CHAPTER VI.
“Sunnyside”—Orange and Banana Groves—Lemons And Limes—Coffee Trees and Pine-apples—California Grapes—Quality of the Land—Mode of Cultivation—Florida, Past, Present and Future—Increased Production—Better and Cheaper Transportation—Interrogatories And Answers.
HAVING given the reader a hasty outline of the Manatee region, I will add a brief resume of my personal experience at “Sunnyside” during the past eighteen months. On my arrival in Braidentown, in the fall of 1879, my land was a “howling wilderness.” At this time I have a young orange grove of six hundred trees, sixty lemon, fifteen lime, ten guava, half a dozen olive, two soft-shell almond, twenty coffee, four each Japan plum and persimmon, two pomegranate, two cocoa-nut and four Le Conte pear trees, all of which are growing luxuriantly. I also have one acre in bananas and sixty pine-apple plants, both of which will bear fruit next year. Around the fence inclosing my house lot, I have sixty California grape-vines of the choicest varieties, viz.: Flaming Tokay, White Muscat of Alexandria, Mission and Rose of Peru. The vines are looking well, and will bear fruit next year.
The land on which I am located is spruce-pine, interspersed with water-oak and scrub palmetto, which would be pronounced by the average Floridian worthless. I had at the commencement, and still have, abiding faith in the white sand of Florida with a mulatto sub-soil. No matter how white the surface, if underlaid by a mulatto or yellow sub-soil, the citrus family will thrive. The foliage of my young trees is dark green, and their vigorous growth astonishes the “crackers,” who predicted a failure. Owing to the mildness of the climate—my location being exempt from frost—my trees grew all last winter. My orange trees are set in parallel rows, thirty feet apart each way; the lemon and lime trees twenty-five feet apart; the bananas twelve feet, and the pineapples two feet apart. I hoe my grove every two months, and plow it four times a year. Thus, by keeping the soil constantly tickled with the hoe, my trees laugh with a bountiful foliage. What I have done, can be performed by others. There is no secret about the matter. We welcome immigrants from the frigid North, from the prairies of the West, and from the lands beyond the sea. To all we say, come and tarry with us.
Florida, the first State belonging to the Union, discovered and settled by Europeans, has, during the past 350 years, been hustled about from pillar to post like a shuttle-cock. The repeated Indian wars from 1816 to 1858, rendered life so insecure, that the early settlers literally carried their lives in their hands. Is it then a matter of surprise that Florida is so sparsely populated? Mr. J. S. Adams, former Commissioner of Immigration, truthfully remarks: “The wonder truly is, not that she has not attained a more flourishing condition, but that she exists at all, and that her boundless forests, her lovely rivers and her beautiful lakes are not fast locked in the silent embrace of a moveless desolation.” Since slavery, which rested like an incubus of original sin on the soil of Florida, has been removed, immigration has been pouring in from the North and the West, and from the isles of the ocean. Germany, Italy, France and England have each furnished their quota, and the forests along the line of the railroads, as well as those accessible by steamboats, are beginning to show the effects of an advanced civilization. The gigantic undertaking of draining Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades, together with the construction of a ship canal, connecting the Atlantic Ocean with the Gulf of Mexico, by Mr. Hamilton Disston, of Philadelphia, and his coadjutors, is proof positive that a new era is beginning to dawn on the Land of Flowers, and, ere many years, the southern portion of the State will be one vast orange grove, interspersed with the guava, lemon, lime, pine-apple and banana. I hear the skeptic say: “You will overstock the market, and your fruit will not pay the cost of transportation.” The orange par excellence can be grown only in the soil of Florida, therefore competition with foreign countries need not be feared. Florida will soon be able to supply the cities of the Mediterranean with a superior fruit to that grown on their own shores, and more cheaply. Increased production and transportation will cause a corresponding reduction in freight, and also insure greater and better facilities in the modes of transportation. There will also be a large reduction in price to the consumer, which will enable the man of limited means—in other words, the poor man—to indulge with the millionaire in the daily luxury of the golden apple of the Hesperides—the Florida orange. The above may be deemed by some persons chimerical, but time, the great arbiter of events, will solve the problem.
By every mail I am in receipt of letters asking all manner of questions in relation to the climate, soil, productions, etc., of this part of Florida. At first I cheerfully complied with the requests of my numerous correspondents, but the novelty has worn off, and the task has become slightly monotonous. Recently, I received a four-page capsheet letter from a gentleman in Utah Territory, to which was appended seventeen interrogatories in relation to the Gulf Coast of South Florida. That straw broke the camel’s back, and, in reply to the following question: “I see by the last census that Manatee County has a population of over 4,000, and not a death recorded for 1880. Do people ever die there?” I wrote immediately, “Hardly ever. When we want to start a graveyard, we kill a man.” I am firmly impressed with the belief that my Mormon correspondent, with a “family of ten persons,” will not immigrate to the Land of Flowers. Below will be found twenty-five questions in relation to Florida, from correspondents the “wide world over,” with answers appended:
1st. “At any time of the year do you have severe storms of thunder and lightning?”