonville, Orange Parh, Mandarin, Magnolia, Green Cove SjpTings, and scores of others on the St. John's, all having hotels, and all their special charms. The St. John's region is too well known to need a word at this late day. Longer excursions from Jacksonville lie in all directions southward and westward ; 88 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY, 1. Beginning with the east coast, the tourist may make Indian River his objective point. This region enjoys a glorious climate, less variable than the interior and west, has fine rich semi-tropical scenery, and grows beyond doubt the finest oranges in the world. From Jacksonville the traveler may go by rail direct to Indian River at Titusville, 166 miles, a town reached by telegraph and express. From that point he may make the entire tour of this famous sound, called by universal consent a river — known to the Spaniards as the Rio (TAis — from Titusville near the head, to Jupiter at the southern extremity, a distance of 118 miles, by steamer all the way. One line of steamers leave Titusville daily, passing JRooh Ledge, with its first- class hotel, fine scenery, with excellent hunting and fishing; Eau GaUle, with its post-office, store, and hotel, with several residences, and its State Agri- cultural College building, a monument of recon- struction sham and of Gleason ; down to Melbourne, 39 miles from Titusville, where the flora begins to show increase of tropical elements ; and where there is a thriving settlement, largel}^ English, with two hotels, a newspaper, and no end of rod and gun sport. From Melbourne to Jupiter, 69 miles, there plies a steamer three times a week, passing TRA YEL. 89 Looking across Indian Eiver. ^; 90 THE FLORIDA OF TO~DAY. The Narrows^ with its acres and islands of oysters ; St. Lucie, with its long-famed hunting-grounds and its flocks of manatees ; Eden, with its famous pine- apple fields and fine fishing; on to Jupiter Inlet, the present end of the telegrapli line, with its lighthouse 170 feet high. Here the tourist is defi- nitely within the subtropics ; and a handsome, well-grown cocoanut-tree is Flora's conspicuous sign of a new climate. Only a few names of places have been men- tioned in this transit from Titusville to Jupiter; but there are more than a score of delightful places, with each a hotel and a post-ofiice. The flora and fauna gradually pass from the semi-tropical to the subtropical as the traveler goes southward. The attempering breath of the Gulf Stream becomes more and more operative until the traveler reaches Jupiter, where the Stream flrst separates from the land in its course northward. 2. Or, the traveler may make Lake Worth his ob- jective point. He would then, as before, go from Jacksonville by rail to Titusville, 166 miles ; from Titusville to Jupiter by steamer, 118 miles ; from Jupiter by hack to Lake Worth, 8 miles. Once on the lake — which, like Indian River, was originally a sound — he can go to any point in boat, either row. TRA TEL. 91 sail, or steam ; mostly sail. Lake Worth is 23 miles long, about a mile wide, and separated from the Atlantic by a narrow strip of land in some places less than a quarter of a mile wdde. An inlet near the northern end of the lake connects it with the Atlantic. The water of the lake is less salt than that of the ocean, by reason of numerous small streams and a general seepage from the fresh-water lakes above to the westward. The fresh-water lakes are about a mile west of Lake Worth ; so that the fisherman finds three kinds of water in less than three miles — the ocean, the semi salt lake, and the fresh lakes — with their several families of fishes. Deer, turkeys, ducks, and small game of various kinds are abundant ; as indeed they are almost the entire length of the Atlantic coast, but especially abundant in the more newly settled localities. The flamingo, a distinctly tropical bird, has been seen as far north as this lake. The cocoanut-palm grows and fruits here, wdiile it is a very uncertain growth anywhere north of this. The tropical fruits that can be grown north of this region, can be grown here without protection. 3c Or the tourist may make Biscayne Bay, about sixty miles south of Lake Worth, his objective point. To this beautiful region there are tw^o 92 THE FLORIDA OF TO-BAY. routes. One is, as above, from Jacksonville to Titus- ville, to Jupiter, to Lake Worth ; and there charter a boat and sail down the Atlantic coast, from the head of Lake Worth to Miami, the count j-seat of Dade County, 84 miles. From Miami to Key West A Hammock, TEA VEL. 93 the distance is 130 miles. The other route to the Eiscajne region is, to go south down the other side of the State — that is, from Jacksonville to Punta Gorda \>j rail, to Key West by steamer or sail, to Miami bj sail. This Miami region has the usual Atlantic coast variety of soils — pine, hammock, and prairie — with the Everglades lying west of it. Here, in the heart of the subtropics, the visitor sees in the flora the difference between semi-tropic and subtropic. The guava, for exam.ple, which grows sometimes as far up as 30° — and land agents in that latitude advertise the guava as one of their attractions — the guava, here in Subtropical Florida, grows to be a tree twenty or even thirty feet high, with a delicious and abundant fruit, while in the higher latitudes it is a shrub about as tall as a man, with a dwarfed fruit that is hardly flt to eat at all. So also with the lime ; and, indeed, with all the rarer and more tender fruits. Fishing and hunting both have here the best of fields. The Gulf Stream brings into these w^aters the whole family of tropi- cal fishes, and carries the same up as far north as Jupiter Inlet. As to climate, this is, especially the northern portion of it, doubtless the most equable in the State ; and that, of course, means in the United States. The equability appears to be pretty 94 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. uniform from Cape Florida to Jupiter Inlet — the region touched bj the Gulf Stream — and from Jupi- ter Inlet to Fernandina the equability gradually de- creases ; but the entire Atlantic coast has less varia- tion of temperature than other parts of the State. 4. Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades are best reached from Jacksonville by rail to Kissimmee in Osceola County, and thence by boat through the lakes and down the Kissimmee River into Okeecho- bee. A second route is, by rail to Punta Gorda, and thence by boat up the Caloosahatchee River, into Okeechobee — a lake of about a thousand square miles in area, being about forty by twenty-five miles. The river and lake travel in these routes is not generally so delightful in itself as a vestibuled car; but as a picnic, pleasant and refreshing. 5. Key West is in Monroe County, on an island of the name of the city, of about twelve square miles. It is a Spanish-looking town of nearly 20,000 inhabitants, is lighted with gas, runs street- cars, and is reached by telegraph. It is a quaint and antiquely novel city, full of oddities and va- riety. Dr. Henshall says its buildings are of all sizes and of every conceivable style, or no style, of architecture ; and they are promiscuously jumbled together, but are joined or seamed to each other by TRA VEL. 95 a wealth and profusion of tropical foliage, which surrounds, invests, surmounts, and overshadows them, softening the asperities, toning down the harsh outlines, and uniting the separate pieces, which merge their individuality in a harmonious toict eiisemhle. That writer sums up Key West's heterogeneous attractions in these words : " And so, mansions, huts, and hovels, balconies, canopies, and porches, gables, hoods, and pavilions, pillars, columns, and . pilasters, are mingled in endless con- fusion, but harmonized by arabesques of fruit and foliage, festoons of vines and creepers, wreaths and ti'aceries of climbing shrubs and trailing flowers, and shady bowers of palm and palmetto, almond and tamarind, lime and lemon, orange and banana." The population is mainly Cubans and Conchs, but there are also Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, Spaniards, Italians, negroes, and Americans. Eng- lish immigrants from the Bahamas are called Conchs, and settlers from the United States are called Americans. The island is rich in tropical beauties and fruits ; and the city is noted for its unique and picturesque features, Spanish tone, and cigar manufactures. In this one industry it employs over three thousand operatives, and handles five million dollars a year. It can be reached, as above 96 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. stated, from Jacksonville by rail to Cedar Keys, Tampa, or Piinta Gorda ; and from either of these points by steamer to Key West direct. Or, on the other side of the peninsula, from Jacksonville by rail to Titusville, thence by steamer to Jupiter Inlet, thence down the coast by Lake Worth to Miami in Dade Connty, and thence one hundred and thirty miles, by schooner, to Key West. 6. Cape Sable and the entire southern coast of Lee, Monroe, and Dade Counties are well worthy a visit. Here the subtropical sometimes threatens to become the tropical. Cocoanut groves are here and there, and the royal palm is to be found here, the only place in the whole country. The tourist, in a paradise of Nature, may select any one of a score of attractive points for his visit and tempo- rary sojourn. Around the coast runs a horse- shoe of fertile land, not many miles wide at any place, and backed by the Everglades, which center in the great Okeechobee. That part of this horse- shoe attempered by the Gulf Stream, the part toward the east on the Atlantic side, is especially attractive. All this region can be reached readily by schooner or other boat from either Key West or Miami ; and such boats are on hand all the time, especially at Key West. TRAVEL. 97 Y. Tampa, some 24:0 miles from Jacksonville by rail direct, is a typical Florida city, of nearly 2,000 inhabitants. It is interesting for its history, scenery, oranges, fish, and mounds. It is reached by tele- graph and express. One writer claims that Tampa is probably older than St. Augustine, and explains that, in the same year that Menendez founded the latter city, his deputy, De Eeinoro, was in charge of Tampa. Menendez sent a hundred laborers, in- cluding fifteen women, to Tampa to teach spinning to the squaws. Padre Kogel, a Catholic priest, was in charge of ecclesiastical interests at that time, and the following year Menendez made a Spanish peace between the Tago and the Tampa tribes at Tocobayo. But no records of that his- tory appear to have come down to this day. It was in Tampa Bay that General Worth persuaded Coacoochee to go West with his tribe, as narrated elsewhere in these pages. It is a few miles south of this city that a very large and old orange-tree was said to be still living that had borne over ten thousand oranges in one year. 8. Tallahassee, the capital of the State, is an ideal Florida city, and one of the loveliest in the South ; and a most charming community, homo- geneous, hospitable, and essentially Southern. It 7 98 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. lias a population of nearly 3,000; lias excellent hotels, telegraph, express, ice-factory, and is reached by rail direct, 165 miles from Jacksonville. It is the center, too, of many attractive points to visit — historical homesteads, landscapes, lakes, and so on. Two miles from Tallahassee stands Belle vue, the Murat homestead, which was occupied by the widow of Murat, the marshal and King of Naples. The prince spent the last years of his life upon his estate in Jefferson County. He and his widow who survived him many years lie side by side in the Episcopal Cemetery at Tallahassee, with quaint and interesting inscriptions over the graves. Near by, too, is the site of the old Spanish Fort St. Luis, with noteworthy fragments of ponderous but decaying remains. 9. Cedar Keys is by railway direct 127 miles from Jacksonville. It is on Way Key in the Gulf of Mexico, four miles from the mainland. It has three or four thousand inhabitants, two news- papers, two good hotels, a telegraph-office, and an express-office. It is a port of entry, and has shipped as much as $695,000 worth of exports a year, principally lumber, fish, green turtle, and oysters. Imports, about $5,000. A regular line of steamers ply between this port and the West In- TRA VEL. 99 dies. The Eagle and the Faber Pencil Companies have here each a factory for preparing the cedar- wood for lead-pencils. It is a fine field for all kinds of fishing. 10. Pensacola, 326 miles by rail from Jackson- ville, 161 miles west of Tallahassee, was fonnded by the Spaniards in 1696, and has had an eventful and checkered history. The harbor is described as one of the finest in the world, having an area of about two hundred square miles, is thirty miles long, with an average width of at least seven miles and a depth of from thirty to thirty-five feet of water. The entrance is half a mile wide, with twenty-four feet of water. There are immense quantities of lumber and fish shipped, also some coal from Alabama. There are several newspapers, churches, and hotels ; a fine opera-house, an express-office, a telegraph- ofiice, and all the conveniences of a well-appointed city. In that region are the Pensacola E'avy-Yard and the Lighthouse, Fort Barrancas, Fort Pick- ens, and Bayou Grande. Pensacola is a rapidly progressive place, and one having many attract- ive features for both the sight-seer and the home- seeker. Its climate is all that could be desired, having all the advantages of the Korth Florida tier of counties. 100 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. 11. Appalachicola has many points of attraction. It is about 210 miles by rail from Jacksonville, and has some 2,000 inhabitants. It is an important lumber-port, and sends out also oysters, sponges, and fish. It has one newspaper, good hotels, and an attractive enioui'age. 12. Wakulla Springs, sixteen miles from Talla- hassee, is the source of the Wakulla River. It is nearly circular, four hundred feet wide and a hun- dred and six feet deep, brightly clear, green of many shades, and intensely interesting. The river that flows from it is two hundred and fifty feet wide at the outset, and deep enough to bear large vessels. This spring is in some respects more remarkable than the famous Silver Spring in Marion County. 13. Silver Spring.— This phenomenal body of water is in Marion County, and is now accessible by rail, and enjoys the advantages of telegraph and ex- press. It is described as a vast circular basin, six hundred feet in diameter and nearly fifty feet in depth; is the source of a river known as Silver Spring Run, navigable for small steamers, and which flows into the Ocklawaha River, about nine miles distant. Notwithstanding its great depth, the water is so clear that the smallest object — a nickel TRA VEL. 101 or a nail, for example — can be seen on the bottom. The place can be reached by rail direct, or by rail from Jacksonville to Palatka, and thence by boat up the Ocklawaha River to Silver Spring Run. This and the Wakulla Springs are beyond doubt the most wonderful things of their kind in the world. An excellent ronte for the tourist in quest of characteristic Semi-tropical Florida scenery is this : Take the day-boat up the St. John's River to San- ford ; thence by rail to Orlando, through the lake region of Orange County, via Tavares and Lees- burg on Lake Harris ; thence down the Ocklawaha River by steamer to Silver Spring ; and thence down the river again to Palatka, and on to Jack- sonville. 14. The Ocklawaha River is comparatively little visited, but is richly worthy a special visit. For the river alone, a good plan would be to go to Lees- burg by rail, and thence take river-steamer to Pa- latka, taking in Silver Spring as part of the route. The Ocklawaha is perhaps the most meandering of all Florida's serpentine streams, and they are many. It flows, in its winding way, through cypress low- lands not elsewhere equaled in their wild and tangled luxuriance. The stately stems of these trees rise sometimes sixty or seventy feet without a 102 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. TEA VEL. 103 knot or a bend, and they seem to be as much as four feet in diameter in some instances. The night trip on these boats is especially striking : tlie glar- ing head lights, the deep and whirling shadows, the confused glimpses of gloom and grandeur, the pol- ing the grounded boat off shore, the unique signals and shoutings of the crew, ths night cries of startled birds and beasts — all these things, varied every min- ute or two, make up an experience to be found no- where else, probably, in the world. 15. The Suwannee River — known in classic negro minstrelsy as de Swannee ribher — is full of interest for its scenery. It is of easy access from Jackson- ville by rail direct. 1 6. The Caloosahatchee Elver is one of the most striking in the State. The canal that connects it with Okeechobee Lake adds to its interest, and makes it the outlet of the lake to the Gulf of Mex- ico. It is the only river of any considerable size in the Subtropics. Its flora is specially rich and at- tractive. Tropical trees appear — and semi-tropical trees attain greater size than they do farther north. Cocoanut-palms thirty years old are to be seen here. For thirty-five miles from its mouth this river has a depth of eight feet, and a width generally of a mile. The banks are covered w^ith thick set tropi- 104 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY, cal vegetation : oak-trees festooned with long moss and air-plants, palniettoes of several kinds, and tangled mangroves. Now, that the canal leads into the lake, steamers may enter the river at its mouth and reach Kissimmee in Osceola County, some 400 miles. At the mouth of the Caloosa- hatchee is Punta Kassa, the great transfer shipping- point for Key West, which lies 160 miles southward. Cattle for the Southern markets, mainly Key West, has been the great export from Punta Rassa. The Caloosahatchee Valley has a history too. Bloody work was done there in Seminole-war days. FortES mark centers of military operations. Fort Myers, with its surrounding town, stands conspicuous. Mounds point back to prehistoric times and to a history before the Seminole disgraced humanity and before De Leon and the other swaggering A delan- tados had discovered and conquested this Flowery Land. A distinguished veteran traveler, after hav- ing seen all parts of Florida, said of this beautiful valley that, if he w^ere a young man beginning life, it is here that he would settle and make his home. A higher compliment than this it would be difficult to pay any one place where attractive places abound. IT. The Homosassa River is midway between the subtropical Caloosahatchee and the minstrel-famed TRA VEL, 105 Suwannee in floral and climatic features. These features are doubtless equally beautiful and interest- ing, in their three several ways ; and in this sense it is idle to make marked discriminations in compar- ing the separate attractions of a State beautiful from end to end. 18. Besides and beyond all these and scores of places of equal interest, there are yet other scores each one of which is known to a select circle as the flnest spot in Florida — the Eden of garden-spots — the one Paradise of the earth — the none-such and only original heaven on earth — and so on. And most of them are very lovely and attractive places. The land-sharks and the paper-town men, with the professional boomers, have exhausted the vocabulary of commendation and bankrupted the dictionary in laudations over their moss-covered gall-berry swamps and desolate third-rate wet pine-barrens, until the conscientious chronicler of sober truth fears to tell what he knows to be true of scores of fine places all over this beautiful land with its glorious but lit- tle understood anomalies of climate and its rare san- atorial advantages. 19. Mounds. — The excursionist with antiquarian proclivities will find attractive objects to visit all over the State, in the ancient mounds. There are 106 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. fully two hundred of these. They are of many shapes, heights, and areas. The shapes are oblong, circular, rectangular, and irregulai'. The heights vary from three to thirty feet, with diameters from ten feet to eight hundred feet ; and the areas from a hundred square feet to half an acre. They are in all parts of the State, but are perhaps most abundant on the Gulf coast — Anclote, Dune- din, Pinellas, Tampa — but everywhere. The mate- rials are mostly shell, sand, and other soils ; some of them shells and sands alternating in layers eight to twelve inches thick. The uses for which these mounds were built are little understood, various theories having been put forth. Some hold that they were for tombs merely ; and the presence of human bones in many of them clearly suggests this ; but the absence of all traces of such bones in others tends to throw doubt on the tomb theory. The skeletons found generally lie on the right side, ranged radially with the head toward and near the center. Others hold that the mounds are palace sites for the residence of the sachems and saga- mores. Others hint at religious uses, sacrificial altars, and the like. Others regard the mounds as outlooks or sentry-towers for the tribe sentinels on guard, to watch against invasion in canoes. Others TRA VEL. 107 yet maintain that the mounds are merely accmnula- tions of shells, bones, and soil, brought together by grand feasts or communistic boarding-houses. Some claim to find evidence of cannibalism and cremation in these bone-piles. Most writers assume that these mounds are the work of the aborigines found in the country by the Spaniards ; but the Indians are said to claim that the mounds were there when they came to the country. This, however, is worth YQrj little as evidence, although it is doubtless true of the Seminoles of to-day. The finding of a pair of scissors, fragments of a looking-glass, and glass beads, in one mound, indicates that some of the mounds at least have no very great antiquity. On the contrary, however, the presence of old trees on the mounds, as large as those of the adjacent forests —at Pinellas and Dunedin notably — point to a pretty early day and date. Whatever their age, use, or origin may be, they are objects of interest, and the inquiring mind anxiously awaits revelations and developments. There are several valuable pa- pers on these mounds in the Smithsonian Heports of some ten years ago. vin. POPULATION. The history of Florida, its physical features, and its population, are singularly alike in having ele- ments that are exceptional, many, and diverse. Peoples. — The population of to-day is made up of at least four peoples : the old residents, with whom the Southern immigrants readily coalesce ; the Northern and foreign immigrants ; the ne- groes ; and the Indians. Old Residents. — These, mainly British, lived in the northern part of the State, west of the Suwan- nee River. In that region, in ante-helliom days, were large and profitable cotton-plantations, stately old residences, luxurious homes ; a cultured, well- read, refined people, proud, self-reliant, self-sup- porting, courtly, exclusive in a way, but withal hos- pitable, liberal in spirit, religious, conservative, and charitable. Slavery — an institution in its main features distinctly patriarchal — furnished organ- ized labor ; and wealth, with its ease, leisure, and population: 109 other advantages and amenities, marked a com- munity of noblemen without rank. The descen- dants of that day and generation are to-day the old residents, the old-timers, the Bourbons of the State. With these, and in fact of these, is a com- munity of earnest and energetic men, less wealthy and less cultured, but withal of the same spirit and the same civilization, and forming one with them in all the essentials of character. The cracker may be defined as the poor man that pre- fers ease to hardship, content with little, jealous of intrusion into his unkempt life, shrewd, narrow, un- couth, unlettered, homely, conservative. These, in short, are the old residents — the wealthy old-timers, the yeomanry, and the crack- ers — all in their several ways Southern ; and Bour- bons all. The immigrants from the old slave States, where a like spirit prevailed and similar classes grew up, readily and naturally blend with the above, and the two are essentially one. There are settlers from every Southern State, and these of all the classes and varieties. In 1880 the percent- age of natives born of all colors was fifty-eight ; and of Southern immigrants, twenty-nine. These Southern people of Florida look with in- 110 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. telligent interest at the incoming tide of immigra- tion, and welcome it heartily. They wish to see the State developed in that way. What they may resent with some ardor, and doubtless do often re- sent, is the missionary spirit that seeks to change, asking them to discard the old and adopt the new — a tone of infinite superiority that some persons use, that offends the inherent conservatism that marks this people. But the straight-forward man that means business is always cordially welcomed. Northern and Foreign Immigrants. — These classes coujprise a large body of very miscellaneous materi- als. All classes of almost all countries are repre- sented. The IS'ortherners come from every l^orth- ern State and Territory except Alaska. There are a great many of them earnest, industrious, thrifty, intelligent, and progressive men. Some bring capi- tal and improved appliances in the industries ; some bring brain and brawn only; and some bring the worst qualities of the sharper, the adventurer, and the tramp. They are as varied as are the motives that bring them to this old-new country. Much of the push and energy and the resultant success of the State is due to the better of these workers. Not all the boomers, blow-hards, and paper-city humbugs are importations. Native talent has con- POPULATION. Ill tributed a share of these. Upon the quality and character of Northern immigrants, Mr. O. Mo Crosby, a native of New England, gives this well- considered testimony : " As a rule, settlers in Florida come from the class of well-bred Northern persons who have been unfortunate in the scramble for wealth and position, or have bodily ailments which a balmy climate is expected to cure. Another class, that can hardly be called settlers, represents those who own orange-grove villas or cottages, occupying them only during the winter, as many do their cot- tages for the summer at Northern sea-shore resorts. Persons of the first-mentioned class are often vision- ary, -fluent with the pen, and unpractical, while those who reside only a portion of the year in Flor- ida are hardly to be considered among the effective population ; and to a smaller third class of poor, ' make-a-living toilers' belongs nmch of the credit of Florida's practical advancement. These are they who have brought Northern energy and common sense together, and what they have achieved is worth all that has been written by those who have theories yet untried, but who are anxious to get them into print. The Northern settler at first is in- variably hampered by his conceit. He ' will show the slow-going natives a thing or two,' and it is 112 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. usually after he has sunk most of his available capi- tal that he is ready to admit that these natives can teach him. Usually a compromise in methods is the result. It is a trifle humiliating to the average Yankee settler to And that the largest and most productive orange-groves are often owned and culti- vated by native Floridians or Southerners, whom in liis superior wisdom he had considered as lacking in successful methods." If the miscellaneousness of the American con- tingent is striking, that of the foreign settlers is ne- cessarily more so. They come from British Ameri- ca, Mexico, Cuba, Central America, and South America. The Europeans come from England, Ire- land, Scotland, Wales, Austria, Belgium, Bohemia, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, Italy, Luxemburg, Norway, Poland, Russia, SjDain, Swe- den, and Switzerland. There are Asiatics from China and India, Africans, Australians, Sandwich- Islanders, and Atlantic-islanders. In such a variety of nationalities there is, of course, a vast diversity of characters, talents, mo- tives, and results. While, in such an agglomera- tion, there must be mach riff-raff, there are at the same time experts in some of the best and most promising industries — as the wine - growers of POPULATION. 113 France, tlie silk-growers of Italy, the tobacco- growers of Cuba, and the tropical -fruit growers of South America. Negroes. — The negroes of Florida are mainly resident freedmen, with some politicianal additions made during the period of muddle known as recon- struction. The former make up the great collective body of this people, and they preserve the tradi- tions and the genius of their race with excellent fidelity. The fortunes of war gave them freedom, and citizenship has followed through means simi- larly summary. A recent Northern writer, with striking frankness, says that the newly enfranchised slaves " lost no time in deserting the great army of producers to engage almost en masse in the more congenial vocation of politics ; the production of the staple crops ceased almost entirely ; the planta- tion was deserted for the town and the cross-road rendezvous." During the period between 1865 and 1876 these slaves worked faithfully in the planta- tion of politics; but at the latter date a second emancipation changed their status slightly, and since then they have been working somewhat more and voting rather less, and are doing vastly better in all important respects. So also is Florida pros- pering. The future fortunes of the negroes are 8 114 THE FLO BID A OF TO-JDAY. largely in the hands of the controlhng race, and they themselves will probahly have little to do in shaping it ; and doubtless the less they have to do with it the better. A Northern writer elsewhere quoted — Mr. O. M. Crosby, author of " Florida Facts " — makes the fol- lowing pointed remarks upon this matter ; " Outside of the old slave-owning settlements negroes are scarce, they preferring as a rule to work for their old masters rather than to be driven by the impetu- ous ]^ortherner, who they suspect wishes to get more work out of them than is agreeable to their indolent nature. While the African is as necessary in clearing away forests and in hard manual labor as the Irishman is at the North, now that he is free he has no idea of working more than is barely necessary to keep him in pork and grits. His rations cost at most but a dollar a week, and he sees no reason in working six days out of seven, when three or four provide for his own wants and those of his family. There are few colored men that will agree to work faithfully by the month, or, if they do so agree, they often excuse themselves when most needed with an ' I reckon I won't work to-day, boss,' that is aggra- vating to the new settler, anxious to get his grove planted at the right time, and who is nsed to having POPULATION-. 115 hands whom, after hiring, he can command. Con- tractors needing one hundred men nsually employ one third more, to keep the ranks Ml, and then are often left with but a few, especially after pay-day, or until the men begin to get hungry again. Few darkies are providential enough to lay up enough to last them from week to week, and, as their sense of honor is low, they can not be ' trusted ' at the stores. Employers are usually ' dunned ' every day for money, for rations, or ' baccy.' Withal they are so thoroughly good-natured, with a don't-care-for-to- morrow air, that the driving employer soon finds it necessary to be more easy with them, realizing that crowding will cause them to leave him unceremoni- ously." The same writer further says : " The negro problem will assume a new form, to even the most rabid abolitionist, after a residence in Florida. If he employs colored help, paying promptly, feed- ing well, and treating humanely, he will naturally expect the return and obedience he would from laborers at the N^orth, and will be surprised to learn how utterly shiftless and devoid of all honor the average Southern darky is, and will soon find out that the latter would much rather work for his old owner than for him." The amount of property acquired by the negroes 116 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. is encouraging ; and it is a very suggestive fact in this connection tliat their greatest progress — and ahnost their only material progress — ^has been made since 1876. As to the negro's freedom in voting there could hardly be a better witness than Mr. Hamilton Jay. This writer of himself says : " I am a Northern man by birth and education, and came to Florida in 1871. For nearly ten years I was prominently identified with the Eepublican party in Florida, both in a journalistic and official capacity. In the national election of 1876 I had charge of the IJDited States soldiers at the polls in Jefferson County, and during the work of the returning- board at Tallahassee I was editor of the ' Daily Union,' a stalwart Eepublican newspaper, then published at Jacksonville." Of negro voting Mr. Jay says; "I state most solemnly and truthfully that I have never seen a negro intimidated by a Southern white man in his exercise of the elect- ive franchise. On the contrary, I have on more than one occasion seen Southern white Demo- crats go with negroes who hesitated to approach the polls, and stand by their side while they voted the ticket they desired to vote, the Eepublican ticket." POPULATION 117 Indians.— The Indians of Florida are called Seminoles. The original Indians— after the ab- originals had risen, fiourished, built their mounds, and disappeared— appear to have been Miccosu- kies. With these subsequently mingled many fugi- tives from the Carolina and Georgia Mnscogees or Creeks under Secoffee, a noted chief who invaded Florida and settled there in 1750. These fugitives, it is stated, were first designated as Seminoles— meaning refugees, runaways, vagabonds — and finally the remnants of many tribes that remained in that region first endured and then embraced the name. Whatever tbe etymological facts in the case may be, the prowlers, numbering nearly three hundred, now living in Subtropical Florida and gadding about the country, look the name perfectly. In addition to tbe general mixture of Indian bloods, hundreds of runaway negroes have been absorbed ; and the half- breeds on the white side bave a pretty low grade of pale-face blood to boast of. The latest Government reports state the number of Seminoles as about two hundred and sixty-nine, one third of whom are of fighting age, and living in the counties of Lee, Monroe, Dade, and Bre- vard, principally in the Everglades. But the Indian evades the census-taker as he would the plague; 118 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. and will lie without stint, with no motive higher than to circumvent the white man. They live in shifting settlements, called villages, each one under a chief. The old-time wigwam has given place to the modern house, cottage, or shanty, built of lumber, rough but hewn or riven. Piazzas and windows begin to appear. But the dwellings of the many are shanties. These consist of upright posts driven into the ground ; the roof, a thatch of palmetto-leaves tied to cross-poles ; the floor, on shorter posts about a yard from the ground; the sides of the one-roomed houses being open or but slightly protected with palmetto-leaveSo In the day- time when at home they sit on the floors, and sleep on them at night, the beds so called being rolled up during the day. Their lighter social or domestic gatherings around the evening yard fires are — to put it mildly — informal, and the individuals are diversely occupied. Mothers fondle their papooses, and shell beans, pound hominy in mortars, or pull buckskin, or do some other hand work. The chil- dren and dogs roll and tumble about together in play. The men repair their arms and other imple- ments or accoutrements, mold bullets, look on, talk, and smoke. The sages — old men always lapse into sages, it seems — stare into the flre and grunt mono- POPULATION'. 119 syllabic responses to those around them. The family pot for next day's feed is boiling over the fire, while some matron gives it her attention from time to time, adding water, salt, and onions, as her judgment dictates, and a precious mess of nau- seous stuff it generally is ! In the ashes potatoes are roasted. They crawl away to bed, one after another, as the spirit moves. Young men and spinsters are not expected, nor indeed allowed, to talk to white visitors, while the old men are near. The young must affect not to understand English on such occasions. Near each village there is always a public cam/pus^ with a tall pole in the center. Here their festivities all are held. These are their stated dances, the most important of which is the green- corn dance — a sort of annual worship of Ceres. The celebration consists of dancing around the pole, eating green corn, and drinking whisky {wy-o-mee)^ which of late years is the most important feature. They grow corn, rice, potatoes, sugarcane, melons, and some fruit, and keep hogs, cattle, a few ponies, and poultry. The men usually wear a calico shirt, middle wrap, a shawl, and a turban, and on some special occasions, as when visiting the white settlements or 120 THE FLORIDA OF TO-BAY. hunting in the scrub, pantaloons or leggings, and moccasins. The turban is a conspicuous and pict- uresque affair, and quite Oriental in its effects. It is sometimes nearly two feet in diameter, and four to six inches high. It is made of shawls or wraps of some kind, the outside layer being often a showy bandanna. It is a heavy affair, and seems to require a conscious effort to keep it in balance. The chiefs distinguish themselves, especially on occasions of state, with something — no matter what — showy, expensive, and oidrS / often a highly fancy hunt- ing-shirt with broad collar and fringes all over, and tawdry stripes and ribbons. The children, popularly laiown as pickaninnies, not papooses, about their homes generally wear nothing ; but when traveling they often wear loose wrappers, especially in winter, and during youth wear but scant apparel. The turban is for a toga virilis of the males, and is assumed between eighteen and twenty. Every brave has a gun, generally a rifle, the Winchester being most common. The traditional bow and arrows are now the toys of children. The children are cheerful, active, and full of play, eager to learn to shoot, to sail boats, to read, to write, and other like things of the outside world ; POPULATION. 121 but the older folks are glum, seK-satisfied, secretive, conceited, and proud of their ignorance. The wonaen wear calico skirts and jacket, or a plain frock, and beads, and thej generally go bare- foot. Their beads are absurdly piled up ; sometimes as many as iif ty strings of cheap, colored glass beads are piled up around the neck and shoulders. The old women tie up the hair in a knot on the back of the head, while the spinsters wear it loose, banged, and, on rare occasions, braided. The old squaws are hideously hard-featured, and formerly they did pretty much all the house and kitchen drudgery ; but of late years the men, boys, and girls join in the general work. The following account of a very recent visit to a Seminole camp on the Miami River in Dade County gives a fair idea of subtropical savage life in 1888 : " At length we came to a trail or path which led to the Indian camp. This camp is composed of several huts, having no siding, only floors of rough-hewn boards, black with dirt, raised about two feet above the ground. Roofs of palmetto-leaves are all the protection they have against the inclemency of the weather. They had no furniture of any kind, no table, chairs, not even stools or benches to sit on. A few pots and pans stood around, which were used 122 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY, for cooking in, but we did not see any dishes; all must eat out of one pan, using their fingers. ^' Everything was in confusion — clothing, bed- ding, beads, vegetables, and cooking-utensils. They have strings of small turtle-shells, with some kind of seeds, which they fasten around their knees when they dance, the seeds rattling like shot in a glass bottle with every movement of the wearer. Dried skins of bears, wild cats, deer, and other animals were scattered promiscuously about. Lean-looking black pigs roamed at large about the premises. An old hen sat complacently on her nest made of a new calico dress skirt which lay on the floor. Here and there were large pans filled with potatoes, vege- tables, and venison. Biscuit weighing about a pound apiece, and fish cooked whole with head and scales on, stood ready for any one whose appetite could be tempted by such dainties. " We saw none of the Indian men in camp ; they must all have been in the field at work. But squatted under one of the roofs was a pickaninny, a boy about foui' or five years old, and three pretty young squaws, daughters of Billy Harney. The younger one of the squaws was really handsome, with large, beautiful dark eyes, mild and fawn-like in expression, her dark cheeks glowing with health, POPULATION. 123 8S slie moved about in a graceful, gliding manner peculiar to the race. All wore calico skirts fanci- fully trimmed ; and small shoulder-capes, which barely reached the skirt-band, answered for waists. Several pieces of bright tin, about the size and shape of a silver dollar, were fastened at the bosom. Some eighty or a hundred strings of various col- ored beads were wound around their necks nntil they reached nearly to their chins. " One of the squaws was sewing, using a thim- ble, and the sewing would do credit to many a white woman. They talked in their own dialect among themselves, in a low, almost inaudible tone. We could not make out anything they said, although I think they understood us pretty well, as they seemed pleased if complimented." The Indians frequently visit the white settle- ments, to sell hides, venison, turkey, potatoes, etc., and to buy guns, ammunition, sugar, coffee, cloths, and whisky — always whisky. Their words are few — for the whites — in-cah, good ; ho-le-iva~gus, bad ; wy-o-mee, whisky — they need few others. Letters they call talk-paper. These Indians often live to a great age. Several are believed to be past a hundred. The Seminoles of the present generation are bet- 124: THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. ter than those of the last were, albeit the progress is passing slow. Those old fellows that toma- hawked children and cut women's throats while Jackson was Governor in 1821 are in no mood to forgive anybody to-day. It is not the Indian's revelation to have merely an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth ; but his ethics demands every- thing for anything, and his worship is carnage and his sacramental wine is blood. Those old fellows believe that no civilization has ever equaled theirs ; and they have but a contempt- uous idea of the Big Chief at Washington, albeit they have learned — ^from pedagogues like "Worth — to have a certain respect for the United States sol- diers that come near them. These sages refuse fre- quently even to confer with the United States agents sent to them of late years. Old Chipco said to the agent a few years ago that they did not want to hear any "Washington talk." Spe- cial Agent Wilson in 1887 was sent to buy lands for as many of them as would settle and remain set- tled on the lands. He had an interview with Old Alleck, as he is called, the centenarian chieftain of a cluster of shanties and may be a score of so- called braves, and in his official report gives this account of it : POPULATIOK 125 " The old fellow is bent and shriveled with age (he told me he was one hundred years old, and I incline to beheve he is older), his sight and hearing are both badly impaired, and as he sat conversing with two other old ' veterans ' not many years his junior, I then beheld what to my mind was a group of typical aborigines. "I made known my business to Old AUeck through my interpreter, who listened very courte- ously to all I had to say, and then gave vent to the most derisive and sarcastic laugh I ever heard, after which he proceeded with a long harangue, not a word of which was intelligible to me because of his hoarse guttural style of utterance, but I was told by my Indian friend that he would not accede to any of my propositions." A fairly illustrative picture of Seminole charac- ter, spirit, and civilization of the past generation, at its best, is the row raised by the sainted Osceola, when the agent at one of our stations issued an order forbidding the sale of ammunition and arms to the Indians. This order was issued after re- peated proofs that the Indians were arming them- selves for further treachery and greater butchery. Osceola, the gentle martyr and ideal Stoic of the woods, was denied the privilege of purchasing pow- 126 TEE FLORIDA OF TO-BAY. der to shoot more women and cliildren with ; and, bursting wdth rage, gave vent to his noble feelings in these words : " Am I a negro — a slave ? Mj skin is dark, but not black ! I am an Indian — a Seminole ! The white man shall not make me black ! I will make the white man red with blood, and then blacken him in the sun and rain, where the wolf shall smell of his bones and the buzzard live "upon his flesh ! " IX. EDUCATIOK Theee is little to note in regard to education in Florida, except that it lias fully kept pace with the general progress. The common-school system is popular, well supported, efficient, and eminently successful — in very few of the States, indeed, more so. Beyond this, the details of its operation will not interest the general reader. Superintendent A. J. Kussell, to whose ability this success is largely due, gives the following in his latest report : The whole number of schools reported for the scholastic year 1886-87, ending September 20, 1887, is 2,103. The total enrollment for the year 1887 is 82,453 pupils. The total average daily attendance is 51,059 pupils, which is 67 per cent of the total enrollment. The increase in daily attend- ance over preceding year is 6,246. The total num- ber of teachers employed is 2,318 — 1,739 white and 579 colored. Total funds expended for school pur- 128 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. poses, raised by State and counties, $449,299.15 — a jper capita of the total enrollment of $5.45 a year, and of the average daily attendance, $8.80 a year. In addition to the common schools there are several important institutions for higher and special education, such as — The Florida Agricultural College at Lake City, endowed by the United States, where students of the State may receive a foil collegiate course and a thorough practical course in agriculture free of all expense, except for board at a very moderate charge. Students not desiring to take the literary course may take a special course of six or twelve months at option in agriculture. The East Florida Seminary, at Gainesville, a large military and normal institution, with a fine corps of teachers. The West Florida Seminary (Seminary West of the Suwannee River), at Tallahassee, similar to the preceding; the two seminaries having a joint en- dowment fund of $92,300, affording a revenue of $5,695, which is divided equally between them. The Florida University, at Tallahassee. An Institute for the Deaf, Dumb, and Blind, recently established by the State at St. Augustine. EDUCATION. 129 Both races are admitted, the buildings for thern being separate. EolUns College, founded in 1885, at Winter Park, Orange County, with an endowment amount- ing to $114,000. De Land University, at De Land, Volusia County, chartered in 1887, had been for some years growing up from the De Land Academy. It has four departments in successful operation. A State E'ormal College for each race was or- ganized and opened during the past year. The one for whites is at De Funiak Springs, Walton County ; and the one for colored students is at Tallahassee. Both are in operation to-( 9 X. PKODUCTIONS. The productive industries of Florida are numer- ous, varied, important, and to a considerable extent peculiar. The variety of products is greater than in any other State. Prominent among these, and altogether the best advertised of all, is the growing of citrus fruits. Of these fruits there are six well-known kinds — the orange, lemon, lime, shaddock, grape-fruit, and citron. The statement has been made that there are two hundred and fifty varieties in all in the State ; and nursery-men advertise about half that number. Oranges. — The orange is by far the most im- portant of these citrus fruits, and its culture has been longest before the public. It is stated that there are $10,000,000 invested in orange-groves, with room for five times that amount. The crop just gathered, according to actual returns of the transportation companies, aggregates 1,126,799 PRODUCTIONS. 131 crates. Tlie average price net lias been about $1.62 a crate ; the net valne of the crop being, accord- ingly, $1,825,414 Upon this as a basis, it is safe to reckon the aggregate crop at 1,250,000 crates, Orange (^Citrus aurantium). and the net valne at more than $2,000,000. The coming crop is estimated by Captain A. M. Ives, of the Florida Fruit Exchange, at from 2,000,000 to 2,500,000 crates, and no better authority than he can be cited. The oldest and most widely known grove in the State, probably, is the Dummitt grove, on Indian Kiver, near Canaveral. It was started about 1850, and has now some 3,000 trees. ]N"ear by, on the 132 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. west shore, is the Spratt grove. The most produc- tive and the largest bearing grove in the State, and probably in the world, is that of J. A. Harris, on Orange Lake, in Marion County, covering 185 acres. Orange-Trees. and having 30,000 bearing trees. The last crop from this grove was 32,000 crates, which sold for $65,000. It was stated that the crop of 1885-'86 PRODUCTION'S. 133 brought $90,000. Contiguous to this grove lie several important ones, aggregating about 500 acres, all being in or near bearing. One of these, owned bj the Dunn Brothers, is valued at over $100,000. There are also the Matthews grove, the John Church and Company, and several others. This is doubtless one of the most important orange centers in the State. The younger grove of J. Hart l^orris, at Spring Garden, Yolusia County, 200 acres, in partial bearing, is also an important one. So is the Bishop grove. The Spear grove, near Sanford, Orange County, has only four and a half acres, but the trees are large — twenty-five or thirty years old — and the yield is from 10,000 to 15,000 crates a year. J^ear Sanford also is the Belair grove ; and farther down the St. John's Kiver is the Hart grove, which yields about $10,000 a year. All through these central counties, from the Atlantic to the Gulf, til ere are hundreds of valuable and rapidly advanc- ing groves, altogether too numerous even to mention by name, much less in detail. The claims, or pretensions, as the case may be, of different regions are very conflicting and confus- ing; but to one not interested in any way in the orange business it seems to be by general agreement settled — outside the Belt — that the Indian River 134 TEE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. region lias some advantages over all others, and can grow and has grown the finest oranges in Florida, and "in Florida" means in the world. The St. John's region, however, and the interior counties ly- ing west of that, are unquestionably doing a heavier business than the paradise along the ocean-coast is doing thus far. Bnt all over the Orange Belt, and north of it in IN'orthern Florida, and south of it in Subtropical Florida, the orange grows and thrives with more or less success, though its habitat is in Semi-tropical Florida — the Orange Belt proper. In I^orthern Florida, except along the water-protected Gulf coast— and occasionally there — there is con- siderable risk of losing crops by frost ; and in the subtropics, lying south of the Orange Belt, the orange is crowded out by more profitable fruits of that climate, and it is possible that the bracing of winter is needed to bring the orange to its best. As many as ten thousand oranges, it seemo, have been gathered from a single tree in one year in sev- eral instances; one near Waldo in Alachua Coun- ty, and one near Tampa in Hillsborough County. No tree, it is stated, dates back beyond the freeze of 1835. The backset given to this industry by the cold snap of 1886 operated but shghtly and only for a time to arrest the enthusiasm in the business. PRODUCTIONS. 135 The cause for depression is already gone, as the large crop jnst gathered proves ; that being the largest ever grown in the State. As to California's claim to be the great orange- growing State, a few facts will show the emptiness of such claim. Professor Budd, of the Iowa Agri- cultural College, has recently examined that Pacific region ; and he reports that in the entire State of California the area adapted to the production of oranges does not exceed 85,000 acres. Dr. Ken- worthj has recently published the statement that the one county of Hillsborough in Florida contains fully 40,000 acres of land better adapted to the cult- ure of oranges, lemons, limes, grape-fruit, shad- docks, and citrons, than the California lands above referred to ; and that in the same county are ten times as many as 35,000 acres on which oranges may be successfully grown, without having to re- sort to the expense of some $15 an acre for irri- gation. ]N"ow there are fully fifteen counties of Florida within the Orange Belt. If Hillsborough County has ten times as much orange-land as all California, and there are fourteen other counties in Florida's Orange Belt, the rivalry between Cali- fornia and Florida can not be very damaging to Florida. It is elsewhere shown that the climate 136 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. of Florida suits the orange better than does that of California. The varieties of the orange best suited to the various soils, climates, and cultures of Florida may be learned from the books on " Orange-Culture," mention of which is made elsewhere in these pages. Yery positive preferences will be found there. The mandarin varieties deserve careful attention and trial, and some have been already approved by growers. The Tcumquat, also, or Citrus Japonica^ seems to have qualities that commend it to the at- tention of the culturists of the Orange Belt. Lemons. — The lemon stands in popular thought next to the orange, although not a great deal, com- paratively, has been done in that direction in this country — this mainly, perhaps, on account of the inferiority of the earlier varieties planted. More recently the old Spanish rough-coated lemon has been giving place to better fruit. Five finer va- rieties have been tried, some with fair but none thus far with phenomenal success ; but time prom- ises the very best results. The Yilla Franca, Bel- air Premium, and Genoa are the favorites of the imported kinds ; and all are vastly superior to the old monstrosity of other days. The Sicily and the Eureka are earnestly advocated by some. But PRODUCTIONS. 137 there are doubtless a score of varieties that will be found to do well. The lemon is a shade less hardy than the or- ange, and it can not be grown as far north as can Lemon. that sister fruit. The southern half of the semi- tropics and all the region southward of it are well suited to the lemon ; and, within that safe and lim- ited area, it is a question if it be not the more profitable of the two in the future. The Yilla Eranca was but shghtlj if at all Imrt near Sanford by the cold snap of 1886 ; while north of that, in all unprotected localities, there was more or less 138 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. damage done to the lemon-trees, tliongh in gen- eral it was temporary. Limes. — The lime seems destined to take the place of the lemon in many nses, but as yet it is not half so well known. The fact that its area of production is far more limited than that of the orange, and even of the lemon, will give it some advantage when it reaches its legitimate place in the fruit-market. It is the tenderest of the citrus Lime-Tree. family, and is confined pretty closely within the sub- tropical region, although several fine and success- ful trees have been grown as far north as 28° on the PRODUCTION'S. 139 Gulf and 29° on tlie Atlantic side. The lime has not hitherto been grown for the obvious reason that its habitat has not been settled long enough jet. Anywhere north of the line just indicated, 28°-29°, the lime is very liable to damage from cold nearly every winter, the testimony of land agents to the contrary notwithstanding. The counties of Marion, Dade, and Lee embrace nearly all the territory available for safe lime-culture. The growing of this fruit has been thus far mainly experimental, very few acres having been planted anywhere and but little marketing done ; but the success of a few individuals, in the region where the lime can grow, has been phenomenal, and prices realized corre- spondingly great. On Lake Worth, in Dade County, Captain E. I^. Dimick has a lime-tree of the fruitage of which and the sales he has kept a careful and separate record and reckoning. The tree, of the variety known as the Mexican or Flor- ida lime, was planted in 1877 ; and at the age of nine years — in 1886-87 — it bore more than 12,500 limes. These were sold in Jacksonville and yielded the handsome sum of $37.72 net. The tree is, of course, an exceptionally fine and favored one ; but the results are important as indicating possibilities. The frait matures nearly every month in the year. 140 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. The trees may be planted a hundred to the acre, or even closer, as they are much smaller, even in the subtropics, than the orange or the lemon. The fruit begins to appear in the third or fourth year from the seed. The Tahiti is the most tropical of the varieties now grown in Florida; but the Im- perial and the Persian are preferred by some. Still, the common or Mexican lime, brought into the State by the Spaniards from Mexico, is for general economic purposes perhaps equal to the best. This variety grows well and is exceptionally free from the diseases so common in the citrus family. A sub-variety of this common kind, left on the east coast by the missionaries of the older days of the Spanish domination, known there to-day as the Mission lime, is the very best of the older kinds. The fruit of this is larger and of smoother peel. Profitable crops have been gathered in Dade County from trees five years old. " Other Citrus Fruits. — The other members of the citrus family are but little grown for sale ; the grape-fruit being most often seen in our American markets, where, however, it is growing in favor. The shaddock also is rarely seen. This fruit has been known to measure twelve inches in diameter. The citron is still scarcer in the cities, except in the PRODUCTIONS. ^ 141 form of preserves. It grows on a tree the most irregular and shrubby of all the citrus tribe. All these grow well, along with the orange, in the semi- tropics, all. being hardier than the lime and the lemon. Valuable information and guidance, both prac- tical and theoretical, on orange-growing especially and citrus-growing generally, are to be found in the books devoted to those subjects. All the essential points on these fruits — soils suitable for them, best varieties to cultivate, times to plant, diseases, draw- backs, fertilizers, and all that pertains to this fasci- nating and sometimes disappointing pursuit — may be found in the books : Moore's '* Orange Culture in Florida," Mannville's " Orange Culture," Davis's " Orange Culture," Spaulding's " Orange Culture Id California," Garey's '' Orange Culture in Califor- nia," Galesio " On the Orange," and Helen Har- court's " Florida Fruits and how to raise them." These, and several others that the reader will read- ily find upon inquiry, w^ill give all the help that can come from books ; and, beyond that, practical experience is all-important. Cocoanuts. — The cocoanut has been for several years now attracting attention in the subtropics. There are few chroniclers that have the hardihood 142 tllE FLORIDA OF TO-BAY. to assert that it can live and fruit well anywliere north of that favored region. The only serious at- tempts to grow cocoanuts have been in Monroe, Dade, and Lee Counties ; and in the northern part of this section — as at Jupiter Inlet, on the Atlantic COCOANUT GeoVE. coast, and south of the hue 27° — the fruiting is not very satisfactory. On the Florida Keys in Monroe, on the coast of Dade, are the extensive groves of John Lowe, 1,500 trees, of which 600 are in bear- ing ; of E. O. Locke, 25,000 trees, of which 100 are PRODUCTIONS, 143 in bearing ; of Williams & WaiTen, 25,000 trees ; and numerous others of from 1,400 up to 18,000, more or less in bearing. On tlie west coast of Mon- roe there are James A. Waddell's grove of 30,000 trees, and two or three other extensive groves. Set- tlers in the Caloosahatchee River region, in Lee County, are planting extensively ; and gratifying results are confidently expected in the near future. James Evans, at Fort Myers, in that valley, has a number of sporadic now finely bearing trees about thirty years old. In Dade County there are at Lake Worth about 25,000 trees, the oldest plant- ed in 1878, of which perhaps 2,500 are in bearing ; and, south of that, Field & Osborne have planted, within the past four years, about 330,000 nuts. Thus the aggregate number of trees in the three subtropical counties is something over half a million planted and probably living, of which may be 5,000 have reached the nut-bearing age or stage. The in- dustry is a new one. The most productive trees are reported to bear 365 nuts a year; but 100 nuts a year to the tree is considered a good average for bearing trees, although 200 to the tree, as single trees, is not infrequent One writer estimates that $1,500 a year to the acre can be realized from co- coanuts. 144: THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. There are two varieties of the cocoanut — the green and the yellow — found in Florida. They grow only near salt water and in the salt atmos- phere. Limestone soils, coral sands, and mold hammocks, are all said to be favorable for these trees. They bear nuts at from seven to ten years under favorable circumstances. The oldest trees in the State were planted at Key West in Marion County, at Miami in Dade, and at Fort Myers in Lee, in or near 1845. There are trees in Key West nearly eighty feet high. Yery little cultivation is thought to be required. A hundred trees to the acre is the usual spacing. If it is true, as is confi- dently claimed, that the cocoanut-palm (the Cocos nuG^fera of the botanists) will not endure frost, then its growing may be safely assumed as marking the frostless region ; and, that point conceded, men need not bother, wrangle, and fleer about the frost- line, so called. Pineapples. — This fruit will bear a little, but very little, more cold than the cocoanut ; but, by means of special protection, pineapples may be grown, with moderate risk, up to the middle of the semi-tropics, the quality of the fruit being poorer the farther north. They have now been cultivated many years with fair success, though on a very lim- PRODUCTIONS. 145 ited scale, in the subtropics, especially upon tlie keys in Monroe Conntj. The area is enlarging, and now embraces all Monroe, Dade, and Lee Connties. It is estimated that fully 500 acres are in cnltivation at this time. The hardier and less valnable varieties have been grown in parts of IN^orthern Florida, but, as a crop, they can not be grown there. In Semi- tropical Florida, esjDecially in the southern half of it, south of 28° or 2S° 30', they can be grown with only an occasional killing by frost ; but in the north- ern half of the Orange Belt protection of some sort is indispensable and the crop exceedingly uncertain, vaporing assertions to the contraiy notwithstanding. They are doubtless, in their legitimate area, and un- der suitable conditions, one of the most paying crops in the State. There are many varieties ; but the one most commonly grown is called the Red Sx3anish, and this with proper cultivation in the extreme south is a most excellent fruit, and weighs ordinarily from two to four pounds, frequently going higher. Reasoner Brothers, in their " Catalogue," state that the following are synonyms of Red Spanish : Straw- berry, Scarlet, Cuban, Havana, Key Largo, and Black Spanish. Pineapple-growers, however, are beginning to experiment with finer kinds, such as 10 146 TEE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. the Pernambucos, Porto Picos, Cuban Garden Pines, Egyptian Queens, and others of the larger and finer varieties. The Red Spanish may be planted from 10,000 to 12,000 plants to the acre. Growers expect to gather about seventy-five per cent of the plantings. Many gather less, and some get more. It depends largely upon the cultivation. Sandy soil suits all kinds of pines best; and finer, tenderer, and more richly flavored fruit is grown on sand or sandy loam than anywhere else. They should be planted high and dry, and watered freely duriug drought. Suckers yield fruit fre- quently in one year, but the ordinary slip needs two years to fruit after setting out. With reason- able attention and skill an acre may yield $1,000 a year net; and with the finer varieties, when these liave been successfully introduced, much larger profits may be reasonably expected. Florida can grow finer fruit and of better flavor and quahty than most if not all other competitors in the American markets, for the reason that home-grown fruits may be allowed to ripen more fully, because the time of transportation is less ; and fruit ripened thus natu- rally is vastly superior to that cut green and cured in transit or in the markets. And, further, the equa- PR0DU0TI0X8. 147 torial countries get their fruits into our markets during April, May, and June, after wliicli they be- come scarce. Florida sends her pines to market in June, July, and August ; so that, being later, they find a demand mainly after the tropical supply is exhausted. There need be no doubt that the trop- ics produce a fruit both larger and finer than the subtropics can hope to do. The Pernambuco pine, for example, whose habitat is within 10° of the equator, attains there a weight of eighteen or twen- ty pounds, according to some trustworthy authori- ties ; w^hereas it is not to be hoped that more than half that weight, under present cultivation at least, can be achieved in our country. It is not practicable to get full returns, or even trustworthy reckonings, of the latest crop of pine- apples ; but the area planted and the production are doubtless more than doubling every year. Mr. Eich- ards, of Eden, on lower Indian River, near the north- ern boundary-line of the subtropics, reports that up to the first of July last there had been shipped from that point about 1,000 barrels or barrel-crates of pineapples. Mr. Knight, of Sebastian Eiver — 27° 48' — and Mr. Horsch are engaging somewhat large- ly in the raising of this fruit. The European markets have been tried with 148 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. very limited sMpments of pines, and these mainly of the finer kinds. A prominent London firm of f rnit-dealers publishes the fact that they have sold Florida pines at twenty-five shillings sterling — that is, over six dollars — apiece ; but they do not mention the variety nor the size and weight of the fruit so sold. Another authority states that a pine weighing fifteen jpounds was sold in that city for three pounds sterling, about fifteen dollars, or a dollar a pound ! Bananas. — The banana will grow in both the semi-tropics and the subtropics ; but the surer crop and the finer fruit belong to the latter, as with all other tropical fruits. The kind most planted on the keys and on the east shore generally — and wher- ever winds are strong and frequent — is known as the dwarfbanana^ which stands from six to eight feet high. This is known to botanists as the Musa Cavendishii. The Reasoner Brothers consider this to be the same as the Chinese, called also dwarf Ja- maica or Martinique hanana. The yield of fruit is enormous, sometimes as many as two hundred or three hundred in a bunch, and the flavor excellent. Professor Whitner states that only the coarser varie- ty known as horse-hanana can be relied upon above the subtropical region. In this country the distinc- tion between banana and plantain is kept up, the PRODUCTIONS, 149 The Banana and the Pineapple. latter being the coarser and hardier kind ; but in India, pomocnlturists have abandoned the name hanana altogether, and treat all varieties of both un- der the name of jplantain. Of bananas in Florida, there are two varieties, commonly known and called 150 THE FLORIDA OF TO -LAY, yellow and red respectively, from the color of the ripened fruit. The plantain, so called, is very rare. The banana is propagated from bulbs and suck- ers ; and these fruit the second year, never the first season. Moist soils, very rich, suit the banana best, and frequent rotation — some Spanish authorities say every three years — ^is necessary ; but higher lands yield fairly well with abundant rains ; and very tine qualities, of limited size, have been grown on sandy loam, well molded and moist ; but the richest of low hammocks are the best for this fruit. Still, the ex- periments thus far, as to soils, are by no means com- plete or final. The lands suitable for the banana as a crop of profit are quite limited in area, in the proper climate, and the crop is generally felt to be a rather risky one. From a thousand to twelve hun- dred to the acre is as close as the plants should be put out. Bananas are grown extensively by Mr. Baugh, on Sebastian Biver, in Brevard County. The bananas grown in Dade County have sold, several years ago, on the ground, as high as a dollar a bunch ; but about half of that is considered a very good price. This fruit is very nutritious as food, and the poor in some tropical countries — notably the semi- PRODUCTIONS. 151 savages of Mexico — it is said, make bananas a cliief article of food. Humboldt is quoted as affirming that an area of land that would grow wheat enough to feed but one man would produce in bananas enough to feed twenty-five men. Professor Whitner, in his " Gardening in Flor- ida," gives the curious piece of information that the Spaniards at one time supposed the banana to be the original forbidden fruit mentioned in Genesis, and, from the fancied resemblance to a cross found in the marks on a transverse section, they claimed that in eating it Adam had a glimpse of the mys- tery of redemption by the cross. Pears. — The Le Conte pear grows in great luxu- riance in Northern Florida, throughout the splendid tier of counties between Jacksonville and Pensacola. Several other kinds — the Bartlett, Lawson, Japan, and some others— have been tried in the State, but none has found the conspicuous success of the Le Conte. This pear was introduced into Liberty County, Georgia, in 1856, by Major John Le Conte, who bought it, as Professor Whitner states, of some ISTorthern nursery-man for a seedling of the Chinese sand-pear. It turned out, however, to be utterly unlike the Chinese fruit, and very appropriately received the name of its introducer, Le Conte. 152 TEE FLORIDA OF TO-BAY. Further cultivation and development by Captain Yamadoe, of Thomasville, Georgia, made this pear what it is to-day, the best pear in the South. It is a hybrid, and must therefore be propagated by cuttings or slips. The tree begins to bear fruit at four or ^YQ years of age, and at ten sometimes stands twenty feet high, and bears ten to fifteen bushels of pears. The orchard-spacing should allow nearly forty feet between the trees. The pears sell at from $2 to $5 a bushel- crate. All along the line of railroad running westward from Jacksonville, and notably around Tallahassee, the visitor will be struck with the superb groves in all directions, rivaling both in picturesque beauty and prosaic profit the splendid orange groves of the semi-tropics farther south. E'orth Florida may well afford to forego the romance-invested orange-groves of the Orange Belt in view of these equally splendid Le Conte pear-groves. Grapes and Wine. — The experiment of growing first-class grapes for wine has been made in Florida, and with complete success. Mr. E. Dubois, an experienced wine-grower from France, has made a careful, full, and systematic trial of the soil and climate of ]S~orthern Florida with wine yielding grapes, and the very best results have rewarded PRODUCTIONS. 153 him. He had prospected in several other parts of the United States before deciding npon his present place. In 1883 he began vineyards with a few acres in Leon County, near Tallahassee, and to-day has thirty acres planted in vines, mostly Cynthiana, ^Norton, Elvira, and Missouri Riesling. In 1887 he had ten acres in bearing, and gathered twenty tons of grapes and made 2,500 gallons of wine — claret, hock, Santernes, and port — which to-day sells readily at from $1.25 to $2 a gallon. This year he will make at least 4,000 gallons. When the thirty acres reach the bearing stage, he can safely reckon on turning out from 8,000 to 10,000 gallons a year, and that means $12,000 or $15,000 a year. Less pronounced but still very satisfactory re- sults were reached by the late Colonel M. Martin in Gadsden County twenty years ago. In 1869 this earlier experiment was begun. The vineyards still yield large crops of grapes — Hartford Prolific, Ives, Concord, Delaware, Martha, and Cynthiana — from which first-class wines are duly manufactured. Besides the above-mentioned varieties, the Scup- pernong and that family of grapes have been grown in various parts of the State with varying results. In the southern half of the State several of the grapes mentioned have been tried with entirely 154 TEE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. satisfactory results. Just which varieties will suc- ceed in the subtropics has not been fully settled yet, bnt it seems certain that J^orthern Florida is better suited to the grape generally than the two more southern sections. Future efforts, however, may find varieties well suited to all sections. Grand Possibilities. — There are many tropical fruits yet on trial, as it were, in Subtropical Florida, of which the future is more or less undefined and undeterminable at present, but which may be de- fined as grand possibilities. Prominent among these possibilities are these : the guava, mango, mangosteen, mammee, mam- mee sapota, sapodilla, and most of the large Anona family. These fruits, all fine in their separate ways, are grown with perfect success perhaps only in the tropics, and they are well known to books and travelers. They are now on trial in Subtropical Florida, and a few of them have attained success. They are of course but little known, except by name, beyond the subtropics, on account of the impossibility of getting them to market in good condition with existing means of transportation. They are mainly saccharine-acid fruits, and need to ripen on the stem in order to develop their best qualities. Hence, there is not time after gathering PRODUGTIOI^S. 155 to reach distant markets. Even railroads could not get them to Northern markets, for the reason that the agitation of the rail movement would, as in the case of new sugar, cause the fruit to decay rapidly by deliquescence or some similar process, unless the temperature be kept too low for that destructive process. What is wanted, accordingly, is either the refrigerator-car, or water-movement by steam, with- out transshipment between the producing groves and the consuming markets. With either of these — and of these the refrigerator seems by far the better, but experiments must decide their relative merits — most, if not all, of these delicious fruits can be put, in excellent condition, into the I^orthern and pos- sibly into the British markets. The guava is widely known through its jelly, so deservedly popular; but the fruit itself is little known beyond its habitat. The common guava grows easily and abundantly, reaching fully twenty feet in height sometimes, all through the subtropic counties, and in fact will live and bear fruit in both the subtropics and the semi -tropics ; but ]Mature's rule is inflexible — the farther north it is planted the more uncertain is its growth, the smaller the tree or shrub, and the scarcer and poorer the fruit. Its success in Monroe, Dade, and Lee is not at all 156 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. problematical. Tliere it ripens some seven or eight montlis in the year, from May till January, say, but most abundantly in summer. Two varieties are quite common, and are called the sweet and the sour or acid. The former is the kind most commonly eat- en, while the latter alone will make jelly of the first quality, unassisted with culinary aids. The shape is that known as 7yhali- forme, although it is more nearly that of a lemon than of an apple. It is of this guava — the Psidium gua^ava—thsit the Eeasoner Brothers say: ''The guava has become a necessity to South Florida ; is to South Florida what the peach is to Georgia." The Cattley guava was introduced from China by an Englishman who gave it his name. This is more hardy than the common, is more a shrub, and will stand the semi-tropical climate doubtless very well, although it has not been yet very thor- oughly tested. Guava. PRODUCTIONS. 157 The mango lias been tried with a measure of success in the extreme south ; and as far north as the mouth of Tampa Bay — not far from 28° — it is reported to have done well, but even there it is risky. One tree of the apricot variety in that region, owned by Mr. Neeld, of Pinellas, at eight years old bore 8,000 mangos one year. The freeze of 1886 proves that this is rather far north for this tropical fruit. The tree usually bears fruit in five or six years from the seed. There are two kinds planted in Florida, and it is yet on the experimental list, except on the extreme south coast and the Firminger, writing of the large Maid a mango in India, its habitat, says, " To those who have never partaken of it, no words can convey an idea of this exquisitely luscious fruit " ; and another apprecia- tive writer says that the pulp of the choice varieties is of the consistency of blanc-mange, so as to be eaten with a spoon, and rivaling if not excelling any fruit in the world for deliciousness of flavor. This is what Northern consumers may hope to get should the growing and transportation prove a success in Florida; and it contrasts sharplj^ with the pitiful greenish, shriveled, turpentine-flavored little mangos sometimes, but luckily not often, found in Northern 158 THE FLORIDA OF TO-BAY. markets. The mango is often as large as a goose- egg. The Eeasoner Brothers say : " We can not speak too highly of this delectable fruit, destined, we hope, to become as plentiful in South Florida as the orange. In productiveness and rapidity of growth it surpasses any fruit-tree we have ever seen, Mango, either temperate or tropical. Some trees in Central America — latitude about 16° — are described as hav- ing trunks four feet in diameter, the trees standing sixty feet apart, and yet the branches touch." In the subtropics, of course, these tropical trees fall corre- spondingly short of such proportions; but Florida PRODUCTIONS, 169 can already boast several well-grown trees. The Guatemala mango in Florida ripens as early as March, but the regular season is later than that. Of the Cuban varieties an excellent authority considers the lobed apple the best. The subtropical nursery- men offer twelve varieties, and all of these will in due time be fully tested. Lots of Florida-grown mangos have sold at forty cents a dozen. Trees should have about thirty feet space ordinarily. They do best in high, well-drained land. The mangosteen^ it is claimed, has been tried with success in the extreme south, but there is doubt as to the genuineness of the variety. The true mangosteen — the Garcinia mangostana — is being planted in Monroe and Dade Counties, and a few years more will decide ; and many persons have large faith in the success. The fruit is probably superior to the mango, which is praised so enthu- siastically by tropical writers, and is about the size of an orange. The mammee is a handsome tree, somewhat like the Magnolia grandiflora. Its success in Sub- tropical Florida is well assured, having been grown some years on the keys. How far up it can grow remains to be proved, but the probabilities are against it above the subtropics. The fruit — some- 160 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. times called the mammee-apple, and among the Span- iards known as the mamey — is round and brown, three to six inches in diameter, containing one to fonr seeds, as large as walnuts, surrounded bv a yellow, juicy pulp, most delicious, and needing no acquired taste to be enjoyed. The taste is not un- like the apricot or summer peach. The tree is a native of the Caribbee Islands, and in Jamaica is said to be one of the largest and most valuable tim- ber-trees. The mammee sapota is remotely like the mam- mee, but is different in most respects. The fruit of this is oval, its longest diameter from three to six inches. It has one large, long seed in the center. The pulp is of a rich saffron-color and is described in terms of extravagant praise ; it is called natural marmalade, from its resemblance to marmalade of quinces. The tree is known in some localities as the marmalade- tree. It is the Achras mammosa, and is native in Central America. It is reported to have fruited successfully on the southern keys; but more time is needed to confirm the probability that it will succeed in Florida. The avocado pear — corrupted into alligator pear, and by the Spaniards popularly called the agiiacate — is a native of the West Indies, and has PRODUCTIONS. 161 been successfully grown a number of years in Sub- tropical Florida. It is pear-shaped, and from that alone appears to have received its misnomer of pear. Tropical-sea sailors call it midshipman's butter. The tree is known to botanists as the Pei'sea gra- tissima. The taste for the fruit is generally an acquired one ; but, as in the case of most such fruits, the partiality for it is intense. It is a stone- fruit, large, greenish-brown in color, with pulp of a bright yellow color, and taste unique and of decided character. The tree is propagated from the seed, and will usually fruit in about five years from the planting. The freeze of 18S6 interfered with the trees down to the boundary-line of the subtropics proper. It may be planted with safety anywhere within that subdivision. The sapodillcc is a native of Jamaica, and grows well on the Florida Keys and on the adjacent main- land ; that is, in the subtropics. It is the AcJiras sapota, and is called by the Spaniards sapote. It is a handsome tree, and is propagated from the seed, fruiting in six or seven years from the planting. The fruit is round, rusty brown, two or three inches in diameter, the taste being that of a rich, sweet, juicy pear, with granulated pulp and almond- shaped seed. The quality of the fruit is very high, equal 11 162 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. perhaps to tliat of the mango ; and it is preferred by many to that fruito It is very hard to transport, from the fact that it needs to ripen on the stem in order to be at its best. The 1886 freeze proved that the sapodilla can not be safely grown anywliere north of the subtropical strip. It thrives at Lake Worth in Dade — latitude 26° 40^ — and was not hurt by the cold of 1886. Of the numerous family of the Anonas four appear to have proved eminently successful in Sub- tropical Florida, and some of them well up into the semi-tropical region. The four are the guanabena, cherimoya, sugar-apple, and custard-apple. The guoMobeiia, popularly called sour-sop, is the Anona Tmbvicata.^ a native of the West Indies. The fruit is described by the Keasoner Brothers as " a large, green, prickly fruit, six or eight inches long, containing a soft, white, juicy pulp, which in fresh, well-ripened specimens is delicious." Mr. Gosse says it is "lusciously sweet and of a delightful acidity; often larger than a child's head; covered with prickles." It is the tenderest of the Anonas.^ and can live only in the extreme southern rim of Florida and on the keys. The frait sometimes weighs fonr pounds, and retails in the Key West fiuit-stores at sixty cents each. PRODUCTIONS. 163 The cherimoya is the Anoyia cherimolia^ and in Key West is frequently called the Jamaica ap- ple, and sometimes dieriinoyer. The frnit varies in size from that of an orange to six inches in di- ameter. It is a native of Peru. It will thrive only in the subtropics, Dr, Seemann, as quoted by Pro- fessor Whitner, says: "The pineapple, the man- gosteen, and the cherimoya are considered the finest fruits in the world. I have tasted them in those locahties in which they are supposed to attain their highest perfection — the pineapple in Guayaquil, the mangosteen in the Indian Archipelago, and the cherimoya on the slopes of the Andes — and if T were called npon to act the part of Paris, I would without hesitation assign the apple to the cherimoya. Its taste, indeed, surpasses that of every other fruit, and Haenke was right when he called it the master- piece of l^ature." The sugar-apple is known to some as the sweet- sop^ and to others as the hulloclc^s heart. Professor Whitner calls it the Anona reticulata, while the Reasoner Brothers catalogue it as the Anona squa- mosa. It is mnch grown in Key West, and has found its way into subtropical regions generally. The tree is a shrub frequently, of very large size generally in the extreme sonth, but smaller farther 104 TEE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. north. Professor Whitner sajs the fruit looks much as a raspberry would of the same size, with its de- pressions as if quilted. It sometimes grows to be as large as a man's two fists, and is of a dark-brown color. The pulp is of a reddish-yellow color, about the consistence of custard, and exceedingly sweet ; some think it too sweet. It is the most difficult of all these fruits to transport ; and refrigeration is psrhaps the only way in which they can ever be got to the markets of the outside world. The custojrd-ajpple — the Anona reticulata — is not to be confounded with the A. glabra^ or the wild ;po7id-apple of South Florida. The former is a fine fruit, while the latter is utterly worthless. The true custard- apple is larger than an apple, or nearly as large as an orange. In India it is prized very highly and cultivated with care ; and for experiment care should be taken to get the true fruit. Yet other Fruits. — Besides the above-mentioned, there are a good many others that are on trial in Florida, many of them with reasonable chances of success. Of these, some have a much larger area than this State ; some are too tropical to stand its climate; and some are of questionable utility. The date-jpahn is a stately tree, handsome. Ori- ental, and reaches, under the most favorable circum- PROLTJGTIONS. 105 stances, about eighty feet. It is equal in landscape effects to the cocoaniit. It is the Phoenix dacty- The Date-Palm. lifera of the botanists, and bears fruit in about eight years. The matured tree is said to yield from three hundred to five hundred pounds of fruit 166 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. a year. There are date-palms in the monastic gar- den of Bordigliera, Italy, said to be over a thousand years old. Yon Mtiller states that trees from one hundred to two hundred years old continue to pro- duce their annual crops of fruit. The Reasoner Brothers write that this common date-palm has pro- duced fruit on Cumberland Island, Georgia, and in St. Augustine for many years, and is well adapted to the soil of Florida. It ordinarily reaches the age of ten to twenty years before producing fruit, but rare instances are know^n of trees producing fruit at three to four years. Some trees on Lake Worth, in Dade County, bore fruit at seven years. The mar- ket value of the date in Florida is yet to be deter- mined. The family of pahns is a numerous one. The tamarind is from both India and Africa, and is raised easily from seed. The Reasoner Broth- ers consider it more hardy than the guava ; and in Key West it is a common street tree. It has foliage like the acacia, the fruit being a legume or pod in- closing a pleasant acid pulp and the seeds. The pulp is excellent for preserves, cooling drinks, and medicine, being rich in formic and butyric acid, and is pleasant to eat as fruit. The tree sometimes at- tains the height of eighty feet ; and one tree over a foot in diameter near Manatee, in Manatee County PRODUCTIONS. 167 —about 27° 30', Gnlf side— was killed by the freeze of 1886. The fomegrmiate — the Punica granatum doubt- less — is about the size of a peach-tree. The fruit of the sweet variety is pleasant to eat, while the sour is more commonly used in making cooling acid drinks. The newly imported variety known as the Spanish Euby is said to be the finest of all the Punicas. One writer says, " Of all the fruits we have ever tasted in our temperate climate, the Spanish Ruby pomegranate and the Adriatic fig are the two finest." This is a good grower and bountiful bearer; and the fruit ships well, ripening in December. It will doubtless do well all over Florida. The Spanish lime is not of the citrus family at all, but is the Melicocca hijuga ; and the Spaniards call it momonGillo. The tree grows to the height of about tliirty feet in the West Indies, and would do well, no doubt, in Subtropical Florida, but not north of that region. The fruit is like a plum, yelr low, with pleasant pulp and central seed ; and the seed is edible, somewhat like a chestnut. The tree is hard to make live, and at first grows very slowly. The loquat — the Eriobotrya japonica, said by some to be the same as the Mesjoihcs japonica — 168 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. grows to be about fifteen feet higli. It will grow in ail parts of Florida, tliongli in some places it does but moderately well as a fruit-bearer. It grows readily from tlie seed. The fruit is in clusters, and is about the size of a plum, w^ith a thick skin of a dull reddish color. The leaf is tough, lanceolate, having a bright-green top and a brownish velvety under side. It is sometimes called the Ja'pan med- lar. The Japan pershmnon^ or date-plum, is the Biospyros Icahi, and is grown in all parts of Florida. The tree bears fruit frequently at one year of age. The fruit is about two inches in di- ameter, and has the general appearance of a smooth tomato, being of a bright-red color, delicious taste, and ripens in the autumn. The stone in the center is somewhat like an almond. The tree is best prop- agated by budding or grafting. The tree has been successfully growm now so many years that its stand is well assured. The alcee is a native of Africa. Botanists know it as the Blighia sapida. In Africa and India it seems to be a large tree, but in Florida rarely gets above ten feet in height. One writer describes the fruit as of the size and form of a small lemon, some- what ribbed, and, when ripe, of a beautiful ver- PRODUCTIOXS. 1G9 milion color. In the West Indies, where it grows well, it ranks with the nectarine in quality of fruit. In Jamaica it is used as a vegetable, and cooked by parboiHng and frying ; and, thus prepared, is popu- larly known as vegetable marrow. Bread-fruit is a blundering name applied by the ignorant to perhaps half a dozen different and dis- tinct fruits. Professor Whitner thinks the Arto- carj)us incisus of the Pacific islands entitled to the name. Kingsley describes the tree in these words : "That awkward-boughed tree, with huge green fruit and deeply cut leaves, oue foot or more across, is a bread-fruit tree." The fruit is oval, sometimes eight inches in diameter. There are no seeds, and the farinaceous pulp may be eaten fresh, when it "resembles bread made with eggs." When fully ripe it becomes sweet and resembles clammy cake. An Englishman writing from India says that sliced and fried it seemed to him hardly distinguishable from excellent batter-pudding. Hartwig informs his readers that there are whole islands in Polynesia that de23end for food upon this bountiful bearer of fruit-vegetables for several months in the year. In Honduras the leaves are said to be by actual meas- urement two feet wide by three in length. In Florida this wonderful tree, with its more wonder- 170 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. fill frait, has not jet been grown with full success ; but nursery-men are ofiering it for sale, and experi- ments now in progress will assuredly settle the ques- tion within the next few years. It is, however, useless to spend time with experimenting above the southern subtropics. Cacao was so highly esteemed by Linngeus that he gave it the striking name of Theobroma — food for a god. The Mexicans call it chocolate whence the English word chocolate. It is found in most tropical countries ; and Professor Whitner holds that it is highly probable that it will succeed in the sub- tropics of Florida. The "American Cyclopsedia" describes the cacao as an evergreen, producing fruit and flowers throughout the year. If unchecked it attains a height of about thirty feet, and resembles in size and shajDC a black-heart cherry-tree. The leaves are smooth and oblong, terminating in a sharp point. The fruit resembles a short, thick cucumber, Ave or six inches long, and three and a half inches in diameter. It contains from twenty to forty beans. These are arranged in a pulp of a pinkish- white color, in five rows. Their size is about that of a sweet almond, but thicker. In Central America the fruit is much larger, being from seven to nine inches in length and three to four inches in diame- PRODUCTIONS. 171 ter, and contains from forty to fifty seeds. In the West India Islands and in Demerara it is so small as to contain only from six to fifteen seeds. The rind of the fruit is smooth, thick, tough, and taste- less. The pulp which incloses the bean is a sweet, sKghtly acid substance, something like that of the water-melon, and is used for food. The fruit ma- tures in June and December. The beans when separated from the pulp and dried in the sun are ready for market. The shell is of a dark- brown color, and furnishes the cocoa-shells of com- merce. The seeds yield by expression an oil that is very nutritious, and acts as an anodyne. All the cacao-land in Florida lies, doubtless, in Mon- roe County. The durian is a native of the Malay peninsula, and in its habitat grows to be eighty feet high ; and it is very doubtful if it can be successfully grown anywhere in Florida, although some have faith in the experiments now making with it. The fruit is oval in shape, and ten inches in its longest diameter. It has a thick rind, covered with strong and hard prickles. It is divided into five cells, each contain- ing from one to four seeds, as large as a pigeon's ^gg ; and surrounding these is the edible pulp, which is delicious, and of a cream-color» A full- 172 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. bearing tree will produce two hundred durians a year. It is propagated from seed. The jack-fruity or yachfruit^ known to botanists as the Artocarpus integrifoliits, is from India ; and its success even in extreme South Florida is by no means yet assured. Firminger, speaking of this fruit, calls it " one of the largest in existence, and an ill- shapen, somewhat oval-formed, unattractive-looking fruit. The interior is of a soft, fibrous consistency, with the edible portions scattered here and there. By those who can manage to eat it, it is considered most delicious, possessing the rich, spicy scent and flavor of the melon, but to such a powerful degree as to be quite unbearable to those unaccustomed, to it." The situation of the fruit is said to vary with the age of the tree, being first borne on the branches, then on the trunk, and in old trees on the roots. Those borne on the roots, which discover themselves by the cracking of the earth above them, are held in highest estimation. The liuronda^ w^hich is the Carissa carandas, is somewhat like the damson-plum. The tree is small, and the fruit contains a number of small seeds. The fruit in India, the habitat of the tree, matures in August and September. It has not been tried in Florida, and some hope for its success there. PRODUCTIONS. 173 The lichee — NejpTieliitm lichi — is an East India tree, and fruit-growers in South Subtropical Florida mean to give it a trial there. The fruit is of the size of a large plum, and grows on a shrub. It is a spring frait, ripening in May. One admiring writer says of the pulp of the lichee that it is '^ as delicious, perhaps, as that of any fruit in existence," and re- sembles the white of a plover's Qg^^ containing a stone in the center. The tree is propagated from the seed. The jpapaw, botanically called Carica 2)ct2Mya, grows well generally throughout Subtropical Flor- ida, but does not rank as a first-class fruit. The wild variety, indigenous in the State, is not to be confounded with the finer variety grown for its fruit. The stalk — it is not a tree — attains the height of twenty -five feet at its best and in the extreme south, but it often bears good fruit when less than ten feet high. It has no branches, but a crown of leaves, among which the papaws grow. The fruit is a good deal like a musk-melon, with a diameter of from three to six inches, ribbed on the outside, of a dull orange color, having a rind thick and fleshy, with a mass of black seeds inside. It is eaten raw, and tastes remotely like a musk-melon. The stalk, Professor Whitner states, "abounds with a milky, 1Y4 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. bitter juice, which contains j^Jrm, a principle which, with this sole known exception, belongs to the animal kingdom. A few drops of this jnice mixed with water will in a few minutes, it is said, render tough meat very tender. The same effect is produced bj wrapping the meat up in a leaf and keeping it so overnight." The nutmeg has not been fully tried in Florida, but many believe that it will do well there. It is the Myristlca fragrans ; and the tree grows to the height of twenty or thirty feet, and looks something like a pear-tree. The leaves are five or six inches long and pointed, in color of a deep, dark green. The fruit is described as pear- shaped, about the size of a peach, consisting of a fleshy pericarp, which, on ripening breaks open into two nearly equal valves, exposing the seed and its appendages. This exterior part of the fruit is about an inch thick, yellowish brown, with an as- tringent juice. In collecting the crop this is thrown away. The tree bears in eight years from the seed, reaches its full bearing in fifteen years, and will continue bearing about eighty. The average yield of a tree is five pounds of nutmegs and one pound and a half of mace — the substance envelop- ing the seed. PRODUCTION'S. 175 Coffee — the Coffea Arahica — is recommended by Professor Wliitner for trial in Southern Florida. It was planted several years ago on the Manatee Kiver by Mrs. Atzeroth, and on Lake Worth by Mr. Spen- cer. The former shrubs were killed to the ground, by the freeze of 1886, but have sprouted up again. The latter were not hurt by the same freeze. Both plantings have yielded fruit — or berries — but they have not taken coffee from the list of not-demon- strated productive crops for Florida. It is propa- gated from the seed. The fruit when ripe is red and resembles a cherry, and the flesh surrounding the two seeds is sweetish and rather palatable. Tea has been grown in J^Torth Florida for a good many years. It will grow in several of the Southern States. There remain to be mentioned yet others : The olive, which is on trial and is expected to succeed. The fig, which grows and fruits in great lux- uriance in all parts of the State, but notably in the northern tier of counties. The peach, which does well in Northern Flor- ida, especially the Peen-To and Honey, which will probably do well all over the State — 2,000 crates shipped from Waldo this year. 176 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. The quince, some varieties of which, especially the Chinese and the orange, do well. The ajpple, a few varieties of which have proved measurably successful in ]N"orthern Florida ; and, The jujiibe — the Zizyjphus jiijuba — a whole- some fruit from India, which ought to be tried more thoroughly than has yet been done. In addition to all these there are the nuts, many of which have a degree of commercial importance. Among these are the pecan, the almond, and the pistachio-nut. The pecan has been grown successfully now S3veral years in l^orthern Florida, and is on trial in both the other sections ; and in a few years doubtless it will appear that it will thrive in all parts of the State. It is the Carya olivcBformis, the best and most prolific variety of which, for Florida cultivation, seems to be the large Texas; but the paper-sliell meets the wishes of many. The tree is a large, handsome one, and wants a rich, w^ell-drained soil. The almond— gwQn by the Reasoner Brothers as the Terminalia catappa — is common in Key West and on some of the other keys adjacent. A few good specimens have been grown as far north as Manatee and Lake Worth, and they promise well. PRODUCTIONS. 177 The pistachio-nut is the Pistachia t'era, which grows in England in sheltered places and in favor- able portions of France ; which ought to do well in the Southern States generally and especially in J^orthern Florida. The tree is twenty to thirty feet high when well grown, the fruit being a stone-fruit or drupe about the size of an olive. The seed or nut is about an inch long, of a greenish color when fresh. The strawberry may not be more prolific and fine in Florida than in some other States, but the fact that it matures there earlier than anywhere farther north makes it an important article among the fruit productions of that State. The most profit- able results can be got by strawberry-culture in the subtropics, for the reason that the berries can be ripened there before those from higher latitudes can reach the markets. The subtropical fruit can be put into the E'ew York market fully a month earlier than can that from the northern parts of the State ; but, at the same time, fewer varieties will thrive in the extreme south. Subsoil irrigation is destined to work important changes in this crop. At Daytona, in Yolusia County, on the Atlantic coast — latitude 29° 10^ — this irrigation has been tried with phenomenal success ; and the indications 12 178 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. are tliat in this way all tlie drawbacks in the south can be overcome, and the berries grown and ma- tured at the will of the grower — ^in December as well as in February. With present appliances, strawberries can be gathered in January, anywhere in the subtropics, and a fortnight to a month later in the higher regions. Subsoil irrigation can m.ake both appreciably earlier, maturing the very earliest for market in December if desired. All kinds of the berry, it seems, do well in the northern tier of counties. For the extreme south horticulturists recommend the JSTunan or CharleFton Seedling, and perhaps the Bidwell, as least likely to bnrn. On the St. John's Kisser a common return is about 2,000 quarts to the acre, while in Clay and Gads- den yields of from 6,000 to 8,000 quarts to the acre have been reported. Strawberries have frequently sold for $2.50 a quart in l^ew York in winter, and in early spring for $1 a quart. From Mandarin on the St. John's last year there were shipped North 50,000 quarts, and these sold at from $2 to 20 cents a quart, the net average of the whole being 25 cents a quart. Tobacco. — This crop has for many years — in fact, ever since its beginning in 1829 — claimed a fair measure of public attention; but in the last PRODUCTIONS. 179 few years a great deal has been done in this di- rection. In 1850 the tobacco crop was 998,614 pounds, the greater part of which was grown in Gadsden County. The crop increased gradually until the war, and then fell off rapidly, and re- mained very small until the incubus of reconstruc- tion was lifted from the State in 1876, since which time a quickening of this industry with most oth- ers has set in. The '' Florida Tobacco Plant " pre- dicts that the present year's planting will be 4,000 acres, and that the crop will he probably between 1,000,000 and 1,500,000 pounds of the hnest tobac- co — this mostly in Gadsden, Columbia, Leon, and Suwannee Counties, Gadsden still ahead of all oth- ers. A prominent business man now engaged in tobacco culture predicts that there will be in a few years 100,000 acres planted. A company has been formed recently — the Flor- ida Tobacco Producing and Trading Company — and its agents have bought lands in Gadsden Coun- ty. They planted last spring a thousand acres, put- ting out about six million tobacco-plants. Some of the varieties planted yield 600 pounds of fine to- bacco to the acre, and others will yield from 1,000 to 1,500 pounds. Another enterprise is starting in Columbia 180 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. County. A Mr. F. A. Gonzalez has been three or four years engaged in growing fine tobaccos there, and decides that Florida is better than Cuba for the business. The experts with their families are ex- pected soon to occupy the place. Beyond doubt there are fortunes in this business, especially thus conducted by experts in all its branches. These men have all the advantages of generations of skilled business men — men equal to those cultivat- ing the famous Yuelto Aba jo district in Cuba, who bid fair to transfer the fame of that favored region to E'orthern Florida. Cuba has proved herself, as a tobacco-producing land, equal to Sumatra ; and now Florida bids fair to snatch the crown from both. Mr. Gonzalez has been offered sixty cents a pound for the tobacco just grown, but declines to sell, and proposes to manufacture it. The soils in Florida especially suited to tobacco are comparatively limited in area, however ; and this fact must be kept in mind. The phenomenally large yield of fine tobacco in Florida is the best assurance that that is a vitally im- portant field for revenue. The average yield is over 500 pounds to the acre, and 1,500 pounds to the acre is counted as possible. More than this figure has been grown in Florida. Now, when 600 pounds PRODUCTIONS. 181 of tobacco, worth from forty to sixty cents a pound, can 1)6 grown as an average crop, surely a grand future is before the tobacco-culturist. The manufacture of tobacco in Florida is an in- dustry well established and developing w^ith re- markable speed. The climate is exceptionally well adapted to cigar-itiaking. There are now between 200 and 300 cigar-factories in Florida, nearly all using Cuban leaf ; but when Florida can grow the leaf as well as manufacture it, the profits will be vastly increased. The number of cigars now manu- factured in the State is just 87,20-1,335. Eecent experiments in Dade and Lee Counties prove beyond question that the extreme south is very well adapted to this industry. One writer claims that in these counties 1,200 pounds to the acre can be produced. It is obvious, accordingly, that the above facts and considerations show that both Northern Florida and the extreme south are well, and equally w^ell, suited to the growing of first-quality tobacco ; prove beyond all reasonable doubt that the whole State is admirably adapted to the cultivation of the weed. There are claimed to be nearly 200 factories in Key West, employing 3,000 operatives, and doing a business of $5,000,000 a year. Some experts are 182 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. said to make $200 a month. The amount disbursed by the factories alone is given as $2,5005000 a year. Cotton. — Among the productions of the State, cotton ranks second, kimber being first in value. The cotton is both long-staple or sea-island, and short-sfaple or upland. The former is by far the more important. Of this long-staple, the Florida crop of 1887 was 30,991 bags, while that of Georgia was 6,411, and that of South Carolina was 7,735 ; an aggregate American crop of 45,137 bags. These are the esti- mates of Alexander & Co., and show that Florida produces more than two thirds of the American crop. The bag weighs about 350 pounds. Texas at one time tried the crop, but gave it up, leaving now but tlie three States named producing this cot- ton. The main markets for the long-staple are Sa- vannah and Cliarleston. At the close of the war Great Britain manufactured practically all the crop ; but to-day the American mills spin nearly a half of it; that is, 20,515 bags against 25,216. Florida could easily double its present crop if the means and resources were properly directed. A large manufactory established at home — and such a one is under consideration by practical busmess men — would speedily develop this maximum capacity, and PRODUCTION'S. 183 at the same time enhance the prices of the ma- terial. The short-staple or upland cotton of Florida amomits to about 30,000 bales of 500 poimds. This will be the rival of tobacco, as the region growing the latter is the same as that of the former, to a great extent at least — the ]N"orth Florida country. One advantage that Florida has over the other short-staple producers is that of having earlier sea- sons, and consequently earlier crops, which come into market while prices are better. Another ad- vantage is the superior quality of the more southern fiber. The aggregate value of the cotton crop has been estimated at nearly $4,000,000. Silk. — In the list of the textile fabrics of Florida silk follows cotton, not so much for what has been actually accGmplished as for the well-assured future that seems before it. As in the case of grapes for wine, the experiment in silk has been carefully, intelligently, and successfully made by a competent expert from abroad. Mr. C. G. Contini, an. Italian silk-grower of ability and experience from Lom- bardy, known to silk-business men as the best center for silk in the world, came four years ago with his own variety of worm-eggs, settled in Florida, and 184 THE FLO BID A OF TO-DAY. has grown silk of the first quality and in such quan- tity as to indicate quite clearly that Florida is one of the best places in the world for silk-culture ; this on account of both soil and climate. He finds already in Florida, and easily propagated to any de- sired extent, the best mulberries for this purpose — the white mulberry or Morus alba, and the Morus multicaidis, which has a history in America. Mr. Contini holds that the alba is far better than the others, especially for the southern counties, because the summer leaves are tenderer. These trees are the ones used in Lombardy. They should be planted not closer than two hundred to the acre. Other mulberries are used to feed silk-worms, such as the Russian with small leaves, the Morus jajpon- ica, and the black or wild mulberry ; but the silk yielded is stringy and colorless. In Ohio osage- orange leaves, and even white salad and lettuce, are sometimes fed to hungry worms ; but the cocoons thus fed are of no value. The climate of Florida is equal to that of Italy, and better than that of France, in being more equa- ble and temperate ; the south of the State being better than the north of it for the same reasons. The number of crops a year increases with the better climate. Perhaps two crops a year north of PRODUCTION'S. 185 Sanford and three south of that line may be grown ; but experiment has not gone far enough to establish any very definite rule upon that point. It takes intelligent and persevering efforts to command success in this as in all other undertakings ; but with these Mr. Contini holds that sericulture may be made the most profitable industry in the State — better than orange-growing, in yielding more profit with less watching, risk, and expense the year ronnd. It takes two to four years to get well started, however. Feebler hands can do most of the work, too ; and a man with a growing family can make from $1,000 to $1,300 a crop, six weeks to a crop, and make two or three crops a year, according to locality and latitude, and the current expense need not be above a third of that income. A company has been organized in Jacksonville to push forward this attractive industry. They pro- pose to grow silk, and to buy in all that produced throughout the State ; and, as soon as the industry is on its legs, establishments for the manufacture — reeling, spinning, and weaving — of silk fabrics will be started. They are planting out some 300 acres in Morus multiGaulis, that being accepted as the best — the most largely silk-producing — for that latitude and climate. In the manufacturing depart- 186 TEE FLORIDA OF TO-BAY. ments there will be improved macliinery, beginning with the reeling and ending with the completed fabric. The single thread of an ordinarily good cocoon is about a mile in length. It takes about five pounds of cocoons to produce one pound of reeled raw silk. The thread of good silk is very strong, and the color a deep straw shade. Following silk, with a long interval, however, are — • Ramie ^ which as raw fiber is worth in Florida $80 a ton. Sisal heinj)^ one of the agaves, toward the culti- vation of which only spasmodic efforts have been made, and next to nothing has resulted. Jiite^ merely among the possibilities of the future ; and Yucca, a native ornamental feature which may have an economic use when scores of other veins have been exhausted. Lumber.— By all odds the most important pro- duction of- Florida industries, reckoned in dollars and cents, is lumber. It has been reckoned at five times the value of the cotton-crop, or nearly twenty million dollars, but that is manifestly ex- cessive. PRODUCTIONS. 187 The cb-ief item is the yellow pine, next cjprecs, and then cedar, oak, walnut, cherry, jnniper, mag- nulia, hickory, beech, willow, bay, and so on to the end of the chapter. Of yellow pine there is an area of some 20,000 square miles. The superiority of this over all other pines as lumber is well known to builders ; and houses covered with winter-cut shingles of cypress will last forty years, and for many other building purposes this wood has won- derfully staying properties. The cedar-factories at Cedar Keys yield immense supplies in the way of pencil-wood. Professor A. H. Curtiss, as botanist under the General Government, explored the State and made some very valuable and interesting reports embody- ing bis best results. He classes as trees all plants having solid, woody stems as much as four inches in diameter, growing erect or nearly so, and without support. The number stated he finds to be forty- seven per cent of all the trees of the United States, and a half more than found in any other State. He gives a list of uses, with the trees adapted to each respectively. This list embraces about one half of the Florida trees given in his general catalogue. Professor Curtiss's list here follows, consisting of thirty-five uses and about one hundred trees : 188 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. PRODUCTIONS. 1S9 AgriGultiiral Imjylements. — Ked and pig-nut hickory, wliite and green ash, white, overcup, and chestnut oak. Baskets. — Eed hickory, pig-nut hickory, tough white oak, swamp chestnut-oak. Broom-Handles. — White bay, tupelo. Building.— For general construction a large variety of woods may be used, but pine is found most convenient, economical, and generally satisfac- tory. For all work that is exposed to the weather, either long-leaved yellow or pitch pine should be used. The latter serves almost as well for framing timbers, but for sills is not so durable. For sheath- ing and inside work generally short-leaved yellow and loblolly pine may be used. Cabinet-work and Furniture. — Poplar, mag nolia, white cypress, curly pine, birch, beech, chest- nut, white oak, black walnut, red bay, white and green ash, sweet-gum, cherry, red and sugar maple, holly, loblolly bay, china-berry, and many of the subtropical woods. For cheap furniture, silver ma- ple, hackberry, sycamore, linn, and pine are used. Canes. — Orange, crabwood, princewood, torch- wood, palmetto, royal palm. Cooj^erage. — Bitter-nut hickory, white elm, mul- berry, dogwood, sassafras, box- elder, cypress, juni- 190 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. per, and various oaks, namely, the white, post, chestnut, scarlet, black, and red. Engravers^ Blocks. — Dogwood. Fencing. — For posts or rails the following trees are preferred : Black cypress, red cedar, juniper, yellow pine, post-oak, chestnut- oak, white oak, overcup oak, willow, hornbeam, cbestnut, catalpa, mulberry, honey-locust, sassafras, slippery elm, hackberry. Floats. — Tupelo. Flooring. — Probably no wood is equal for this purpose to the long-leaved yellow pine. Where this is not obtainable, white elm, sugar-maple, etc., may be used. Fuel. — Most of the pines, oaks, and hickories afford excellent fuel ; also beech, sugar- maple, mag- nolia, black titi, etc. In Southern Florida the woods most used for fuel are the butt on- wood, Jamaica dogwood, crab wood, and torch wood. Gun-Stocks. — Red maple, black walnut. Interior Finish. — The kinds of wood best adapted to inside ornamentation are curly pine, red bay, white and green ash, sugar-maple, cherry, box- elder, black walnut, white oak, juniper, magnolia, and poplar. Levers. — Hornbeam, iron wood. PRODUCTIONS. 191 Medicinal Barhs. — These are afforded by the cherry, dogwood, white bay, willow, sassafras, Geor- gia bark, prickly ash, poplar, slippery elm, white oak, and by a number of the subtropical trees. Oars. — White and green ash. Ox-Yokes. — ^^Black-gum, sassafras, black birch, sycamore, bitter-nut hickory. Paijer-Fulp. — Cotton^vood, linn, box-elder. Pencils. — Red cedar. Piles. — Palmetto, yellow and pitch pine, black- gnm, mangrove. RailvKtij Ties. — Black cypress, juniper, yellow pine, chestnut, post-oak, white oak, slippery elm, mulberry, catalpa. Boilers and Bearings of Machinery. — Black- gum, dogwood, sourwood. Saddle-Trees . — White elm, sugar-maple. Shingles. — Cypress ranks the best, jumper sec- ond, and yellow pine is largely used. Ship and Boat Building. — White, overcup, and live oak, yellow pine, cypress, juniper, poplar, mul- berry, white elm, sugar-maple. Of South Florida woods: Jamaica dogwood, mahogany, mastic, wild tamarind, and inkwood, are favorite kinds. Shoe-Lasts. — Sugar-maple, persimmon, beech. Shuttles. — Persimmon. 192 TEE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY, Tanning Barh. — The mangrove affords most tamiin, but the kinds most used are the black and red oaks, and the tan or loblolly bay. Tobacco-Boxes. — Sycamore. Tool-Handles and Plane-Stocks. — Hornbeam and ironwood, red and pig-nut hickory, beech, per- simmon, sour wood, sloe, sparkleberry. Wagons and Carriages. — White and green ash, red and pig-nut hickory, poplar, and linn ; white, post, and overcup oak. Wheel-Stock. — White elm, slippery elm, and oaks of various kinds ; hubs being made of red elm, black-gum, dogwood, and honey-locust. Wooden Shoes. — Tupelo, black birch. Woodenware. — Linn, poplar, white bay, juniper, black birch, tupelo, tupelo-gum, box-elder, red maple. Rice. — Both varieties — ^lowland and upland — are grown in various parts of the State, but mainly for home use. Seventy bushels to the acre is a good crop, but a hundred bushels has been reported ; while twenty-five content some of the thinner-soil cultivators. The Okeechobee country yields very fine crops when conditions are favorable. Some account of the crops in the newly drained region will be found in the pages on Drainage. The PRODUCTIONS. 193 U. S. Census of 1880 gives Florida credit for rais- ing 1,291,677 pounds of rice. Professor Curtiss, one of the best informed men in the State, writes : " We take it that rice production in Florida may be regarded as a promising but undeveloped industry, and therefore a latent source of wealth. So far as we know, there is nothing needful to bring it into favor and render it a staple crop in every county, except facilities for ^milling' it, so that it may, without too much expense, be placed on the market in prime condition." To this he adds : " The fact that Florida has no rank in the market as a rice-pro- ducing State signifies nothing. Seven years ago Louisiana did not produce for export a bushel of rice. Seven years ago the first rice-mill was built in that State. Yet the statistics show that Louisi- ana's rice-crop for the season of 1886-'87 was one half greater than the combined rice crop of South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia. May it not be said of Florida seven years hence that her rice- crop exceeds that of all the other States ? That un- doubtedly is among the possibilities." Sugar. — Sugar-cane grows well in all parts of the State, especially in the south ; the farther south the better. Sixty tons of it has been grown to the acre. On the Caloosahatchee River a farm of fifty 13 194 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. acres has grown cane eight years, the cane rattoon- ing every year, and has netted $300 an acre for sev- eral years. Fan* lands will produce from 1,500 to 2,000 pounds of sugar a year ; and rich lands, thor- oughly fertilized, will yield from 2,000 to 4,000 pounds. The draining of the Okeechobee region promises to furnish a large addition to the sugar- lands of the State. Upon the matter of rattooning, Mr. Barbour, in his " Florida for Tourists, Invalids, and Settlers," says, " I am informed that on the lands of Indian River has been raised the nineteenth crop of cane from the same planting, and on the shore of Lake Worth cane is now growing which has not been replanted since the early Indian wars." This readi- ness to rattoon makes the crop far less expensive, so long as good returns continue. Grains. — Florida can hardly be considered a grain country, although some of the grains do very well there ; but, generally, in such places other crops do phenomenally well, so that there is no special object in developing the grain in- dustries. Grain does better in Northern Florida than it does in the extreme south. Corn does excellently well in the former region. The yield upon poor PRODUCTIONS. 195 land, with "cracker" cultivation^ is from ten bushels up to twenty perhaps ; but intelhgent and judicious cultivation can always make good yields. Governor Drew is reported to have raised 130 bushels of corn on common pine-land in 1878. Wheat, oats, and rye are grown in Northern Florida very much as they are in the Southern States generally. Very little is sown. Barley is seldom seen. Cattle. — The stock business is carried on mostly in the south — Semi-tropical and Subtropical Flor- ida — below 29° ; but cattle are raised and do well all over the State, Brevard County taking the lead both in number and quality of stock. The aggregate number of cattle is put by Mr, P. O. Knight, of Lee County, at 250,000, and the total value at $1,250,000. Mr. J. Selwin Tait, of St. Augustine, author of " The Cattle-Fields of the Far West," in a paper recently published, puts the cattle of Florida, exclusive of sheep, at 613,515 head, and their value approximately at $6,000,000. The annual sales he reckons at 147,000 head, real- izing, at $11, over $2,000,000 a year. He thinks that Florida has, in this cattle business, ready at her hands, the means of quadrupling her revenue, and he points out the ways and means. The larger 196 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. herds — tlie subjects of tlie cattle-kings — range in number from 10,000 to 15,000 cattle. In IN'ortliern Florida finer breeds of cattle — Dur- ham, Devon, Ayrshire, Jersey, and Alderney — have been liberally introduced, within the last ten years especially ; and great improvement in the quality of the cattle generally has been the gratifying result. In the lower counties, however, where the greater herds are to be foiind, very httle has been done thus far to improve the breeds. Sheep. — l^orthern Florida is the best part of the State for sheep. The pasturage suits them better, and the burs and spurs are not so likely to damage the fleece as in the lower and pinier regions. But burs and spurs must not be neglected anywhere. The industry of sheep-raising in Florida is old but not extensive. Bermuda grass is one of the best for sheep; and, when properly confined within good pasture-limits, they do anywhere very well ; but the extent of the business and the size of the flocks are necessarily quite limited. A flock of 300 is large. Goats. — Experiments with goats have not been very extensive, but the outlook for them seems to be quite as good as that for sheep, if not better. Angoras, Cashmeres, and finer-fleeced goats gener- PRODUCTION'S. 197 ally might succeed better than the common; but the conditions of fine success would necessarily be very much the same as for sheep. Colonel Dennett, of Louisiana, says : '' Goats thrive well in the pine-lands of the South, and more attention should be paid to raising them in these States. Goats are cleaner and more healthy animals than sheep ; they are more sagacious, have more self-protection in them, and live and thrive on browse all winter. Sheep have so many infirmi- ties, and need so much nursing and attention, and peculiar kinds of ranges, and convenient watering- places and good water, and so much care and pro- tection, that few can spare the time and labor needed to preserve the flock and make it prosperous. Dogs, hogs, buzzards, eagles, all prey upon sheep and lambs, and they are liable to nasal catarrh, scab, foot and liver rot, diarrhoea, and numerous other dis- eases and frailties from which goats are almost en- tirely free. Considering the healthfulness of goats, and the loathsome diseases that prey upon sheep, we would always prefer fat kid to lamb or mutton." The Angora has been raised successfully in the State of Coahuila, Mexico, which is in the same latitude as Florida, 24° to 30°. Mr. W. Broderick Cloete, of that State, has the largest and, consid- 198 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. ering its size, the finest Angora flock in JS^ortb America. He has just made, so the '' Texas Stock- man " states, a large shipment of mohair to Eng- land. He has recently added 9,000 Angoras to his flock, bj purchase from a herdman in Texas. If the Angora succeeds so well in Texas and Coahuila, there seems to be no reason to fear failure in Florida. Other Stock. — The native boa:, bke the native cow and pony, seems to be rather run out. All these are better in JSTorthern Florida than in the extreme south. With properly improved breeds, hog-raising in Northern Florida may be as success- ful as anywhere in the United States ; but the gen- uine native, razor-back hog of Florida, wherever he may be found, can not be fairly ranked a first- rate animal as a porker. All these runts— hogs, horses, cows — seem to be the old Spanish importa- tions, neglected and left to run wild for two hun- dred years, and so run down. But improved kinds of all these are being introduced ; and all will do well, especially in E^orthern Florida. Poultry. — All kinds of poultry do well in all parts of Florida, and there is almost everywhere a good local market for both poultry and eggs. The climate is all that could be desired, and especially PRiWUCTIONS. 199 fine for the Asiatic and Italian breeds — Brahmas, CocMns, Leghorns — but the Plymouth Eocks do equally well. The natural enemies of the chicken in South Florida are the wild cat, opossum, and skunk; while in l^orth Florida it is the colored biped mainly, with the quadruped prowlers as in- cidentals occasionally, that makes poultry - raising risky. Good local prices for poultry and eggs are well sustained in all parts of the State. In the subtrop- ics, eggs sell at twenty-five cents a dozen the year round. A settler on Lake Worth — latitude 26° 40' — reports, the present season, 961 eggs from four- teen hens in three months ; an average of twenty- three eggs a month to the hen. And many if not most parts of the State, with equal management, could probably do as well. Turkeys, geese, and ducks thrive everywhere, but the abundance of wild turkeys and ducks ren- ders the raising of domesticated birds unnecessary. The man that can shoot a brace of ducks any hour in the day need not bother with raising them, un- less he prefers the domestic varieties. Gardening. — This is fast becoming a leading in- dustry in all parts of the State ; and, as the State is settling up and developing southward, new products 200 TEE FLORIDA OF TO-LAY. and new conditions are lending their attractions c0ntimially. Gardening or truck-farming is excep- tionally attractive in the subtropical counties, on account of the important fact that most vegetables — tomatoes, celery, cucumbers, egg-plant, potatoes, and pretty much all the market spring vegetables in demand in the E'orth — can be matured in that cli- mate from two to four weeks ahead of even the cen- tral and middle parts of the State. As illustrative of the wonderful scope of that subtropical region, the following hst of vegetables and fruits actually ripened and used on Lake "Worth, in Dade County — latitude 26° 40' — during the month of December, 1886, is given. It was prepared by a resident of the place at the time, and is as follows : VegetaUes. — Beets, cabbages, cassava, celery, cucumbers, egg-plant, lettuce, onions, parsley, pota- toes, pumpkins, radishes, snap beans, squashes, sweet potatoes, tanyahs, tomatoes, turnips, and water- melons. Fruits. — Bananas, citrons, cocoanuts, figs, gua~ vas, lemons, limes, oranges, papaws, plantains, pine- apples, sapodillas, and sugar-apples. This list does not give the scope of vegetable and fruit productions, but what were actually on hand during the midwinter month of the year of PRODUCTION'S. 201 tlie great freeze. There is nothing invidious in presenting this special list of one region, for the whole State teems with vegetables and fruits all the year round, varying with the soils, cultures, ele- vations, and latitudes ; but everyw^here and always a rich and royal abundance. Its own special prod- uct is shipped from every locality in the State ; and in ten years from to-day these shipments will doubtless be in the aggregate ^yq times as great as they are now. Mr. W. D. Chipley, of Pensacola, in his " Facts about Florida," gives the following facts in regard to the yields in J^orthern Florida : " A man in Tallahassee had prepared his acre of land, and planted it in Irish potatoes in January, 1884. In April he planted corn between the rows of potatoes and dug the potatoes in May, which gave the last dressing to the corn. In July he planted between the corn-rows sweet potatoes, which he harvested in l^ovember, and he counted up his yield as follows : 96 barrels of Irish potatoes, worth $la barrel, $384 ; 40 bushels of corn, worth, with the corn-shucks for fodder, $40 ; and 300 bushels of sweet potatoes, worth $150 ; a total of $574 from a single acre of ordinary farm-crops. Had the acre been set with pears, peaches, figs, olives, or Japanese persimmons, 202 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. with less labor and less outlay for manures, lie miglit have realized even greater profits ; and in garden products still more would have been realized." These facts do not need comment. An extensive truck-farmer of Florida may be quoted as giving the following estimates of what as an average crop can be grown on an acre : Tomatoes, 200 bushels ; cucumbers, 200 bush- els ; snap beans, 100 bushels ; Irish potatoes, 50 to Y5 bushels ; green peas, 75 to 100 bushels ; cab- bages, 50 to 150 barrels; melons, 500 to 1,000; strawberries, 2,000 to 4,000 quarts. A gardener's calendar of what to plant and what to gather each month in the year would give a fine exhibit of Florida's horticultural resources ; but — ^it would be too long for these pages. Besides the vegetables generally produced in the Southern States, there are some whose area is limited. Among these may be mentioned the tan- yah, cassava, and comptie. The tanyah is the Co- looasia esculenta, according to Professor Whitner, and the Calladium esoulentum^ according to others, and is much eaten in the Sandwich Islands. It is remotely as to its roots like the sweet potato, with more starch and less sugar. Its large and handsome leaves are familiar to most readers. It grows best PRODUCTIONS. 203 in moist rich lands almost without cultivation. Cas- sava has been a good deal written about, and is far better known. It will yield more tubers to the acre than any other of the edible-root family. One grower reports 56,000 pounds, or a thousand bush- els, to the acre ; and others report as high as 80,000 pounds. Analysis shows the cassava to be exceed- ingly rich in merchantable and nutritive elements, yielding about 30 per cent of glucose or sirup, 40 per cent of starch, and 10 per cent of the residuum, tapioca. It is very valuable as stock and poultry food, and properly prepared is an excellent article for the table. It is easily propagated, from the stalk and branches cut into pieces ; and will grow in any soil, but yields most in the best soils. Comptie grows wild in the subtropics. In Dade County the people for many years have been manufacturing from it starch and a species of arrow-root, for the Key West and local markets, and for home use. Opium. — The making of opium from the poppy has been tried with fair measure of success. One individual reports fifty pounds made by him at one time ; and at City Point on Indian River — about latitude 28° 22^ — intelligent experiments have been made through several years ; and, under the stimu- lus of a new process, put forward by Mr. W. W. 20i THE FLORID A. OF TO-DAY. Winthrop, of extracting the morpliia directly from the poppy instead of the old process of extracting it from the gum-opium, it is likely that a new and practical impetus will be given to poppy-growing. Mr. "Winthrop says of his process : " I extract the morphia, so to speak, from the plant direct, without making it into gum-opium first. In other words, I extract the morphia from the meconate state in which it is held. This will be an immense saving, but it will require considerable capital to build up a factory, etc., to manufacture morphia in quantities. The chemists extract the morphia from the gum, and it is as morphine that most of it is used." The same writer thinks that $700 an acre is not a large estimate for poppy-growing. The time to plant in that latitude is March and April. Farther south this time would be a little earlier, and farther north a little later. Honey. — The bee works in every latitude, and has ample materials everywhere. In far south cli- mates the honey-bee, like the human bee, having all the year before him in which to work, works more leisurely ; and his stores have to be plundered ju- diciously in order to encourage his perseverance in storing liberally. Little has been done at bee-rais- ing in Florida beyond supplying home needs of PRODUCTIONS. 205 honey, but the indastry could be extended vastly, if there should be occasion ; but, where there are so many attractive and remunerative directions of labor, it is not to be expected that everything can be pushed forward at the same time. Out of the Waters. — The waters yield seven mer- chantable products — fish, oysters, turtles, sponges, shells, corals, and alligator spoils. A writer in Key West states that the fish busi- ness in South Florida amounts to $800,000 a year ; and even Cuba is supplied with fish from these waters. From the everywhere-present and always excellent sea-mullet to that prince of fish the pom- pano, all the edible fishes are fine and sell well. There are fisheries all along the 1,200 miles of shore, and Northern Florida exports fish in large quantities. Appalachicola, Pensacola, and Cedar Keys, all ship large quantities of fish. The sport of fishing is discussed on other pages. Oysters abound in most parts of tlie State. Scores of boats engaged in this fishery business cen- ter at Key "West ; and all the way up the Gulf coast and the whole extent of the Atlantic coast, from Fernandina southward at least to the 2Tth degree of latitude, oysters planted by ]^ature abound. Many private plants are now being made, especially on the 206 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. South Atlantic and GiiK coasts, notably in the Cedar Keys region. Canning has been begun, with considerable capital employed. Turtles. — Four or ii^e kinds of turtle are very plentiful, especially on the south Atlantic and south Gulf coasts. Of these, the green turtle — Chelonia mydas — is perhaps the most prized ; but there are also loggerheads, hawkbills, and trunk- backs. They weigh from a few pounds up, it is claimed, to 1,200 pounds each. The turtling busi- ness is varied. The turtles are captured mainly with nets, but are also caught while on land, and trapped in various ways. Turtle-turning is a sport for the boys as well as profit-pursuit. The turtle- boats spend frequently two months on the turtling- grounds, and the business, it is said, is worth some $400,000 ; but such estimates are vague approxima- tions merely. Turtle-eggs^ of which the turtles lay from 100 to 300 in each nest, are also valuable as food, and in their season make an appreciable item in the provisioning of the far south pioneer settlers. In Key West the beef and the turtle markets stand side by side, and many prefer the latter as a regular meat-suppl3^ Turtles are shipped alive to the I^orthern markets from Key West, Lake PRODUCTIONS. 207 Worth, Biscayne, and several points on the GnK coast. A species of tortoise or terrapin, that bnrrows in the sandy soil, and popularly known in this State as the gopher, is commonly eaten ; and considerable shipments in a retail way are made from the Gulf coast to the Key West markets. Gopher calij^asTi is a popular dish in some neighborhoods. It is a somewhat singular philological fact that the animal here called gopher is known in the West as the salamander; while the burrowing rat that in the West is called gopher is here known as the salamander. The derivation of the word gopher , from the French gaufre (honey-comb), doubtless led to the confounding. Sponges are gathered in several parts of the State, especially in the far south regions. Appala- chicola, Rio Carabelle, St. Mark's, and Cedar Keys, do a good deal in that way. Key West claims to export 600,000 pounds a year, the bulk of it going to Paris. There are a hundred and fifty sponging- boats that center at Key West. The sponge-trade of the State is stated by some tropical writers as fully $1,000,000 a year, but this is probably some- what over the mark. The sponges are taken in waters from five to twenty feet deep. They are 208 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. dislodged from tlieir beds with hooks, taken ashore, and lodged until life is extinct ; then beaten, cleaned, and dried — altogether a most unsavory work. Some spongers make as much as $1,000 in a month of the sponge season. Manj of the fine and expensive Mediterranean sponges sold in our Northern mar- kets are gathered in Florida, shipped to Paris, re- touched, and exported thence to America — to dem- onstrate the superiority of European wares ! Shells of divers kinds and corals are gathered in many places ; the farther south, the richer and more numerous they are. Groing southward, these prod- ucts of the sea increase in color, size, and value. Alligators from their amphibious domain con- tribute teeth and hides, and these have been much sought of late years. The shooting of alligators ceased a few years ago to be a sport worthy a re- spectable sportsman, and is now a legitimate busi- ness pursuit, but not very extensively pursued, be- cause not easy nor very profitable. XI. SPORTIXG. Fishing. — Writers on sporting, whether in the field of fin, fur, or feather, agree almost unani- mously in pronouncing Florida a paradise for sports- men ; although, as between land-sports and fishing, the latter is unquestionably the finer. One of the ablest and best-informed writers of to-dav, Mr. S. C. Clarke, of Marietta, Georgia, widely known as an angling naturalist, holds that " the coasts of the Peninsula of Florida afford a greater variety of spe- cies of fish, and probably a greater variety of valu- able food-fishes, than can be found in any one region in the IJnited States." Dr. Charles J. Kenworthy, of Jacksonville, the ^'Al Fresco^'' of the sporting journals, a leading authority in sporting matters in Florida, bears ample testimony to the supreme excellence of that State's piscatorial advantages. Her 1,200 miles of salt-water coast, added to her fresh-water bodies — lakes, rivers, ponds, springs, havens, and bayous — give both variety and diversity 14 210 TEE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. of field, and supply a variety and diversity of fishes altogether exceptional. Our knights of the rod find here some migratory fishes that are common on the Northern coasts, such as the striped bass, sea-bass, blue-fish, sheepshead, and weak-fish ; others that do not usually range farther north than Delaware, such as the black and the red drum ; others that are local in their habits and range, such as the groupers and snappers ; others again of a more tropical character, that appear on the Florida coast only in warm weather, and whose home is the more tropical lati- tudes, as the tarpum, cavalli, and the lady-fish. All along the ocean and Gulf coasts, where the fresh- water lakes are near the sea, there are to be found within a mile or two both salt and fresh waters, with their separate and distinct families of fishes. In other places, notably at Lake Worth, in Dade County, there are three classes of waters — the ocean which is salt, the lake which is semi-salt, and the lakes inland which are fresh — all within less than three miles ; thus affording three classes of fish. '^ Nowhere," says Mr. Clarke, " in our broad coun- try can the angler find greater variety of game or more or better sport than on the coasts of Florida. In an experience of more than fifty years as an an- gler, reaching from Canada to Florida and from SPORTING. 211 Massachusetts to Colorado, the writer has found no region where fish were so abundant as on this [the East Florida] coast." An exhaustive list of the fishes of this State would cover the whole scope of Southern waters, both temperate and tropical, and both salt and fresh. Dr. Henshall, in his racy book on Florida, gives a list of one hnndred and twenty species found by him in these waters. Of course, the fish vary with the latitudes, the southern waters having more kinds and larger fishes, and the sportsman that wants the finest sport in this line will go to the far south, either Gulf or Atlantic side. The most attractive fishes, taking the common ground of both fun and food, seem to be the fol- lowing : T\iQ 2)ompaRO is generally known by that name, although the early French settlers in South Caro- lina called it the crevalle. It is the most valued food-fish of the Southern waters, and in the JN^ew Orleans markets it ranks first. It is a bottom-fish, and the angler that expects to hook it must be alert. Mr. Joseph B. White, of New York, writing from Lake Worth Inlet, in Dade County, reports, during the present year, his capture of a pompano weigh- ing twenty-one pounds. He used a bass-hook with 212 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. concli bait. This is probably the largest pompano ever caught in Florida waters. The usual average weight is perhaps less than half that. The sheejpshead ranks close to the pompano as a sport-fish, and is somewhat more easily and more frequently caught. The channel hass is called red drum in Yir- ginia, spotted bass in South Carolina, and red- fish in ]New Orleans. It is considered one of the best game-fish in these waters, a strong and persistent fighter, and sometimes weighs forty pounds, and on the line feels as if it weighed two hundred. The salt water trout or spotted trout — the Cynoscion maculatum of the books — is easily caught with hook, weighs from three to fifteen pounds, and is an excellent food-fish. The red gro%i])er is a bottom-fish, of fine qual- ity, strong, wary, and is best caught with mullet- bait ; and when hooked generally makes for his covert under the roots and rocks, whence only the smaller sizes — say five-pounders — can be hauled by ordinary man- power. The cavalli frequently weighs ten to twelve pounds. It is finer as a game-fish than as food, and will take almost any bait, but will fight to the SPORTING. 213 death before it will leave the water, and dies as soon as landed. The mangrove snapper is a secretive and shy fish, like the grouper, and is caught in the same manner. The Spanish mackerel in its season is a prince among fish ; and many consider it superior to the Pompano, and it is much less frequently caught. The lady-fish^ or skip-jack as it is sometimes called, is the most agile and acrobatic of all these Southern fishes ; and, while almost useless for the table, gives her captor sport galore. The harracuda — the Sphyrcuna harracuda or jncuda — is a strong fish, of good quality, and a great favorite with anglers. The smaller sizes usu- ally caught are excellent for food, but the large ones are unmanageable on the line and rather coarse sometimes. The tarpum or tarpon is a herring-shaped fish, often five or six feet long, of giant strength, and generally takes the tackle with him into the ocean. It weighs from a hundred pounds up to several hundred, and is too coarse ordinarily for food, but always attractive to adventurous anglers. The Jew- fish also is a large fish ; so also are the sharks / albeit anglers do not usually care to cultivate or to tackle either of them. 214: THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. The mullet swarms in most Florida waters, and can be caught best with cast-net or seine, for it re- fuses all kinds of bait. Fishermen frequently catch the mullet with, cast-net or dip-net, and use it as cut bait. The mullet is fair food, but the netting for them of course injures the fishing at that place. The silver or white mullet is the one that abounds in Florida. The Uue-fish is first-class game, and also ex- cellent food. The drum is a rather coarse fish, and in the extreme south is not commonly eaten, although about St. Augustine its quality is better. The largest sizes weigh as much as forty pounds, and can pull like a horse. The red drum^ called in East Florida the channel bass, is perhaps the Sglce- nojys ocellata of Gill. It is an omnivorous fish, bold, strong, and intelligent, weighing sometimes fifty pounds ; but this size is not often pulled in wdth an angle line. The habits and fighting meth- ods of the drums are similar to those of the sheeps- head, and it takes both skill and strength to land either quickly. A fine fish of the flounder or the sole family has been caught on the Atlantic shore of the sub- tropics, but it is by no means common. SPORTING, 215 Bream is in miicli favor, and is very abundant. Besides these tliere are scores of fishes more or less common ; as the moon-fish and the sun-fish, the pike, the bonito, red-fish and whiting, snapper and snool^, gag and gar, sucker, eel, grunt and por- gee, the dainty needle-fish, the wonderful flying- fish, the formidable sword-fish, saw-fish, and sharks, the hateful rays and stingarees, cat fish, and hog- fish, angel-fish and devil-fish, anchovy, menhaden, sailor's choice, and minnows. A list of the fishing-grounds of Florida would embrace almost every place situated on water ; and, in view of the extent of coast, number of lakes, and multitude of islands and keys, it is evident that the number of such places is rather large. Dr. Ken- worthy undertook several years ago to make a list ; and he na'.ned over thirty places, scattered from Fernandina round to Pensacola, and all through the numerous lake regions and meandering rivers. The fact is that, while some places are better situated for fishing than others, there is hardly anywhere that good fishing can not be had. Other things be- ing equal, the best grounds can not be expected near cities and large towns, where steamers and various sailing-craft frequent and scare away the finny game ; nor in waters wliere the cast-net, the 216 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY, dip-net, the gill-net, and the seine are industriously plied. Business interferes with pleasure, liock Ledge, St. Lucie, Lake Worth, Biscajne Bay, Cape Romano, Charlotte Harbor, Tain pa Bay, Cedar Keys, and so on — every port, bay, river, lake, and bayou, from the St. Mary's to the Perdido — are all, with the if above named, fine fishing-grounds ; and each several one (some enthusiastic dweller there will confidently assure you) is the fisher- man's paradise — whatever that is. But it is true that wherever the sportsman may please to go, at the proper time for fishing there — be it ocean, gulf, bay, bayon, channel, sound, river, lake, or spring — there he will find interesting sport. He may have angle, net, seine, gig, or barb — in boat or from the shore— by day or with torchlight — whether he is fishing for fun or for fish — and he will find on this continent no better theatre for his piscatorial feats than these Florida waters. With regard to tackle. Dr. Ken worthy says that the game-fish of Florida are uneducated, and make no distinction bstween a mist-colored leader and a clothes line. The great desideratum for Florida fishing is strength of tackle — stout lines and large hooks. A heavy bass-rod is all-important; if fly- fishing is indulged in, the rod should be not less SPORTING. 217 than eight ounces. As the fish are not particular, expensive flies need not be used. For hand-line fishing, resident experts use cable-laid cotton and braided cotton lines. Hunting. — Game is plentiful in most parts of Florida, though less so than fish, and both are more abundant in the sparselj-settled south than in the older regions farther north. The best game seems to be deer, duck, turkey, bear, panther, wild cat — in that order — and lastly small game. In this class may be named the hare or rabbit, opossum, raccoon, squirrel, quail, and the host of birds. The deer abounds especially in the far south ; and experienced sportsmen have written up several localities — St. Lucie and Eoek Ledge on Indian Kiver, Lake Worth, the Caloosahatchee Yalley, Ivissimmee, Clear Water Harbor, and so on. The hunting is generally without dogs ; and the hunter or party of hunters, having reconnoitred the field, moves cautiously through the woods, standing at selected points, and thus finds the animal without alarming it. This is the Indian method; and the Indians are always successful hunters. The deer has certain hours to feed, to drink, and to take salt ; and is easily found by those that study these 218 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. SPORTING. 219 hours carefully. The moon affords favorable light at certain periods, and showers direct the game to certain pastures. The hunter that heeds these little indicia, apparently trifling though they seem, need rarely return home gamelqss anywhere in the game region. But the visiting sportsman will fre quently bring with him his own special code of field-ethics, and is likely at the outset to despise the simpler and more primitive tactics of the resi- dent hunter. But, whatever be the ethics or the tactics, the main point and purpose of hunting will be the same — abundance of game. Duck-shooting is a science — at least an art — of the expert that calls for no special discussion. In their seasons these birds abound in countless hosts in certain localities, and these localities are almost everywhere that w^ater and shore present good con- ditions. Dr. Hen shall found seventeen species of ducks in Florida. His list embraces the canvas- back, mallard, three teals — the black, the w^ood, and the pintail. Turkeys exist generally with the deer ; and, w^hile they are scarcer than deer, they afford excel- lent sport to those fond of that kind. The common wdld turkey — Meleagris gallojpavo A7nerica?ia—is the only species reported by hunter-naturalists. 220 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. Bears are getting scarce, except in the deep re- cesses of the southern unsettled country, and even there bear-hnnting is comparatively rare of late years. Panthers and wild cats are hardly legitimate ob- jects of sport-hunting. They are generally hunted by the residents in order to rid the country of dep- redators, and directly in the interests of poultry- yards and pig-pens. But the hunter for other game sometimes encounters one of these pronounced characters, and the amount of fight and run — gen- erally the run precedes the fight — is ample to at- tract considerable attention. In addition to the above-named, the fur game — including pests and prowlers — of Florida embraces the following : Lynx, wolf, fox, mink, skunk, otter, polecat, salamander, rat, mouse, and mole. In Al- len's " Mammals and Winter Birds of East Florida " much valuable and interesting information in this direction may be found ; also in Henshall's " Camp- ing and Cruising in Florida." The feathered tribe, besides the bird game above mentioned, is very numerous, fine -plumed, and sweet-voiced. There are the blue-bird, the black- bird, and the cardinal-bird ; the thrush, bobolink, cat bird, oriole, and the polyglot mocking-bird ; the SPORTING. 221 titmouse, wren, and humming-bird; the sparrow, lark, snipe, do7e, kingfisher, and jaj ; the vireo, shrike, cherwink, grackle, woodpecker, w^oodcock, and plover ; the crow, eight species of hawk, owl, king-buzzard, and vulture ; the paroquet, willet, sandpiper, godwit, stilt, marsh-hen, and rail ; a va- riety of cranes, eight species of herons, the flamingo, bittern, gallinule, gannet, curlew, and ibis ; the limp- kin, pelican, cormorant, and water-turkej ; the gull, tern, egret, skimmer, and the gnat-catcher ; the warbler, killdeer, whip-poor-will, and chuck-wilFs- widow. These are permanent residents ; and win- ter brings some seventy-four other tourist birds. Without being game in the ordinary sense of that word, the alligator, which abounds in all the available fresh- water streams and lakes in the State, is extensively hunted, and that too for mere sport, as well as for hides, teeth, etc. That is, in addition to being an industrial pursuit, alligator-killing is a sport, and pursued by a certain class of tourists for the mere fun of murdering the creatures. The same is true, to a very limited extent, how- ever, also of the manatee. This monster amphibian is strictly subtropical. It is found, on the Atlantic side, as high up as the St. Lucie Eiver, near lat- itude 27°. The younger ones have flesh that is 222 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. tender and wholesome, and these calves are said to be much sought by both Indians and whites. The manatee is sluggish and clumsy, sometimes twelve or fifteen feet in length, and ten or twelve feet in girth ; and when well grown will weigh a ton. One writer gives the maximum weight as 3,000 pounds. It has two hand-like flippers, small eyes, and a head very remotely like a cow's. It is pachydermatous, of dark-brownish color, and has sparse hair ; is a harmless and docile beast, and is usually caught, as turtles are, with a strong rope seine. It is also shot or harpooned. The grampus is much rarer than the manatee. This monster has been captured, or killed, and landed on the Gulf shore, in Hillsborough County, and perhaps in other places. XII. PESTS. Insects. — Mncli exaggerated nonsense has been written about the insects of Florida. It is tme that the earth, the waters, and the air there teem with life, as they do in all southern climates. But it is also true that the insects are not aggressive in pro- portion to their number. Human life is naturally shaped so as to offset the natural surroundings ; and no civilized man need succumb to so trifling an enemy. The same means that suffice to keep off mosquitoes in ^N^ew Jersey will keep them off in Florida. The mosquito season is longer in the South, but these insects can be kept at bay more easily in the South for the reason that much greater attention is paid to appliances for that purpose. Houses are constructed so as to exclude them ; and, with windows and doors properly wire-netted or closed with gauze of suitable texture, and beds properly protected with netting, there need be no great annoyance from mosquitoes. When they get 224 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. foothold in a room, a spoonful of insect-powder — jpyrethrum, of several varieties — ^burned will expel or kill them. It can be grown there. Smudge-fires to windward will always banish the mosquitoes. Fleas abound in some places, mostly where hogs and dogs live about the place ; but these can be readily kept away with pennyroyal and several other plants, easily cultivated there. Gnats, flies, and that class of pests, seem to be about the same as elsewhere. Where there are little pests, there are usually larger enemies to them to keep them down. A large insect known as the mos- quito-hawk destroys countless thousands of gnats, as do also the spiders, birds, and lizards. The red-bug annoys those that hunt him up in the jungles and tangles of weed and undergrowth ; but nobody need hunt up such pests. The cockroach about the house is an annoy- ance, but borax or some similar drug — insect-pow- der, for example — will drive all roaches away. The same is true of ants. Sand-flies are very annoying in places, but no- where constantly. They come and go, and are gen- erally so near the water's edge that it is compara- tively easy to keep away from them. These pests, as well as all mosquitoes, gnats, and air-flies, may be PESTS. 225 kept at bay with smoldering fires, popularly kiio\vn in Florida as smudge- fires, built and burned to windward of the spot to be protected. Materials of pleasant-odored smoke abound everywhere, and a spoonful of insect-powder will insure the desired effect. Reptiles. — There are three kinds of snakes in Florida that are poisonous — the rattlesnake, the moccasins, and the adders, there being two varieties of the moccasin and two of the adder. These all, especially the rattlesnake, flee from man ; and years of life in Florida have been passed without ever hearing of a case of bite from any of these snakes. The habitat of these reptiles is the jungle, the swamp, and the thicket, places that it is rarely neces- sary to visit. The hunter and the fisherman will naturally provide themselves with protection against such dangers, and deserve to be bit if they do not. There are several snakes that are wholly innocu- ous — the king-snake, the bull or gopher snake, the ordinary black-snake, the coach- whip, the ground- snake, and indeed all except the rattlesnake, the moccasin, and the adder. Frogs, toads, and the like, serve their several useful purposes, as they do elsewhere, and should be protected and cultivated intelligently. 15 226 THE FLORIDA OF TO-BAY, Land-Sharks. — It is difficult to classify these pests, as thev are not strictly insects, nor reptiles, in the herpetological sense of that word. They must be tolerably known to the intelligent reading public of to-day ; although, like Proteus, they assume new shapes with wonderful facility. The boomer is one variety of these sharks. He has a wonderful vocabulary of adjectives, both laud- atory and abusive ; the former for his one little Eden where his lands are to sell, and the latter for everywhere, everything, and everybody else. The paper-town shark is one of the most recent evolutions. He is multiform and irrepressible ; and the public would better think twice before reading his wonderful "circular." The drop-game of the last generation, and the saw-dust trick of this, are neither of them so beautiful and attractive as this stupendous sell of Florida. While there may be honest and truthful boomers of the paper-town "' racket," and doubtless there are, the public needs a volume of admonition and advice ; and that vol- ume is faithfully condensed in the one word — Be- WAEE. As the tourist and prospector for a home in Florida goes on in his tour of inspection, he needs to weigh well the testimony he receives. If he do PESTS. 227 not, lie is likely to settle in the first community lie interviews ; for every one of these seems to feel under obligation to belittle every other community that lies ahead ; and in this behttling there is too often a deal of belying. The traveler arrives at Jacksonville, and looks about him. He there is likely to get the impression that the civilization and refinement of the State center there ; and that every step into the interior is a step toward the backwoods and barbarity, discomfort, malaria, and general nothingness. His first step is into the St. John's Eiver region ; and there he is in like manner plied with the idea that he is in the center of prog- ress, culture, and happy exemption from all the ills that lie so heavy on the benighted lands to the southward. His next step is to Indian River ; and there he gathers in the comforting idea that he is in the genuine original center of civilization, where K'ature is at her best, where real progress is burst- ing out, and where there are none of those disgust- ing and discouraging drawbacks that curse all the land that lies south of that paradise — the subtropics of Lake Worth and Biscayne Bay, where there can be nothing but insects, vermin, mud, malaria, In- dians, desolation, abomination, discomfort, disease, black death, and poverty — where nothing will grow 228 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. but comptie and mangroves, and where nobody lives anyhow. But the traveler should listen at Jacksonville, listen on the St. John's, listen on Indian Eiver, and listen in the subtropics. One disillusion ought to open his eyes. Generally it doesn't. But three or four disillusioniDgs will suffice for all, save the fool ; and he would better stay at home. This is not intended to mean that " all men are liars " ; but that the explorer is likely to encounter in any community enough of that entertaining class to give him just that set of ideas. It means more ; to wit, that that class of meddling romancers is just the one to hunt up, pursue, and persecute the tour- ist and stranger with theii* hoarded treasures of lies about the country. These misrepresenters are fully equipped with all the resources of their trade — the siippressio veri, the suggestio falsi, the innuendo, and the lie out of whole cloth. They are irrepress- ible, effusive, plausible, unescapable, intolerable. The Ancient Mariner was passivity itself in compar- ison with these. The tourist must hear them. Let him listen, and — go on. APPEE"DIX EAILWAY ROUTES. A. — FLOEIDA CENTEAL AND PENIXSULAE EAILEOAD. Cekteal Division. — Beginning at Fernandina, the Florida Central and Peninsular R. R. extends directly across the State to Cedar Keys, on the Gulf coast (154 miles), crossing at Cal- lahan the Savannah, Florida and Western R. R. (Waycross Branch). Baldwin, at the crossing of the Western Division from Jacksonville to Chattahoochee, is 47 miles from Fer- nandina, 20 from Jacksonville, and 107 from Cedar Keys. Waldo is 84 miles from Fernandina, at the junction of the Southern and Central Division. Gainesville (98 miles) is the principal town on the line of the road. It has 5,000 inhabit- ants, four churches, four hotels, and two newspapers. Cedar Keys is the Gulf terminus of the railway. From Cedar Keys a steamer sails on Mondays and Thursdays for Tarpon Springs, at the head of Anclote River, a voyage of eight hours. Eighteen miles west of Cedar Keys, the Suwanee River, navigable to Ellaville, enters the Gulf; and the Withla- coochee River, 18 miles south. SouTHEEN Division. — This division of the Florida Central and Peninsular R. R. diverges at Waldo in a direction nearly southeast, crossing at Hawthorne the track of the Florida Southern R. R. Citra and Anthony are passed on the way to Silver Spring junction, whence a branch two miles long 230 THE FLORIDA OF TO-BAY. leads to Silver Springs. Sixteen miles south is the Lake Weir country, and 10 miles farther is Wildwood (whence a branch line runs to Leesburg), to Plant City, where connec- tion is made with the South Florida E. R. At Tavares (22 miles from Wildwood) is the terminus of this division, where connections are made with Sanford, on the St. John's Eiver, and Orlando. Western Division. — From Baldwin this branch runs to the Chattahoochee River, River Junction being its western terminus. It passes through Olustee, Lake City, Live Oak (where it intersects the Florida branch of the Savannah, Florida and Western E. R.), Ellaville, Madison, Tallahassee, the capital, Quincy, and other towns. It connects at Chatta- hoochee River with the Louisville and Nashville R. R. for Pensacola and New Orleans. B. — JACKSONVILLE, TAMPA AND KEY WEST EAILEOAD. This line, starting from Jacksonville, follows the course of the St. John's River, passing through Orange Park, Magnolia, Green Cove Springs, Palatka, Seville, Astor Junction, De Land Junction, and Enterprise. The main line crosses the St. John's River by a bridge 3,500 feet long to the terminus at Sanford. The St. Augustine division connects Jackson- ville and St. Augustine by an air-line road of 36 miles. The De Land branch connects the main line, at De Land Junc- tion, v^ith De Land, a town of 3,000 inhabitants. The Indian River division extends from Enterprise Junction to Titusville, the largest town on Indian River. At Palatka the main line connects with the Florida Southern Railway for Gainesville, Ocala, Leesburg, Pemberton Ferry, and Brooks- ville. Connection is also made at Palatka with the St. John's and Halifax road for Ormond, Daytona, and Halifax River. At Orange Junction the main line connects with the Blue Springs, Orange City and Atlantic R. R. for Orange City, Lake Helen, New Smyrna, and Hillsborough River; at Mon- APPENDIX. 231 roe with the Orange Belt R. E. for Oakland, Apopka, Brooks- ville to Point Phiellas, on the Gulf; at Sanford with the South Florida R. R. for Winter Park, Orlando, Kissimmee, Bartow, and Tampa, where are met the Cuban mail-steamers Olivette and Mascotte, of the Plant Line, for Key West and Havana. C. — SOCTTH FLOEIDA EAILEOAD. From Sanford this line passes Belair to Maitland, a colony of Northern families, and the rising resort, Winter Park, beautifully situated on Lake Osceola, live miles in circumfer- ence. Passing Orlando, with 3,500 inhabitants, the road reaches Kissimmee City, skirts Lake Tohopekaliga, and con- tinues through Lakeland and Plant City to Tampa. D. — FLOEIDA SOUTHEEN EAILEOAD. This line extends from Palatka, crossing the Florida Cen- tral and Peninsular R. R. at Hawthorne to Leesburg, where it connects with the St. John and Lake Eustis branch. From Leesburg it is continued to Pemberton Ferry, Lakeland, and Bartow, where it meets lines from Sanford, Orlando, and the St. John's River. From Bartow trains run to Punta Gorda, on Charlotte Harbor. RIVER ROUTES. THE ST. JOHX'S EIVEE. The town of Mayport — the quarantine post and anchorage of Jacksonville — lies on the left of the river at its mouth. Opposite is Pilot Town and St. George's Islani. Daily boats run from Jacksonville. Jacksonville is 21 miles from Mayport. At this point the St. John's, after flowing north for 300 miles, turns eastward and empties into the Atlantic. Its whole course, which lies through an extremely level region, is about 400 miles, and throughout the last 150 miles it is little more than a succes- 232 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. sion of lakes, expanding in width from 1^ to 6 miles, and having at no point a width of less than one half mile. Its banks are lined with a luxuriant tropical vegetation, handsome shade-trees and orange-groves, and here and there are pict- uresque villages. The steamers of the Do Bary and People's Line leave Jacksonville daily at 3.30 p. m. for Sanford and Enterprise. Time, about eighteen hours ; fare, $4.50 ; round trip, $8. Eeturning, leave Sanford at 2.15 p. m., and reach Jacksonville next morning. Others make a daylight run, leaving Sanford at 5 a. m., and arriving at Jacksonville at 6.10 p. M. The following is a list of places on the St. John's. The distances are from Jacksonville: Miles. Eiverside 3 Black Point 10 Mulberry Grove 11 Mandarin 15 Fruit Cove 18 Hibernia 22 Eemington Park 25 Magnolia 28 Green Cove Springs 81 Hogarth's Landing 36 Picolata 45 Tocoi 52 Federal Point 60 Orange Mills 64 Dancy's Wharf 65 Whitestone 66 Russell's Landing ... 69 Palatka '75 Rawlestown 77 San Mateo 80 Buffalo Bluff 88 Satsuma 100 Welaka - . . . 100 Miles. Beecher 101 Orange Point 103 Mount Royal 109 Fort Gates 110 Georgetown 117 Lake View 132 Drayton Island 135 Volusia 137 Orange Bluff 140 Hawkinsville 160 De Land Landing 162 Lake Breresford 165 Blue Spring. 172 Shell Bank 193 Sanford 199 Mellonville 200 Enterprise 205 Cook's Ferry and King Phil- ip's Town 224 Lake Harney 225 Sallie's Camp 229 Salt Lake 270 APPENDIX. 233 Fourteen miles above, on the east bank, is Mandarin, one of the oldest settlements on the St. John's. It is the winter home of Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe. Magnolia (28 miles), on the Jacksonville, Tampa and Key West R. R., is situated on the west bank. A little to the north of the point Black Creek, a navigable stream, up which small steamers make weekly trips as far as Middleburg, empties into the St. John's. Three miles above Magnolia are the Green Cove Springs, oue of the most frequented resorts on the river, but now more easily reached by rail from Jacksonville. The spring dis- charges about 3,000 gallons a minute, and fills a pool some thirty feet in diameter with green ish-hued crystal clear water. The water has a temperature of 78° Fahr. ; contains sulphates of magnesia and lime, chlorides of sodium and iron, and sul- phureted hydrogen; is used both for bathing and drinking; and is considered beneficial for rheumatism, gouty affections, and Bright's disease of the kidneys. Attached to the springs are comfortable bathing-rooms, and close by are several hotels. About 10 miles above, on the same side, is Picolata, the site •of an old Spanish settlement, of which no traces now remain. Tocoi (52 miles) is of some importance as the point where connection is made with the St. John's Railroad to St. Au- gustine, 15 miles distant. Palatka occupies a fine, high pla- teau with a wide-reaching view up and down the river. It is the head of navigation for steamships, 75 miles from Jack- sonville by the river and 36 by railroad. It has railway connection with Gainesville and Ocala ma the Florida Southern R. R. It has a population of nearly 5,000. In the vicinity are many old, productive, and valuable orange- groves; and on the opposite side of the river, reached by ferry, are the famous groves of Colonel Hart. Palatka is steamboat headquarters for the upper St. John's and its tributaries. Steamers run from Palatka up the Ocklawaha River to Silver Spring, and a railroad — the St. Augustine and Palatka Railway — offers facilities for reaching the sea. 234 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY, Above Palatka the vegetation becomes more characteristi- eallj tropical, and the river narrows down to a moderate- sized stream, widening out at last only to be merged in grand Lake George, Dexter's Lake, and Lake Monroe. The steamers make the run from Palatka to Sanford in about twelve hours. Welaka (25 miles above Palatka), above the entrance to Dunn's Lake, and opposite the mouth of the Ocklawaba Eiver, is the site of what was originally an Indian village, and afterward a flourishing Spanish settle- ment. Just above Welaka the river widens into Little Lake George, 4 miles wide and 7 miles long, and then into Lake George, 12' miles wide and 18 miles long, one of the most beautiful sheets of water in the world; many isl- ands dot its surface. It is 1,700 acres in extent, and con- tains one of the largest orange-groves on the river. Yolusia (5 miles above Lake George, 137 miles from Jacksonville) is a wood-station, with a settlement of considerable size back from the river. Thirty-five miles above Yolusia is Blue Spring, one of the largest mineral springs in the State. It is several hundred yards from the St. John's, but the stream flowing from the spring is large enough at its confluence with the river for the steamers to float in it. Pursuing its voyage to the south, the steamer speedily enters Lake Monroe, a sheet of water 12 miles long by 5 miles wide. On the south side of the lake is Sanford, the metropolis of South Florida, situated at the head of navigation for large steamers on the St. John's. On the opposite side of the lake from Sanford is Enterprise, a popular resort. xllthough Sanford is the head of large steamboat navigation on the St. John's, there is for the sportsman still another hun- dred miles of narrow river, deep lagoons, gloomy bayous, and wild, untrodden land, abounding in game, while the waters teem with fish. Small boats can be obtained to run during the winter through Lake Harney to Salt Lake, the nearest point to the Indian River from the St. John's; and a small steam- APPENDIX. 235 boat makes frequent excursions througli Lake Jessup to Lake Harney. The trip to Lake Harney and back is made in twelve hours. Lake Jessup is near Lake Harney; it is 17 miles long and 5 miles wide, but it is so shallow that it can not be entered by a boat drawing more than three feet of water. The St. John's rises in the elevated savanna before mentioned, fully 120 miles south of Enterprise, but tourists seldom ascend farther than Lake Harney. INDIAN EIVEE. From Titusville the steamer Rockledge makes daily con- nection for City Point, Merritt's Island, Cocoa, Eockledge, Eau Grallie, and Melbourne, whence connecting steamers con- tinue the trip to The Narrows, St. Lucie, Jupiter Inlet, and Lake Worth. (See pages 88-90.) THE OCKLAWAHA. The Ocklawaha boats start from Palatka at nine o'clock in the morning. The trip occupies all of one day and one night, and until an early breakfast-hour of the second day. The first three hours of the trip are occupied in going up the St. John's to Welaka, a point just opposite the mouth of the Ocklawaha. About midnight the boat passes through "The Gateway of the Ocklawaha," as it is called. This is formed by two immense cypress-trees, growing so close to each other that scarcely enough room is left to allow the boat to pass. About day- light the boat turns suddenly to the right, and the celebrated "Run" is entered. Here the stream becomes a river one hundred feet in widtli, and runs with a swift current, against which these diminutive steamers make laborious way for nine miles. The bottom is of white sand, and so transparent are its waters that mosses and grasses growing on the bottom, one hundred feet below, can be seen distinctly. At the end of the "Run" the boat crosses the "Silver Spring" and anchors at a wharf on its farther shore. A row-boat awaits 236 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. the tourist for the purpose of exploring the wonderful sprin< at leisure. (See page 101.) LIST OF HOTELS IN FLORIDA OPEl^^ AS WINTER RESORTS.* Altamont, Orange Co. : Altamont House, Frank A. Cofran, $3.50 to $4.00.t Belleview. Marion Co.: Hotel Sanitaria. Brooksville, Hernando Co. : Hernando Hotel, $2.50 to $3.00 ; Grand View Hotel, $3.00 to $2.50. Cedar Keys, Levy Co. : Suwannee Hotel, $2.50 to $4.00. Conant, Sumter Co. : Hotel Conant, $2.00 to $3.00. Crescent City, Putnam Co.: Grove Hall, $3,00; Putnam House, $3.00. Daytona, Volusia Co. : Ocean House, $2.50 to $3.00 ; Pal- metto Hotel, $2.00 to $2.50. De Funiak Springs, Walton Co. : Hotel Chautauqua, $2.00 to $3.00. De Land, Volusia Co. : Carrollton House, $2.50 to $3.00 ; Parceland Hotel, $2.50 to $3.00 ; Putnam House, $2.00 to $3.00. De Leon Springs, Holmes Co.: De Soto House, $2.00 to $2.50. Eau Gallie, Brevard Co. : Eau Gallie House, $2.50. Enterprise, Volusia Co. : Brock House, $4.00. Eustis, Orange Co. : Eustis House, $2.50 to $3.00 ; Ocklawalia Hotel, $2.50. Fernandina, Nassau Co. : Egmont Hotel, $4.00. Fort Mason, Orange Co. : Lake View House, $2.50. * From the " United States (official) Hotel Directory and Railroad Indicator," known as the " Hotel Red-Book." Travelers' Publishing Company, New York. f Rates given are by the day. APPENDIX. 237 Fort George, Duval Co. : Fort George TTotel. Gains ville, Alachua Co.: Arlington Hotel, $2.50 to $3.00; Eochemont House, $2.60 to $3.00. Gulf Hammock, Levy Co.: Gulf Hammock Hotel, $2.50 to $3.00. Green Cove Springs, Clay Co. : Clarendon Hotel, $4.00 ; St. Clare Hotel, $3.00 to $4.00; The Pines, $3.00; Morganza Hotel, $1.50 to $2.00. Interlachen, Putnam Co. : Hotel Lagonda ; Interlaclien Hotel, $3.00. Jacksonville, Duval Co.: The Everett, $4.00; St. James, $4.00; The Carleton, $3.00 to $4.00; The Duval, $3.00 to $4.00; Hotel Oxford, $3.00; Hotel Togni, $3.00; Fre- mont House, $2.50 to $3.00; The Glenada, $2.50; Wind- sor Hotel. Eey West, Monroe Co. : St. James Hotel, $3.00 ; Kussell House, $2.50. Kissimmee, Orange Co. : Tropical Hotel, $3.00 to $4.00. Kismet, Orange Co. : Hotel Kismet. Lady Lake, Sumter Co. : Lady Lake House, $3.00. Lakeland, Polk Co. : Fremont House, $2.50 to $3.00. Lake Helen, Volusia Co. : Harlan Hotel, $2.00. Leesburg, Sumter Co.: Grand Central Hotel, $3.00; Lees- burg House, $2.00 to $2.50. Live Oak, Suwannee Co. : Ethel House, $2.00 to $2.50 ; Live- Oak Hotel, $2.00 to $2.50. Longwood, Orange Co. : Waltham Hotel. Madison, Madison Co. : Central Park Hotel, $3.00. Magnolia, Clay Co. : Magnolia Hotel, $4.00. Maitland, Orange Co. : Park House. Mayport, Duval Co. : Atlantic Hotel, $2.00 to $3.00. Monticello, Jefferson Co. : Madden House, $2.50 ; The Monti- cello. New Smyrna, Volusia Co. : Ocean House, $3.00. Oak Hill, Volusia Co.: Oak Hill Hotel, $4.00. 238 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DA Y. Ocala, Marion Co. : Ocala House, $4.00 ; Aldred House, $2.50 to $3.00 ; Montezuma Hotel, $2.50 to $3.00. Orange City, Volusia Co. : De Yarman House, $2.00. Orange Springs, Marion Co.: Globe Hotel, $2.50 to $3.00. Orlando, Orange Co. : Charleston House, $3.00 ; Magnolia House, $2.50 to $3.00; Wilcox House, $3.00; Windsor Hotel, $3.00. Pablo Beach, Duval Co. : Murray Hall Hotel, $3.00 to $4.00. Palatka, Putnam Co. : Putnam House, $4.00; Saratoga Hotel, $3.00 to $4.00 ; Hotel Phoenix, $3.00 ; Hotel Palatka, $2.50 to $3.00 ; Graham House, $2.50 to $3.00. Pensacola, Escambia Co. : Continental Hotel, $3.00 to $4.00. Eavenswood, Orange Co. : Naylor House, $3.00. Rock Ledge, Brevard Co. : Hotel Indian River, $4.00 ; Tropi- cal House, $2.50 to $3.00. St. Augustine, St. John's Co. : Hotel San Marco, $4.00 ; Hotel Cordova; Magnolia Hotel, $3.00 to $4.00; Florida House, $3.50 to $4.00 ; Ponce de Leon Hotel ; Carleton House, $3.00. St. James City, Manatee Co. : San Carlos HoteL Sanford, Orange Co. : Sanford House, $4.00 ; San Leon Hotel, $2.00 to $2.50." Sarasota, Manatee Co. : N'ew Sarasota House, $2.50 to $3.50. Seville, Yolusia Co. : Grand View House ; Hotel Seville, $3.00. Silver Springs, Marion Co. : Silver Springs Hotel, $3.00. Spring Garden, Volusia Co. : Highland Park Hotel. South Lake Weir, Marion Co.: Lake Side Hotel, $2.50 to $3.00. Tallahassee, Leon Co. : New Leon Hotel, $4.00 ; St. James Hotel, $2.50 to $3.00. Tarpon Springs, Hillsborough Co. : Tarpon Springs Hotel. Tampa, Hillsborough Co. : The Plant Hotel, $4.00 ; Palmetto Hotel, $3.00 to $4.00; Orange Grove Hotel, $2.00 to $4.00 ; St. James Hotel, $2.00 to $3.00. Tangerine, Orange Co. : Wachusett House, $2.50 to $3.00. APPENDIX. 239 Tavares, Orange Co. : Tavares Hotel, $2.50 to $3.50. Umatilla, Orange Co. : Umatilla House. Waldo, Alachua Co. : Waldo House, $2.00. Welaka, Putnam Co. : McClure House, $3.00. Wellborn, Suwannee Co. : White Sulphur Springs Hotel, $3.00. Welshton, Marion Co. : Hotel Welshtou. Winter Park, Orange Co. : Seminole House, $i.00. INDEX. Adelantado, 15, 67, 104. Africa, 166, 168. Africans, 112. Agassiz, 60. Agricultural College, 88, 128. Agricultural implements, 189, Aguacate, 51, 160. Akee, 168. Alabama, 84, 56, 61, 76. Alaminos, 8. Alaska, 110. Alcazar, 84, 86. Aleck Hajo, 24. Alexander & Co., 182. " Al Fresco," 209. Allen, Mr., 220. Alligator, 24. Alligators, 208. Alligator pear, 51, 160. Allison, Governor, 26. Almond, 51, 176. "American Cyclopsedia," 170. Ancient Mariner, 228. Anclote, 106. Andes, 163. Anonas, 51, 154, 162-164. Cherimolia, 163, 16 A.nonas, Glabra, 164. Muricata, 51, 162. Reticulata, 164. Squamosa, 163. Appalachian Mountains, 62. Appalachicola, 100. Apples, 176. Arkansas, 23, 56, 61, 76. Arpeika, 24. Asiatics, 112. As-se-se-ha-ho-lar, 24. Assinwar, 25. Atlantic City, 40. Atlantic-islanders, 112. Atzeroth, Mrs., 175. Augusta, 40. Australians, 112. Austria, 112. Avocado pear, 51, 160. Bahamas, 17, 44, 77, 95. Baldwin, Dr., 33, 35, 39, 62. Bananas, 51, 148, 150. Barbour, Mr., 194. Bar Harbor, 74. Barley, 195. Barrancas, Fort, 14, 99. 242 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. Basinger, Lieutenant, 20. Baskets, 189. Baths, 86. Baugh, Mr., 150. Bays, 8, 9, 61, 91. Big Sarasota, 61. Biscayne, 91. Clear Water, 8, 9. Little Sarasota, 61. Bayou Grande, 99. Bears, 220. Bees, 204. Belgium, 112. Belknap, General, 21. Bellevue, 98. Bermuda, 196. Big Chief, 124. Big Water, 29. Billy Bowlegs, 24. Bimini, Isle of, 7. Birds, 220. Biscayne, 20V. Bismarck, 40. Black Dirt, 24. Black Drink, 24. Blodget, Dr., 52. Bloxham, Governor, 26, 27. Blue Springs, 81. Bohemia, 112. Boia,ca, 7. Boomer's land, 226. Bordighera, 166. Bosporus, 77. Boston, 40, 73, 74. Bourbons, 109. Bowlegs, Billy, 24-. Branch, Governor, 18. Bread-fruit, 139. Breckenridge, Minn., 40. British America, 112. Broken health, 57. Brooke, Sir Philip, 45. Brooksville, 80. Broome, Governor, 25. Broom-handles, 189. Brown, Governor, 25. Budd, Professor, 135. Building- woods, 189. Cabinet-woods, 189. Cacao, 170. California, 29, 34, 55, 76, 135. Call, Governor, 18. Caloosahatchee River, 32, 43, 01, 70, 94, 102, 104. " Camping and Cruising in Flori- da," 220. Canada, 72, 210. Canaveral, Cape, 42, 131. Canes, woods for, 189. Capes : Canaveral, 42, 131, Florida, 74, 94. Hatteras, 46. May, 74, 81. • Romano, 42. Sable, 61, 96. Caribbee Islands, 160. Carolina, 14, 15. Cassava, 203. Cattle, 194. " Cattle-Fields of the Far West," 195. IXDEX. 213 Catticy guava, 50. Cautio, 7, 20, 82. Cedar Keys, 42, 67, 80, 93, 98, 187. Central America, 112, 158, 170. Ceres, 119. Cession, 15, 17. Charleston, 73. Charles Town, 14. Charlotte Harbor, 32, 42, 80. Chattahoochee River, 76. Cherimoyer, 51. Chicago, 75. China, 112. Chipley, W. D., 201. Chipco, 124. Chitto-Tustenuggee, 24. Chukaluskee, 42. Cincinnati, 75. Citrus fruits, 130, 136, 140. Citrus Japonica, 136. City Point, 203. Clarke, S. C, 209. Clays, 6i. Clear Water Bay, 8, 9. Climate, 33, 43, 48, 49, 52, 57. Climate-cure, 52. Climatology, 52. Clinch, General, 21. Cloete, W. Broderick, 197. Coacoochee, 21, 23, 24. Coahuila, 197. Coal, 65. Cocoanuts, 51, 96, 141. Cocoanut-groves, 142, 143. Coffee, 175. College, Agricultural, 88, 128. College, City, 35. Normal, 129. Rollins, 129. State, 64. Colorado, 34, 211. Comptic, 203. Conchs, 95. Concrete, 67. Confederate States, 26. Connecticut, 34, 66. Consumption, 55, 56. Contini, C. G., 183. Cooperage-woods, 189. Coquina, 66. Coralline, 67. Corals, 208. Cordova, Hotel, 87. Corn, 194. Cotton, 182. Cowford, 77. Cows crossing over, 77. Creeks, 25, 117. Crescent Lake, 31. Crosby, 0. M., HI, 113. Cuba, 8, 9, 16, 63, 95, 112, 113, 180. Curtiss, A. H., 42, 187, 193, Custard-apple, 51, 164. Dade, Major, 19, 21. Dade massacre, 19. ! " Daily Union," 116. Dakota, 34, 76. D'Arriola, 14. Date-palm, 164. Date-plum, 168. Davis, Mr., 141. 2U THE FLO BID A OF TO-DAY. Davis, John, 14. Daytona, 42. Deaf, Dumb, and Blind Institute, 128. Death-rate, 55, De Bary, 81. De Cordova, 8. Deer, 217. De Funiak Lake, 81. De Funiak Springs, 129. De Gourges, 13. De Land, 80, 129. De Land University, 129. Delaware, 56. De Leon, Ponce, 7, 8, 20, 67, 84, 104. De Luna, 11. Demerara, 171. De Narvaez, 8. Denison, Dr., 52, Denmark, 112. Dennett, Colonel, 197. De Ortiz, Juan, 9. De Reinoro, 97. De Soto, 9, 10. De Vaca, Cabe9a, 9, 10. Dimiek, E. N., 139. Discoveries, 7. Divisions, 41. Down South, 82. Drainage, 54, 69, 192. Drake, Sir Francis, 18. Drew, Governor, 26, 27. Dry Tortugas, 32. Dubois, E., 152. Ducks, wild, 219. Duluth, 40. Dummitt Grove, 131. Duncan, Sir William, 16. Dunedin, 106, 107. Dunn Brothers' grove, 133. Durian, 171. Dustins, 18. Duval, Governor, 18. Easter-Sunday, 7, 20. East Florida Seminary, 128. East India, 173. Eaton, Governor, 18. Eau Gallic, 88. Eden, 90, 147. Education, 127. Egypt, 84. El Dorado, 8, 9. Emathla, 24. England, 59, 112. Engravers' blocks, 190, Enterprise, 81. Eocene, 60, 61. EsjDiritu Santo, 9. Eustis Lake, 81. Evans, James, 143. Everglades, 30, 31, 47, 53, 69, 71, 93, 94, 96, 117. Excursions, 81. Exposition, subtropical, 77, 79. Facts about Florida, 201. Fairbanks, 7, 18, 19. Fall Brook, 35. Fencing, timbers for, 190. Fernandina, 32, 42, 45, 72, 73, 94. Field & Osborne, 143. INDEX. 245 Figs, 50, 175. Firminger, 157. Fish business, 205. Fishes, 210, 212, 215. Fishing, 209. Fishing- grounds, 215. Fishing-tackle, 216. Flint-rock, 66. Floats, 190. Flooring, 190. Florida facts, 113. Florida for tourists, 194. Florida Fruit Exchange, 131. Florida University, 128. Formosa, Island of, 47. Fort Barrancas, 14, 99. Carlos, 14. Caroline, 11-13. George Island, 87. Marion, 84. Myers, 70, 104, 143, 144. Pickens, 15, 99. St. Luis, 98. San Marco, 67, 82, 83. San Mateo, 13, Fossils, 59. Fountain of Youth, 67. France, 11, 59, 112, 113, 152, 184. Franceses, 12. Fruit Exchange^ 131. Fruits, 49, 51, 136, 154, 167, 169, 172. Fruits, semi-tropical, 48, 49. Fruits, subtropical, 50, 200. Fuel, 190. Furniture- woods, 189. Gainesville, 128. Galesio, 141. Game, 91, 217, 220. Gardening, 199. Gardening in Florida, 151. Garey, Mr., 141. Geography, 28. Geology, 59. George, Lake, 31. Georgia, 15, 34, 56, 75, 151, 166, 182, 193. Germany, 112. Gleason, 88. Goats, 196. Gonzales, F. A., 180. Gopher, 207. Gosse, Mr., 162. Governors, 25, 26. Grains, 194, 195. Grampus, 222. Grand possibilities, 154. Grant, James, 16. Grape-fruit, 50. Grapes, 49, 152. Great Britain, 15-17. Great Father at Washington, 22. Greece, 112. Greeks, 16. Green Cove Springs, 87. Groves. See Cocoanuts and Ok- ANGES. Guanabena, 51, 162. Guavas, 50, 51, 155, 156. Gulf of Mexico, 44, 70, 80, 98, 102. Gulf Stream, 44, 46, 47, 60, 62, 63, 90, 93, 96. 246 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. Gun-stocks, 190. Guayaquil, 163. Uaenke, 163. Halifax River, 82. Halleck-Tustenuggee, 24, Hammocks, 69. Hampton Spriogs, 68. Hardy, Lady, 82. Harris, J. A., 132. Hart, Governor, 26. Hart Grove, 133. Hart wig, 169. Hatteras, 46. Havana, 16. Health, 52, 71. Heilprin, 60. Helen Harcourt, 141. Henry, Professor, 37. Hensball, Dr., 94, 211, 220. Hickey, John B., 70. Hillsborough River, 32, 81. Hirrihigua, 9. History, 7. Hogs, 198. Holatter Micco, 25. Ho-le-wa-gus, 123. Holland, 112. Homosassa River, 32, 104, Honduras, 169. Honey, 204. Horsch, Mr., 147. Horses, 198. Hospetarkee, 24. Hotel Cordova, 87. Huguenots, 11-13. 219, Humboldt, 151. Humidity, 35, 40. Hunting, 217. Idaho, 34. Ilhnois, 34, 56. Immigrants, Northern and for- eign, 110. Immigrants, Southern, 1€9. Immigration Association, 79. Incah, 123. India, 112, 157, 166, 168. Indiana, 56. Indianapolis, 75. Indian Archipelago, 163. Indian River, 82, 80, 88, 90, 131, 133. Indian River Inlet, 43, 45, 46. Indians, 117. See Seminole. Industrial features, 63. Insects, 223, 224. Institute for Deaf, etc., 128. Interior finish, 190. Iowa, 56, 76. Ireland, 112. Iron-ore, 64, Islands, 31. Amelia, 32. Anastasia, 32. Cumberland, 166, Dry Tortugas, 82, Formosa, 47. Key Largo, 32. Key West, 32. Merritt's, 35. Santa Rosa, 15, 81, 32. Ten Thousand, 32. INDEX. 247 Italy, 112, 113, 166, 184. Iv^es, A. M., 131. Kraemer, James il., 53. Kumquat, 136. Kurunda, 172. Jacques, Dr., 52. Jack-fruit, 1*72. Lake City, 128. Jackson, General, 17, 18, 21, 124. Lake regions, 50, Jacksonville, 34, 40, 73, 76 V8, Lakes, 29-194. 80, 82, 87, 90, 92, 96, 99, 116. Apopka, 31. Jamaica, 160, 161, 163. Buffum, 31. Japan persimmon, 168. Crescent, 31. Japan plum, 49. De Funiak, 31. Jay, Hamilton, 116. East Tohopekaliga, 69. Johnson, Dr., 52. Eustis, 31. Jujube, 50, 176. Fresh Water, 91. Jumper, 24. George, 31. Jupiter Inlet, 45, 46, 88 ,90 ,93, Harris, 101. 95, 142. lamonia, 31. Jute, 183. Istokroga, 31. Kissimmee, 30, 31. Kansas, 34, 56, 76. Miccasukee, 31. Kaolin, 64. Monroe, 31. Keiffer pear, 49. Okeechobee, 29, 69, 94, 96, 102, Kentucky, 56. 192. Kenworthy, C. J., 40, 52, 57, 135, Orange, 31, 132. 209, 215. Santa Fe, 31. Key Largo, 31, 32. Tohopokaliga, 31. Keys, 32, 43, 161. Worth, 42, 71, 90, 92, ^Q, 143, Key West, 32, 35, 40, 74, 91, 104, 162, 175, 194. 144,162,166, 176, 181, 205, Land-sharks, 105, 226, 207. Laudonniere, 10, 11. Kingsley, 169. Lawson, Dr., 52, 54. Kissimmee, 30, 94, 104, Le Conte, Dr., 52. Kissimmee Lake, 30, 31. Leesburg, 101. Kissimmee Eiver, 32, 94. Lemons, 50, 136. Knight, Mr., 147. Lente, Dr., 52, Knight, P. 0., 195. \ Levers, 190. Kost, Dr., 59, 63, 65, 68. ! Lichee, 173. 248 THE FLO BID A OF TO-DAY. Lignite, 65. Limes, 50, 51, 140, 167. Liraona, 35. Linngeus, 1*70. Locke, E. 0., 142. Logan, Dr., 52. Lombardy, 183. London, 148. Long Branch, 74, 81. Los Angeles, 35. Louisiana, 15, 17, 29, 34, 56, 61, 76, 197. Lowe, John, 142, Lumber, 186. Luteranos, 12. Luxemburg, 112. Macomb, General, 21. McRae, Miss, 18. Magnolia, 87. Magnolia Hotel, 87. Maine, 56. Malaria, 52, 71. Malay, 171. Mamey, 160. " Mammals and Winter Birds of East Florida," 220. Mammee, 51, 159. Mammee sapota, 160. Manatee, 50, 166, 176. Manatee, 221. Manatee River, 60. Mandarin, 87, 178. Mango, 51, 157. Mangosteen, 51, 159. Mannville, Mr., 141. Marble, 66. Mariana, 65. Mariannes, 9. Marietta, 209. Marl, 64. Marmalade-tree, 160. Martin, M., 153. Marvin, Governor, 26. Maryland, 56. Massachusetts, 31, 56, 211. Massacre, Dade, 19. Mastodons, 59. Matanzas, 12. Matthews grove, 133. Mayport, 80, 87. May River, 11, 87. Medicinal barks, 191. Mediterranean, 40. Melbourne, 88. Menendez, 10, 12, 18, 97. Mentone, 40. Merritt's Island, 35. Mexico, 9, 10, 76, 77, 112, 151, 197. Mexico, Gulf of, 63. Miami, 71, 92, 93, 96, 144. Miami River, 121. Micanopy, 24. Miccasukee Lake, 31. Micco, 24. Miccosukees, 25, ll7o Michigan, 56. Millview, 80. Milton, Governor, 25. Mineral waters, 67. Minnesota, 56, 76. Minorcans, 16. Miocene, 60, 61. INDEX. 219 Miruelo, 8. Mississippi, 34, 56, 61, 76. Mississippi River, 9, 10, 14, 2f 44, 62. Missouri, 56. Monroe, 81. Montana, 34. Montiano, 15. Moore, Mr., 141. Moore, Governor, 14, Morphia, 204. Morus alba, 184. Morns Japonica, 184. Morus multicaulis, 184. Moseley, Governor, 25. Mosquitoes, 223. Moss, long, 46, 47, 52. Mounds, 104, 105. Mountain, Table, 29. Mount Whitney, 29. Mulberry, 184. Murat, 98. Murietta, 35. Murray Hall, 81. Muscogees, 117. Naples, King of, 98. Narrows, The, 90. Nassau, 40. Nebraska, 34, 76. Nceld, Mr., 157. Negroes, 19, 113. New England, 18, 19, 28, 72. New Hampshire, 56. New Jersey, 56. New Orleans, 21, 76. New Mexico, 55. Newport, 74. Newport Springs, 68. New Smyrna, 16. New York, 34, 56, 72, 73, 75. Normal College, 129. Norris, J. Hart, 133. North Carolina, 56, 193. Northern Florida, 29, 42, 46, 145. Norway, 112. Nutmeg, 174. Oars, woods for, 191. Oats, 195. Ocean Grove, 81. Ocean routes, 72, 73. Ocilla River, 32. Ocklawaha River, 32, 100, 101. Oeklokonee River, 32. Oglethorpe, Governor, 15. Ohio, 34, 56. Okeechobee drainage, 54, 69, 192. Okeechobee Lake, 29, 30, 31, 69, 94, 96, 102, 192. Old xYleck, 124, 125. Old residents, 108. Oligocene, 61. Olives, 175. Olustec, 71. Opium, 203. OrangeBelt,43,134, 135, 145, 152. Orange-culture, 135. Orange-culture iu California, 135. Orange-culture in Florida, 135. Orange-groves, 131-133. Orange Lake, 31, 132. Orange Park, 87. Orange-quince, 176. 250 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. Oregon, 34, 76. Orlando, 101. Osborne, Field &, 143. Osceola, 24, 125. Otulkee, 24. Otulko-Thlocko, 25. Overland routes, 73. Oxford, 11. Ox-yokes, woods for, 191. Oysters, 205. Pablo Beach, 74, 80, 81. Palatka, 80, 101. Paleontology, 59. Palmer, Dr., 62. Palm-Sunday, 1. Panthers, 220. Papaw, 173. Paper-pulp, 191. Paper towns, 226. Paris, 59, 163, 207. Pascoffer, 24. Pascua Florida, 7. Peace River, 32. Peach, 175. Honey, 175. Peen-To, 175. Pears, 151. Pecan, 176. Peen-To peach, 175. Pemberton Ferry, 80, Pencil- wood, 191. Pennsylvania, 56. Pensacola, 14, 15, 17, 80, 99, 201. Peoples, 108. People's Line, 81, Perry, Governor E. A., 26, 27. Perry, Governor Madison, 25. Peru, 163. Pests, 223. Philadelphia, 73. Pickel, Professor, 64. Piles, 191. Pineapples, 144-146. Pinellas, 106, 107, 157. Pistachio-nut, 177. Plant System, 80. Pleiocene, 60. Pleistocene, 60. Pocahontas, 9. Poland, 112. Polynesia, 169. Pomegranate, 50, 167. Ponce de Leon Hotel, 84. Poppy, 203. Population, 108. Port Royal, 11. Post-tertiary, 60. Poultry, 198, 199. Poway, 35. Powhatan, 9. Productions, 130. Pullman cars, 74, 75. Punta Gorda, 80, 93, 94, 9& Punta Rassa, 40, 104. Quinces, 176. Railway-ties, 191. Railway Routes, 229, Ramie, 186. Reasoner Brothers, 49, 50, 145, 158, 162, 163, 166, 176. IXDEX. 251 Heconstructlon, 26, Red Bluff, 35. Reed, Governor, 18, 20, 26. Renaissance, Spanish, 84. Reptiles, 225. Restoration, 26. Retrocession, 17. Revolution, American, 16. Rhode Island, 56. Ribault, 11, 12. Rice, 192. Richards, Mr., 147. Rio d'Ais, 88. Rio Carabelle, 207. Rio Grande, 10, 14. Rivers, 10-134. Alafia, 32. Appalachicola, 32. Ashley, 14, 63. Caloosahatchee, 32, 61, 70, 94, 101, 143. Chattahoochee, 76. Chipola, 32. Cooper, 63. Hillsborough, 32, 81. Horaosassa, 32, 104. Kissimmee, 32, 94. Manatee, 32, 60, 175. May, 11, 87. Miami, 32, 121. Mississippi, 9, 10, 14, 28, 44, 62. Ocilla, 32. Ocklawaha, 32, 100, 101, 235. Ocklokonee, 32. Peace, 32. St. John's, 10, 11, 30, 32, 46, 81, 87, 101, 134, 231. Rivers, St. Mark's, 32, 68. St. Mary's, 31, 32, 42. Sebastian, 147, 150. j Suwannee, 32, 102, 103, 108. I Wakulla, 32, 100. Withlacoochee, 32, 80. Rock Ledge, 74, 88. Rocky Mountains, 61. Rogel, Padre, 97. Rollers and bearings of machin- ery, 191. Rollins College, 129. Roman baths, 86. Romano, Cape, 42. Routes, ocean, 72. Routes, overland, 73. Russell, A. J., 127. Russia, 112. Russian baths, 86. Rye, 195. Sacramento, 35. Saddle-trees, 191. Sahara, 38. St. Augustine, 7, 10, 13, 18, 35, 67, 74, 80, 82, 87, 97, 128. St. John's BlufiP, 11. St. Louis, 76. St. Luis, Fort, 98. St. Lucie, 42, 90. St. Mark's, 15. St. Paul, 40, 75. Sam Jones, 24. Sand-lands, 68, 146. Sandstone, 66. Sandford, 35, 81, 101, 123, 137. Sandwich-Islanders, 112. 252 TEE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. San Marco, 67, 82, 83. San Marco Hotel, 8*7. San Mateo, 12. Santa Fe Lake, 31. Santa Maria, 11. Santa Rosa Island, 15, 31, 32. Sapodilla, 51, 161. Sapote, 161. Sarasota, 74. Saratoga, '74. Savannah, 73, 75. Schools, 127. Scotland, 112. Sebastian River, 147, 150. Secession, 26. Secoflfee, 24, 117. Seeman, Dr., 163. Seminoles, 17, 21, 24, 104, 107, 117, 123, 125. Seminole wars, 18, 25, 104. Semi-tropical Florida, 29, 43, 45, 50, 101, 134. Settlement, 12. Sharks, land, 226. Sheep, 196. Shells, 208. Shenandoah Valley, 75. Shingles, 191. Ship- and boat-building, 191. Shoe-lasts, 191. Shuttles, 191. Silk, 183. Silver Spring, 100. Silver Spring Run, 100. Sisal hemp, 186. Slavery, 108, 113, 114, Smith, John, 9. Smithsonian Reports, 107. Snakes, 225. Soils, 68. South America, 77, 112, 113. South Carolina, 10, 11, 14, 56, 182, 193. Spain, 15-17, 112. Spaulding, 141. Spanish Main, 13. Spear grove, 133. Spencer, Mr., 175. Sponges, 207. Sporting, 209. Sprague, Captain, 25. Spratt grove, 132. Spring Garden, 133. Springs, 68, 129. Blue, SO, 81. De Funiak, 129. Green Cove, 68, 87. Hampton, 68. Newport, 68. Silver, 30, 100. Suwannee, 68. Tarpon, 74, 81. Wakulla, 100, 101. White Sulphur, 68. State, 25. State College, 64. State Governors, 25. Stearns, Governor, 26. Strawberries, 77, 178. Subtropical Florida, 29, 43, 46, 48, 50, 69, 93, 117, 154, 159. Sugar, 193. Sugar-apple, 51, 163. INDEX, Suwannee River, 32, 42, TG, 102, Tohopokaliga Lake, 31. 105. Tool-handles, 92. Swamps, 69. Tornadoes, 58. Sweden, 112. Trade-winds, 47. Switzerland, 112. Travel, 72. Turban, 120. Table Mountain, 29. Turkeys, wild, 219. Tago, 97. Turkish baths, 86. Tait, J. Selwin, 195. TurnbuU, Dr., 16. Tallahassee, 18, 24, 97, 116, 128, Turtle-eggs, 206. 152, 201. Turtles, 206. Tallahassees, 25. Tyndall, Professor, 38, 39 Tamarind, 51, 166. Tampa, 60, 74, 80, 97, 106. Van Deman, E. B., 80. Tampa Bay, 9, 10, 21. Varnadoe, Captain, 152. Tan-bark, 192. Vegetables, 200. Tanyah, 202. Vegetables, yields of, 202 Tavares, 80, 101. Vera Cruz, 11. Tea, 175. Vermont, 56. Temperature, 33. Vestibuled cars, 74. 25 3 Ten Thousand Islands, 32. Territorial Governors, 18. Territory, 17, 18. Tertiary, 59-61. Texas, 55, 56, 61, 76, 198. " Texas Stockman," 198. Thames, 59. Theobroma, 170. Thomasville, 76, 152. Tiger-Tail, 24. Ti-es, 51. Titusvilie, 80, 8S, 96. Tobacco, 178. Tobacco-boxes, 192. Tobacco Company, 179. Tocoi, 80. Virginia, 14, 43, 56, 75. Von Miiller, 166. Vuelta Abajo, 180. Wacca Palatka, 77. Wadddl, James A., 143. Wagons and carriages, 193. Wakulla Springs, 100, 101. Waldo, 134, 175. Wales, 112. Walker, Governor, 26. Washington, 21. Washington talk, 124. Waycross, 73, 76. Way Key, 98. Weather Bureau, 33. Wee-la-ka, SO. 254 THE FLORIDA OF TO-DAY. West Florida Seminary, 12S. West Indies, VV, 98, 160, 169, 171- West Virginia, 34, 56. Wheat, 195. Wheel-stock, 192. White, J. B., 211. Whitner, Professor, 151, 163, 169, 173, 175, 202. Whitney, Mount, 29. Wigwam, 118. Wild eats, 24, 220. Williams, 18. Williams and Warren, 143. Wilson, agent, 124. Wilson, Dr., 52. Wines, 152, 153. Winter Park, 129. Winthrop, W. W., 203. Wisconsin, 56. Withlacoochee River, 32, 80. Wooden shoes, 192. Woodenware, 192. Worth, General, 21, 23, 97. Worth, Lake, 42, 194. Wy-o-mee, 119, 123. Yack-fruit, 172. Yankee settlers, 112. Yields of vegetables, 202. Youth, Fountain of Perpetual, 67. Yucca, 186. THE END. APPLETONS' GUIDE-BOOKS, A.PPL3T0NS' GENERAL GUIDE TO THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 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