A History of Florida

Many decades ago the word Florida was synonymous with mosquitoes, alligators, snakes, and Indians. As a part of this Union, it was at that time considered financially a worthless sand-spit, which had cost our Government fifty million dollars and many lives in the almost fruitless effort to rescue it from the hands of the wily Creeks and Seminoles, who occupied the middle and southern portions of the State. Florida lies between the degrees of twenty-five and thirty-one north latitude, and eighty to eighty-eight west longitude from Greenwich. The northern boundary being nearly three hundred and fifty miles from east to west, and its length from north to south, nearly four hundred miles. It is in the same latitude as Central Arabia, Northern Hindostan, the Desert of Sahara, the northern portion of Burmah, the southern part of China and Northern Mexico. The average width of the peninsula is about eighty miles, and every part is fanned by either the Trade or Gulf winds, rendering the air delightfully pleasant in midsummer. The most marked geographical feature of the State is the enormous extent of coastline-the Atlantic and Gulf exceeding eleven hundred miles, with numerous large bays, offering great facilities for commercial intercourse. The northern part of the State is hilly and rolling. Midway of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, an elevated ridge extends through Middle and South Florida to Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades, gradually sloping to the Atlantic Ocean on the east and to the waters of the Gulf of Mexico on the west. The elevated lands are mostly pine, interspersed with black-jack, post, and water-oak. At the base and along the water courses, are rich hammock lands bordered with flat and rolling prairie, with the everlasting scrub palmetto everywhere. The southern portion of the State is at this time a vast cattle range, embracing thousands of acres on which a surveyor's chain has never fallen.