FLORIDA lies between the degrees of twenty-five and thirty-one north latitude, and eighty to eighty-eight west longitude from Greenwich. The northern boundary being nearly three hundred and fifty miles from east to west, and its length from north to south, nearly four hundred miles. It is in the same latitude as Central Arabia, Northern Hindostan, the Desert of Sahara, the northern portion of Burmah, the southern part of China and Northern Mexico. The average width of the peninsula is about eighty miles, and every part is fanned by either the Trade or Gulf winds, rendering the air delightfully pleasant in midsummer. The most marked geographical feature of the State is the enormous extent of coastline—the Atlantic and Gulf exceeding eleven hundred miles, with numerous large bays, offering great facilities for commercial intercourse. The northern part of the State is hilly and rolling. Midway of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, an elevated ridge extends through Middle and South Florida to Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades, gradually sloping to the Atlantic Ocean on the east and to the waters of the Gulf of Mexico on the west. The elevated lands are mostly pine, interspersed with black-jack, post, and water-oak. At the base and along the water courses, are rich hammock lands bordered with flat and rolling prairie, with the everlasting scrub palmetto everywhere. The southern portion of the State is at this time a vast cattle range, embracing thousands of acres on which a surveyor’s chain has never fallen.

In 1860, the population of Florida was 140,000; in 1880, it was 267,000, and at this time, it is probably in round numbers 300,000. When the vast area of the State, sixty thousand square miles, comprising nearly thirty-eight million acres of land, is taken into consideration, it will be seen that we are not badly crowded. The sale by Governor Bloxham of four million acres of “swamp land” to the Disston and Anglo-German syndicates is a mere bagatelle.

The county in which I reside—Manatee—is nearly as large as the combined States of Connecticut and Rhode Island. It is truly a county of “magnificent distances,” the county seat, Pine Level, being forty miles south of the villages of Braidentown and Manatee, on its northern border. “No pent-up Utica contracts our powers.” We do things on a large scale. We raise the most luscious oranges, the largest watermelons, and the most appetizing pineapples and bananas on the face of the earth; and I do not think I elongate the truth when I say, that in point of size our alligators, mosquitoes, and grasshoppers will compare favorably with those of any other country. Our frogs are also as sprightly as Mark Twain’s “jumping frog of the Calaveras.” Our cucumbers, tomatoes, snap-beans, squashes, and cabbages reach the cities of the North and West three months in advance of any other State of the Union.

If there is one thing above all others of which we feel justly proud, it is our superb climate. The “glorious climate of California,” and the sunny clime and golden skies of Italy bear no comparison with it. It is indescribable, and must be seen and felt in order to be fully appreciated. A Baptist clergyman—Hard-shell—who visited Braidentown last winter, was so fascinated and infatuated with the climate and surroundings that he said he verily believed that he was then nearer Paradise than he ever expected to be again while in the flesh.

A timid person occasionally asks, “Are there Indians still in Florida?” A remnant of the once warlike Creeks and Seminoles—scarcely two hundred souls, including males, squaws, and papooses—still have an abiding place on the Caloosahatchee, the Kissimmee, and in the Big Cypress Swamp, south of Lake Okeechobee. They are peaceably disposed, and only mingle with the whites when they visit the country stores to dispose of their peltry and game and replenish their ammunition. Chipco and the elder Tigertail, two of their former chiefs, have been called to the “happy hunting-grounds” during the past two years. The former was a centenarian, having attained the green old age of one hundred and ten years. He participated in the Dade massacre, near Brooksville, in 1835. The latter died by the visitation of God, having been killed by lightning while crossing the Kissimmee in his canoe. The Indians have several negro slaves in their secluded camps, who have never been informed that the Emancipation Proclamation of the martyred Lincoln loosened their shackles and made them free men.

The questions are frequently asked: “What crops can you raise in Florida? What can be grown on your soil?” The agricultural, horticultural, and pomological products of Florida are more varied than those of any other State of the Union. The northern, northeastern, and northwestern parts of the State, as well as Middle Florida, are admirably adapted to the cultivation of oats, barley, corn, Irish potatoes, cotton, and tobacco. At the Atlanta Exposition, two years ago, Florida was awarded the first premium for sea island cotton, rice, and sugar. The peach, plum, Le Conte pear, several varieties of the apple and grape, and all the small fruits are indigenous to the soil and climate of those portions of the State. South Florida, composed of the counties of Hernando, Sumter, Orange, Volusia, Brevard, Polk, Hillsborough, Manatee, Monroe, and Dade, is the land of the orange and all semi-tropical fruits. The guava, pineapple, banana, cocoanut, date, sugar-apple, sapodilla, mango, alligator-pear, and other tropical fruits thrive admirably in the lower counties, south of the twenty-eighth degree of latitude. South Florida is also the natural home of the sugar-cane. There it ratoons from six to eight years and tassels. The cultivation of early vegetables for the northern and western markets is also a large and remunerative industry, which has been recently inaugurated on the hammocks bordering the Manatee Bay, on the Indian River, and on the numerous keys or islands along the Gulf coast, between Sarasota and Cape Sable. The cassava has also proved to be a remunerative crop in South Florida when properly cultivated. The introduction of jute and Sisal hemp, in the near future, will also add materially to the wealth of the southern counties of the State. The flat prairie and swamp lands, now considered almost worthless for agricultural purposes, will then blossom as the rose.

Dwelling in an almost perpetual summer, one would naturally suppose that the climate would prove enervating to the human system. Such is not the fact. In midsummer the weather is of a very pleasant temperature, the nights being uniformly cool, and sultry days, so common in the North, of very rare occurrence. So agreeable are the summers, there is little choice between them and the winters, and many of the oldest settlers prefer the former. Florida, in common with other States of the Union, is sometimes afflicted with drouths, and there is sometimes a superabundance of rain; but, as a general rule, the seasons are regular and well adapted to all the valuable staples of the country. Frequent showers occur during the spring and early summer, and about the first of July the rainy season fairly sets in and continues until the first of October. Although rain falls on nearly every day during this season, it seldom ever rains all day. These rains fall in heavy showers, generally accompanied by thunder and lightning, but are seldom of more than two hours’ duration. They generally occur early in the afternoon, leaving for the balance of the day a cloudless sky and a delightfully cool atmosphere. Paradoxical as it may seem, our winters are warmer and our summers cooler than those of the Northern and Western States. The mercury in the thermometer rarely reaches 96° Fahrenheit in midsummer, and at Braidentown, Manatee County, only on two occasions during the past four years has it fallen as low as 38°.

The general healthfulness of Florida is proverbial. That its climate is more salubrious than that of any other State of the Union is clearly established by the medical statistics of the army, as well as by the last census returns. The report of the Surgeon General of the United States Army, demonstrates the fact that diseases which result from malaria are of a much milder type in Florida than in any other part of the United States. Among the troops serving in Florida, the number of deaths to the number of cases of remittent fever has been much less than in any other portion of the Union. In the Middle Division of the United States, the proportion is one death to thirty-six cases of remittent fever; in the Northern Division, one to fifty-two; in the Southern Division, one to fifty-four; in Texas, one in seventy-eight; in California, one in one hundred and twenty-two; in New Mexico, one in one hundred and forty-eight; while in Florida, it is but one in two hundred and eighty-seven. As a health resort for invalids suffering from pulmonary complaints, Florida stands pre-eminent. Her invigorating, balsamic breezes, with healing on their wings, soon banish the hectic flush from the cheek of the invalid, and health and strength return once more to cheer and gladden the hearts of despairing friends.

A description of Florida lands published by Dr. Byrne in 1860 applies with equal truthfulness at the present time. In every State and Territory in the Union there is a large proportion of barren and poor lands, but the ratio of these lands differ greatly in the different States. Florida has a due proportion of poor lands, but compared with other States, the ratio of her barren and worthless lands is very small. With the exception of the Everglades and her irreclaimable swamp lands, there is scarcely an acre in the whole State of Florida that is entirely worthless, or which cannot be made, under her tropical climate, tributary to some agricultural production. Lands which in a more northern climate would be utterly worthless, will in Florida, owing to her tropical character, yield valuable productions. For example, the poorest pine lands of Florida will produce without fertilizing a luxuriant crop of Sisal hemp, which yields more profit to the acre than the richest land when cultivated in sugar, cotton, and tobacco. So it is with jute and numerous other valuable tropical products that are adapted to the lands that in more northern climates would yield nothing to agriculture. Besides this, there are in Florida no mountain wastes, and most of the land not under cultivation is covered with valuable timber.

The classification of lands in common use being based on their elevation and the character of their vegetable growth, does not indicate very fully the character of the soil. There are the hammock, pine, and swamp lands. Then there is the high or light hammock, and the low or heavy hammock. Of pine lands, there are the first, second, and third rate. The characteristic of hammock land as distinguished from pine is in the fact of its being covered with a growth of underbrush and vines, while the pine lands are open. Whenever, then, the land is not so low as to be called swamp, and produces an undergrowth of shrubbery, it is called hammock.

The school lands of Florida—five hundred and seventy thousand acres—are subject to entry at from one dollar and twenty-five cents to seven dollars per acre, according to quality and location. The swamp lands—eight and a half million acres—belonging to the State on the 1st of May, 1882, are graded in price according to the number of acres, varying from one dollar per acre for a tract of forty acres down to seventy-five to seventy cents per acre for tracts of six hundred and forty acres and over. The Disston Syndicate paid twenty-five cents per acre for four million acres of swamp land, in bodies of ten thousand acres each. The commutation price of United States lands is one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre. Unimproved lands in the hands of private parties are selling at from five to fifteen dollars per acre; improved land at from twenty to fifty dollars per acre, the value depending on location, latitude, improvements, etc. There are also large tracts of land in Florida known as “Spanish grants,” which are chiefly owned by non-residents, and which can be purchased at reasonable prices.

Governor Bloxham recently stated that the present financial condition of Florida is a fit subject for congratulation. There is at all times money in the Treasury to pay accrued liabilities, while the amount of the bonded debt is only one and a quarter millions, and the assessed value of the property of the State is thirty-seven millions. The condition of our public schools is decidedly progressive. There are at this time over twelve hundred schools in the State, and last year a fund of $139,000 was raised to support them.

Places of worship may be found in all our settlements; not gorgeous edifices, with steeples and spires pointing heavenward, but unpretentious and comfortable structures, in which all denominations of Christians assemble to worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences. The Methodists are the most numerous. Next in point of numbers, the Baptists of different grades of shell, from hard to soft, may be enumerated. Then come the Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Campbellites, and Catholics, with a slight sprinkling of other denominations by way of variety. The religious status of the population of Florida, like the climate, is rather above the average of other sections of the Union. There is an indescribable element in the climate of Florida which is conducive of religious fervor. Several immigrants from the North and West, whose piety never cropped out until their arrival in Florida, have been suddenly seized with a call to preach. In some parts of South Florida, local preachers are nearly as numerous as laymen, and it is often highly amusing to hear them expound the Scriptures, and see them wrestle with theology.

The Fountain of Youth, sought for in vain by Ponce de Leon three hundred and seventy years ago, is in Florida. Time has not dried up the source of its health-giving, its life-giving, waters. They flow as of yore, and every one who thirsteth can partake of them freely. Invalids and pleasure-seekers find it in our glorious climate, in our invigorating breezes, which blow as soft and balmy as those from Ceylon’s isle; in our beautiful flowers and almost perpetual verdure, and in the total absence of the chilling winds and frosts of the North and West, which render life almost unendurable. De Soto and his followers sought our shores in quest of El Dorado. That also is in Florida. You see it in our productive soil, in our vast orange groves, in our bananas, pineapples, guavas, and pomegranates, which no other State of the Union can produce. Who then shall say that both the “Fountain of Youth” and “El Dorado” are not within the boundaries of Florida? Our climate is a perpetual summer; the husbandman tickles the soil with the plow and hoe, and it laughs with an abundant harvest; the stately magnolias and graceful palms lock hands in our hammocks and wave their evergreen foliage as a token of welcome to immigrants, and wild flowers gladden the eye and perfume the air with their fragrance.