22 FLORIDA FRUITS ORANGES. 



three of his children with consumption, killed his wife by 

 a combination of diseases brought on by working in the 

 snow and mud, and finally killed him also with inflamma- 

 tory rheumatism. 



The one son who was left rented the farm, won by thirty 

 years of toil, for the paltry sum of one hundred and fifty 

 dollars a year, and fled to our genial State to save his life 

 and reflect at leisure over the vast contrast between the 

 results of the thirty years of toil on his father's part and 

 the twenty years of ease of his cousin, John Eaton. It was 

 all in the difference of location ; one settled in a cold, in- 

 clement country, the other in a mild, genial clime, one of 

 Nature's garden spots. 



Of course it is easy to go north, to any of our old set- 

 tled States, and point out fine fertile farms worth many 

 thousand dollars, places that have been carved out of the 

 wilderness by the work of one generation. But then, 

 what if the same amount of time, money, and intelligence 

 had been spent in Florida? Why, the difference would 

 have been as startling as that between the work of John 

 Eaton and of his cousin in Canada. 



And now let us come down to later times, and to men 

 who were not pioneer hermits but pioneer settlers. 



We know of an island in Lake Griffin, containing three 

 hundred acres of rich land, studded over with orange trees, 

 once wild, but now budded, and yielding luxuriant crops. 

 Fourteen years ago the first small improvements were made 

 here, the land and work together costing fourteen hundred 

 dollars ; ten years later the proprietors received six thou- 

 sand dollars for their crop, and refused an offer of forty 

 thousand dollars ($40,000) for the property. 



Thirteen years ago a father and two sons, ruined by the 

 war, purchased eighty acres with a wild grove on it for 

 five hundred and fifty dollars. The trees they budded 



