And now in relation to the general subject of farming in Florida. Our own region east of the St. John's River is properly a little sandy belt of land, about eighteen miles wide, washed by the Atlantic Ocean on one side, and the St. John's River on the other. It is not by any means so well adapted to stock-farming or general farming as the western side of the river. Its principal value is in fruit-farming; and it will appear, by a voyage up the river, that all the finest old orange-groves and all the new orange-plantations are on the eastern side of the river.
The presence, on either side, of two great bodies of water, produces a more moist and equable climate, and less liability to frosts. In the great freeze of 1835, the orange-groves of the west bank were killed beyond recovery; while the fine groves of Mandarin sprang up again from the root, and have been vigorous bearers for years since.
But opposite Mandarin, along the western shore, lie miles and miles of splendid land—which in the olden time produced cotton of the finest quality, sugar, rice, sweet-potatoes—now growing back into forest with a tropical rapidity. The land lies high, and affords fine sites for dwellings; and the region is comparatively healthy. Then Hibernia, Magnolia, and Green Cove, on the one side, and Jacksonville on the other, show perfect assemblages of boarding-houses and hotels, where ready market might be found for what good farmers might raise. A colony of farmers coming out and settling here together, bringing with them church and schoolhouse, with a minister skilled like St. Bernard both in husbandry and divinity, might soon create a thrifty farming-village. We will close this chapter with an extract from a letter of a Northern emigrant recently settled at Newport, on the north part of Appalachicola Bay.
Sept. 22, 1872.
I have been haying this month: in fact I had mowed my orange-grove, a square of two acres, from time to time, all summer. But this month a field of two acres had a heavy burden of grass, with cow-pease intermixed. In some parts of the field, there certainly would be at the rate of three tons to the acre. The whole field would average one ton to the acre. So I went at it with a good Northern scythe, and mowed every morning an hour or two. The hay was perfectly cured by five p.m., same day, and put in barn. The land, being in ridges, made mowing difficult. Next year I mean to lay that land down to grass, taking out stumps, and making smooth, sowing rye and clover. I shall plough it now as soon as the hay is all made, and sow the rye and clover immediately. I have five cows that give milk, and four that should come in soon. These, with their calves, I shall feed through the months when the grass is poor. I have also a yoke of oxen and four young steers, with Trim the mule. I have already in the barn three to four tons of hay and corn-fodder, and two acres of cow-pease cured, to be used as hay. I hope to have five hundred bushels of sweet-potatoes, which, for stock, are equal to corn. I made a hundred and ten bushels of corn, twenty-five to the acre. My cane is doing moderately well. Hope to have all the seed I want to plant fourteen acres next year. Bananas thrive beautifully; shall have fifty offsets to set out this winter; also three or four thousand oranges, all large-sized and fair.
All these facts go to show, that, while Florida cannot compete with the Northern and Western States as a grass-raising State, yet there are other advantages in her climate and productions which make stock-farming feasible and profitable. The disadvantages of her burning climate may, to a degree, be evaded and overcome by the application of the same patient industry and ingenuity which rendered fruitful the iron soil and freezing climate of the New-England States.
THE GRAND TOUR UP RIVER.
HE St. John's is the grand water-highway through some of the most beautiful portions of Florida; and tourists, safely seated at ease on the decks of steamers, can penetrate into the mysteries and wonders of unbroken tropical forests.