CLIMATE-SEEKING IN AMERICA.
By GEO. ALFRED TOWNSEND.
As nations rise in wealth, comfort and communications, they discover that the simplest of all things, mere climate or air, is of the greatest value. The English race paid early attention to this question and seized upon the sheltered positions, the spas and baths as places of resort both for weak systems and for luxurious existence. Religion itself conveniently placed its miracles and chapels where the best climate or the most healing waters were found.
Soon after America was discovered there spread through the most successful nations a belief in a Golden Spring, an El Dorado, and this was pursued notably in Florida, where many yet believe that the most golden spring is to be found, as its season hardly begins till February or March, and is used to offset a lingering winter and the angry winds of the northern sea coast country.
One of the most notable instances of seeking a climate in our colonial history is that of Sir William Johnson, who lived among the six nations of Indians about the Mohawk, and being a portly man with European habits of life, he found his old age, in spite of his active and military youth, affected by gouts and by the heavy stagnant air of the limestone valleys in which he lived, and he was one of the first Americans to select at once a seacoast resort and the mineral springs. We need not repeat the story of how the Indians, among whom he married, concluded in their affection for him to show him their celebrated mineral spring, and took him on a litter through hidden paths to the Tufa rock of Saratoga, where he, the first of white men, saw the reflection of his face in the meteoric water there. It is not as well known that Sir William Johnson also made himself a road to the sea beach, near New London, where he went in summer, not for mineral water, but for sea air, which he esteemed so much more valuable.
Climate, indeed, is one of the most important subjects to be considered by superior men, and the earliest travelers in this country noted down where they escaped the insects, where the nights were cool, where the trade winds blew, etc. The oranges of Florida, for instance, were noted by the old Spanish chroniclers as the finest that grew in their immense dominions, and that perfection is kept up to the present time.