The island of Santa Catharina was originally settled by the Spanish; Cabeza de Vaca landed here in 1542 and marched hence across country to Asuncion, Paraguay. The Spanish failed to establish a permanent colony, however, and the Portuguese took possession. The island was captured by a Spanish expedition under Viceroy Zeballos in 1777. A boundary treaty of that same year restored it to Portugal. In 1894 Santa Catharina fell into the possession of revolutionists against the government of President Floriano Peixoto. With the collapse of the revolution the city was occupied by the government forces, and its name was then changed to Florianopolis in honour of the president of the republic.

FLORIDA, the most southern of the United States of America, situated between 24° 30′ and 31° N. lat. and 79° 48′ and 87° 38′ W. long. It is bounded N. by Georgia and Alabama, E. by the Atlantic Ocean, S. by the Strait of Florida, which separates it from Cuba, and by the Gulf of Mexico, and W. by Alabama and the Gulf. The Florida Keys, a chain of islands extending in a general south-westerly direction from Biscayne Bay, are included in the state boundaries, and the city of Key West, on an island of the same name, is the seat of justice of Monroe county. The total area of the state is 58,666 sq. m., of which 3805 sq. m. are water surface. The coast line is greater than that of any other state, extending 472 m. on the Atlantic and 674 m. on the Gulf Coast.

The peculiar outline of Florida gives it the name of “Peninsula State.” The average elevation of the surface of the state above the sea-level is less than that of any other state except Louisiana, but there is not the monotony of unbroken level which descriptions and maps often suggest. The N.W. portion of the state is, topographically, similar to south-eastern Alabama, being a rolling, hilly country; the eastern section is a part of the Atlantic coastal plain; the western coast line is less regular than the eastern, being indented by a number of bays and harbours, the largest of which are Charlotte Harbour, Tampa Bay and Pensacola Bay. Along much of the western coast and along nearly the whole of the eastern coast extends a line of sand reefs and narrow islands, enclosing shallow and narrow bodies of water, such as Indian river and Lake Worth—called rivers, lakes, lagoons, bays and harbours. In the central part of the state there is a ridge, extending N. and S. and forming a divide, separating the streams of the east coast from those of the west. Its highest elevation above sea-level is about 300 ft. The central region is remarkable for its large number of lakes, approximately 30,000 between Gainesville in Alachua county, and Lake Okeechobee. They are due largely to sinkholes or depressions caused by solution of the limestone of the region. Many of the lakes are connected by subterranean channels, and a change in the surface of one lake is often accompanied by a change in the surface of another. By far the largest of these lakes, nearly all of them shallow, is Lake Okeechobee, a body of water about 1250 sq. m. in area and almost uniformly shallow, its depth seldom being greater than 15 ft. Caloosahatchee river, flowing into the Gulf of Mexico near Charlotte Harbour, is its principal outlet. Among the other lakes are Orange, Crescent, George, Weir, Harris, Eustis, Apopka, Tohopekaliga, Kissimmee and Istokpoga. The chief feature of the southern portion of the state is the Everglades (q.v.), the term “Everglade State” being popularly applied to Florida. Within the state there are many swamps, the largest of which are the Big Cypress Swamp in the S. adjoining the Everglades on the W., and Okefinokee Swamp, extending from Georgia into the N.E. part of the state.

A peculiar feature of the drainage of the state is the large number of subterranean streams and of springs, always found to a greater or less extent in limestone regions. Some of them are of great size. Silver Spring and Blue Spring in Marion county, Blue Spring and Orange City Mineral Spring in Volusia county, Chipola Spring near Marianna in Jackson county, Espiritu Santo Spring near Tampa in Hillsboro county, Magnolia Springs in Clay county, Suwanee Springs in Suwanee county, White Sulphur Springs in Hamilton county, the Wekiva Springs in Orange county, and Wakulla Spring, Newport Sulphur Spring and Panacea Mineral Spring in Wakulla county are the most noteworthy. Many of the springs have curative properties, one of them, the Green Cove Spring in Clay county, discharging about 3000 gallons of sulphuretted water per minute. Not far from St Augustine a spring bursts through the sea itself with such force that the ocean breakers roll back from it as from a sunken reef. The springs often merge into lakes, and lake systems are usually the sources of the rivers, Lake George being the principal source of the St Johns, and Lake Kissimmee of the Kissimmee, while a number of smaller lakes are the source of the Oklawaha, one of the most beautiful of the Floridian rivers.

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Of the rivers the most important are the St Johns, which flows N. from about the middle of the peninsula, empties into the Atlantic a short distance below Jacksonville, and is navigable for about 250 m. from its mouth, the Withlacoochee, flowing in a general north-westerly direction from its source in the N.E. part of Polk county, and forming near its entrance into the Gulf of Mexico the boundary between Levy and Citrus counties, and four rivers, the Escambia, the Choctawatchee, the Apalachicola, and the Suwanee, having their sources in other states and traversing the north-western part of Florida. On account of its sand reefs, the east coast has not so many harbours as the west coast. The most important harbours are at Fernandina, St Augustine, and Miami on the E. coast, and at Tampa, Key West and Pensacola on the W. coast.

The soils of Florida have sand as a common ingredient.[1] They may be divided into three classes: the pine lands, which often have a surface of dark vegetable mould, under which is a sandy loam resting on a substratum of clay, marl or limestone—areas of such soil are found throughout the state; the “hammocks,” which have soil of similar ingredients and are interspersed with the pine lands—large areas of this soil occur in Levy, Alachua, Citrus, Hernando, Pasco, Gadsden, Leon, Madison, Jefferson and Jackson counties; and the alluvial swamp lands, chiefly in E. and S. Florida, the richest class, which require drainage to fit them for cultivation.