Sponge reefs also occur at various parts of the coast and many small vessels are employed in collecting these animals and drying them for the market.
The low lands along the coast are often rich, but they are unhealthy. The United States Army Medical Reports pronounce them the most unhealthy parts of the peninsula. This, however, does not apply to the sandy pine tracts south of Tampa Bay, many of which still bear the imprint of an extended cultivation in some past time.
TAMPA.
Hotels.—*Florida House, Orange Grove Hotel, both $2.00 per day, $35.00 to $40.00 per month.
Boarding Houses.—Several in number, from $5.00 to $10.00 per week.
Mails.—By steamer, twice weekly; to Brookville, weekly.
Churches.—Baptist, Methodist, Roman Catholic.
Newspapers.—The True Southerner, republican; the Florida Peninsular, democratic, both weekly.
Sailboats and Horses, about $1.00 per day.
Tampa is a town of 600 inhabitants, on the left (east) bank of Hillsborough river, where it empties into Hillsborough bay. It is thirty miles from the light house at the entrance of the harbor. The soil is poor, covered chiefly with pine, red oak and palmettos.