ART. II.-FLORIDA: ITS PEOPLE AND ITS PRODUC TIONS.

FLORIDA ranks among the largest of our States, having an area of nearly sixty thousand square miles. It stretches from the Georgia line southward about four hundred and fifty miles, and the peninsula has an average breadth of nearly a hundred miles, with at no point an elevation above tide-water of over five hundred feet. Its twelve hundred miles of shore line have such shallow waters that few good harbors exist. The surface of the State is, however, pleasantly cut in all directions by navigable rivers, and lakes favoring internal travel and commerce. Its lands, classified as swamp, savanna, low hummock, high hummock, and pine, embrace a fertility and adaptation not surpassed, if indeed equaled, in America. Its pine forests are majestic and park-like, rich in choice lumber, and in its hummocks grow the cypress, the red, live, and water oak, the hickory, magnolia, bay, gum, palmetto, dogwood, and other varieties. There are numerous mineral springs scattered through the State, and its subterranean streams are truly marvelous. The rain-fall and the watershed of the State are not sufficient to account for the abundant lakes and rivers, these being supplemented by enormous fountains bursting up through the limestone crust, sometimes forming navigable streams at their fountain heads, with waters so deep and blue as to be objects of perpetual study and wonder. The swamp and "waste" lands of Florida are not as extensive as was formerly supposed, and its relative acreage of productive soil compares favorably with any of the Middle or Eastern States. Nearly all the lakes and rivers are skirted with belts of hummock land often rich to the last degree of fertility, covered with ponderous forests hung with wild vines and fringed with moss.

The pine lands vastly predominate, and bid fair to become the most prized and useful part of it. These are easily cleared and subdued, are healthful, with sightly eminences for building places, their soil, when moderately fertilized, being quick and well adapted to every agricultural and horticultural use. The chief rivers are the St. John's, a long, broad, imposing stream of a thousand miles; the Indian River, a narrow lagoon on the

eastern coast; the Ocklawaha, the most crooked and weird. stream on the globe; the Appalachicola, the Ocklochonnee, the Perdido, the St. Mary's, the Suwanee, the Hillsborough, the Withlacoochee, the Kissimmee, and the Caloosahatchie. Its chief lakes are Orange, Eustis, Griffin, Harris, Apopka, Monroe, George, Jackson, Santa Fé, Pansoffkee, Butler, Tohopekaliga, Cypress, Marianna, and Okechobee, besides a legion of smaller ones scattered throughout the center of the entire peninsula. These sparkling bodies of pure soft water abound with fish of great size, and the forests with game.

The Florida peninsula lies in the exact latitude of northern Mexico, Central Arabia, Hindustan, and China, but it has a climate entirely different and vastly more enjoyable than any of those countries. To one reared in the Northern States it seems at first absurd to suppose that human life below the twenty-ninth parallel can be rendered truly enjoyable during all the seasons of the year. Peninsular Florida is in its climate singularly unlike every thing else in America. It has more rain and less cold than Southern California, and is never scalded by such heated waves as are of annual occurrence as far north as the city of Albany. The insular position of this narrow belt of country, extending southward between vast bodies of salt water, washed along its entire eastern border by the Gulf Stream, and on its western by the equally tropical waters of the Gulf of Mexico, renders winter in any severe sense quite impossible. And the alleviations from excessive heats are equally marked. The humidity of the atmosphere, favored by abundant inland lakes and forests, the constant sea breezes, resulting from this proximity to vast oceanic currents, the sweep of the tradewinds, and the usual local aerial disturbances, breathe through this entire region a moist, agreeable, pure, but modified sea atmosphere. The storms are not usually severe. The sun comes close over head at mid-day with fire in its ray, but a slight shade amid such a breeze affords the condition of comfort. Sunstrokes are entirely uncommon, and laboring men from any part of the world pursue out-door toils the entire year with impunity.

Florida is coming to be recognized as the sanitarium of America. A discerning military chieftain who had examined all the Indian tribes of the country, declared years ago that the

Florida Seminoles possessed the finest physique of them all. There are scarcely any chronic diseases found among families who have resided a dozen years in the State. There is a gratifying relief from rheumatism, neuralgia, catarrh, asthma, bronchitis, diphtheria, cholera, small-pox, measles, malignant fevers, and pulmonary consumption. Hydrophobia is not heard of. Some light types of a few of the above-named diseases may occur, but they are unusual. Lime being an omnipresent factor in the substratum of the soil, existing in solid blocks through the stony districts, in the vast unmeasured marl-beds, and in more. subtile compounds, we see a natural cause for the absence of miasma, and for a soil of wondrous fertility. The salubrity of this district is further augmented by a dry, porous soil, bright sunshine, pure sea atmosphere, equable temperature admitting of open-air pursuits every day of the year, and the facilities for a varied diet of fresh vegetables and fruits. Climatic changes produce much of the sickness of the world. Two sevenths of all deaths are said to result from pulmonary troubles, and statistics show that phthisis steadily decreases from Maine to Florida. People dwelling in a climate that rarely produces a frost, and where the mercury seldom reaches ninety-five, are not much afflicted by climatic exposures. Florida has its low malarial districts where "chills and fever" reign, but the high pine ridges with their balsamic breezes are cheerful and salubrious above every thing else yet found.

Colonies began the work of settlement in Florida forty-two years earlier than at Jamestown, and fifty-five years earlier than at Plymouth. But for two long centuries it was the football and trading stock of tyrants and the lurking place of pirates. In 1819 it was ceded to the United States, but was not advanced to the dignity of a State until 1845. An effort to remove the Indians beyond the Mississippi on the part of the United States Government led to the bloody and expensive Seminole War, which dragged its weary length from 1835 to 1842, and retarded the settlement of this fair district for a generation. In 1861, like its contiguous sister States, it seceded, and lay for several years the battle-ground of contending forces. A reconstructed State government began its reign July 4, 1868, so that the State has enjoyed only fourteen years for free and proper development.

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Previous to the war of '61, though sparsely populated, it was a slave State, and made some progress in the prevailing southern industries of that period. In its northern counties, (the Tallahassee region,) settled by many cultured families from North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland, were many extensive cotton plantations, yielding a bale to the acre of the famous sea-island variety, requiring the toil of a negro for the production of each bale. Along the St. John's, the Indian River, around the great lakes of Sumter County, and elsewhere, the rich hummocks were cleared for the production of the sugar-cane. On the gulf coast, in the region of Manatee, was the Gamble, afterward known as the Cofield and Davis plantation, the most extensive and best-equipped sugar plantation in Florida. Fourteen hundred acres of rich hummock land had been cleared at an expense of seventy-five dollars per acre, and inclosed in one field of cane, which was worked by two hundred slaves. A sugar refinery, with all needed appliances, costing half a million, completed the outfit. All these large enterprises collapsed with emancipation, and many of the proprietors left the State. The partially grown forests on these rich bottoms, and the ruins of vast structures, with shattered machinery, tell the tale of the past.

Florida has no large cities, but it has many rising, interesting towns. St. Augustine, founded by the Spaniards fifty-five years before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, with its narrow, crooked, shell-paved streets, its ancient structures and sea-wall of coquina stone, its old cathedral, its gates of wood three hundred years old, is an interesting point. Jacksonville, near the mouth of the St. John's, and the entrepôt to that part of the State, is the largest and most city-like of all its towns. Its streets, though not paved, are well arranged, well lighted, and lined with neat, and, in some parts, with massive, structures. There are many large hotels and business houses, with good churches and schools. The population is so cosmopolitan that the stranger coming from any place in America feels himself at home. This is destined to become a very large and prosperous business center. For a hundred miles up the St. John's River are scattered in close proximity neat little towns, Palatka, with a population of about fifteen hundred, being the largest. Gainesville, on the line of the Transit Railroad, with a popula

tion of nearly two thousand, and containing the United States Land Office for the State, is a pleasant, modern-built town. Fernandina on Amelia Island, and Cedar Keys on the Gulf, one hundred and fifty miles apart, form the termini of the Transit Railroad, the former being a large, thriving seaport town, and the latter, though not large, is still the theater of a very considerable wholesale trade. Tallahassee, the capital of the State, founded in 1821, is situated on a cluster of hills, with old, substantial structures, stately trees, and the best-kept flower gardens of the sunny South. Key West, the most southern United States town, claims to be the largest in Florida. It stands beside the track of all the steamship lines running to and from Mexico, Central America, Texas, and all the gulf coast cities. It is only eight hours' sail from Havana. The buildings, nearly all one-story structures, are painted white. Aside from the government dock, barracks, and fortifications, cigar manufacture attracts the greatest attention. Over eighty licensed cigar manufactories are in operation, producing at present thirty-five million cigars annually. Tampa, Ocala, Sanford, Orlando, and Leesburg, are all rapidly rising towns, the latter having more than doubled its population and commerce during the last two years. The architecture throughout the State is generally plain and simple, and a twostory house outside of large towns is the exception. The climate is so mild that any structure that sheds rain is comfortable, so that a house thoroughly well finished and furnished is rarely found. And as there are no demands for housing cattle and fodder, barns are smaller and more meager than houses. But what is lacking in architecture is usually made up in plants, flowers, and rare trees. The swamps, hummocks, and pine ridges abound with wild flowers of great beauty. Nothing is richer than the pure, white, waxy flower of the magnoliatree, perhaps ten inches in diameter, blooming in the forest forty feet above the soil. The pond-lily, the climbing yellow jessamine, with its golden bells; the woodbine, with its crimson clusters; the flaming Virginia trumpet-creeper, and many others, need only to be seen to be admired. In the cultivated yards are seen the domesticated lilies "arrayed" in all their glory, violets, geraniums, cactuses, the century plant, with its long, thick, sword-shaped leaves, and which blooms but once