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producing oranges, sugar cane, corn, potatoes, rice, and long cotton; Leon, one 
dollar and fifty cents per acre—quality medium, fair while fresh, easily cleared 
and cultivated, and will produce twenty bushels of corn or half a bale of cotton 
per acre, and by a little manuring can be kept up to this; Baker county, one 
dollar and fifty cents per acre—very productive for cotton, sugar cane, potatoes, 
vegetables, &c.; Duval county—average fifty cents per acre. In Alachua 
nearly all the wild lands are owned by the State, the general government, or 
railroad companies. State lands are held at from fifty cents to eight dollars, 
mostly at the former. United States lands are only in the market as homesteads, 
and railroad lands vary in price from one dollar to two dollars and fifty cents. 
The land is principally “ pine barren ;” considerable heavy pitch-pine inter- 
spersed with cypress swamps, and in sections hommocks, the latter being very 
rich. The greater part of the land, however, is valuable only for timber and 
turpentine. In Levy the wild land is chiefly timber, and valued according to its 
location. A portion of this land is comparatively worthless, consisting of sand- 
hills and scrub lands, covered with brush and filled with a variety of wild ani- 
mals, and people living adjacent are compelled to keep gangs of dogs for protec- 
tion. There is plenty of government land upon which to settle, some of it the 
best hommock land, capable of yielding an average crop of forty bushels of 
corn; prices from one dollar to five dollars. Manatee county also has consider- 
able hommock lands of first rate quality, underlaid with marl; worth from five 
dollars to ten dollars per acre. The timber of the hommocks consists of live 
oak, hickory, red cedar, bog, &c., while the pine is the turpentine or long pine. 
3. The resources of Florida are to be found in her timber and soil, there exist- 
ing (so far as yet developed) little of mineral wealth within the limits of the 
State. In Alachua a small deposit of bog iron is reported, and our Levy county 
correspondent states that there is a good iron mine in that county which has 
been worked, but not properly developed. The ore is said to contain seventy- 
five per cent. of pure iron. The mine is not now worked and could be pur- 
chased cheap. ‘Timber in variety abounds in almost unlimited quantity, but in 
some sections the lumber business has been overdone, and the mills may be pur- 
chased at half cost. The climate and soil are exceedingly favorable to the cul- 
ture of fruits and to successful general agriculture. Our Levy county corre. 
spondent writes : ‘The resources of this county are the best I ever saw at any 
place. The soil is not as good as at the west, but the climate is fine and 
less work is required to make a good living; and with the same spirit of enter- 
prise here as is seen in the west, would develop a land not now known in the 
United States.” 
4. Cotton, corn, sugar-cane, rice, potatoes and fruits are the principal crops, 
but under the present system of culture yields are small and agriculture not 
profitable. In a number of counties cotton has been the specialty, but under 
present prices its production will doubtless decline in favor of other crops. 
Sugar-cane is considered a good crop and is getting more in favor ; it is easily 
cultivated and, as our Leon correspondent says, “ would be a good crop for white 
labor.” In Baker county, sea-island cotton and sugar-cane are the chief produc- 
tions. Duval county, sweet potatoes, corn and sugar-cane ; corn yielding twenty 
bushels per acre, sweet potatoes one hundred to two hundred bushels, sugar- 
eane two hundred gallons sirup and two hundred pounds of sugar; the latter 
is the most profitable crop. In Alachua, sea-island cotton is the specialty, of 
which our reporter says: “The price of this cotton last year ranged from 40 
cents to $1 60 per pound; this year from 35 to 90 cents. The average yield is 
about eighty-five pounds of lint per acre, but as high as four hundred pounds 
have been raised. At 50 cents, with the present labor, it is a paying crop. Cotton 
is a hard crop to raise, takes the whole year, and, for the labor expended, is the 
least paying crop in the country. During the past season ninety-nine out of 
every hundred have lost money. Corn produces an average of eight bushels on 
