RISE AND PROGRESS OF ORANGE CULTURE. 13 



several causes conducing to perpetuate this strange blind- 

 ness. For one thing, Florida, though it contains within its 

 borders the oldest city by forty years in the United States, 

 has ever been, owing to a conjunction of circumstances, 

 one of the least known and most sparsely settled of them 

 all ; owned first by one European power, then by another, 

 before finally passing into the Federal States; torn and 

 distracted by Indian wars and raids, and lying in a remote 

 corner of the Union, completely out of the general line of 

 travel, it is not to be wondered at that Florida was, except 

 to a very few, a sealed book. It is true that there were a 

 a few intelligent, wide-awake Southerners who held the 

 orange at an approximate to its true value, but these men 

 were content to set out and cultivate their trees on a com- 

 paratively small scale, and they never penetrated further 

 into the country than the 'St. John's River and St. Augus- 

 tine, where, too often, a severe frost would injure the ten- 

 der trees and discourage their owners. 



Beyond the points just mentioned few settlers were to be 

 found, and those few were, almost to a man, of a low and 

 ignorant class; men who were satisfied to saunter lazily 

 through their days, existing on ''pork and hominy," or 

 whatever else was "easy to grow, and could take care of 

 itself," in which category were included vast herds of cat- 

 tle, which ever and anon they drove to the nearest sea-port 

 for shipment to the West Indies. To such as these the 

 luscious sweet orange of Europe, so well known in the 

 Northern States, was a boon unknown and undreamed of; 

 they knew, it is true, that, scattered over the central and 

 southern portions of Florida, were wild groves of beau- 

 tiful trees, bearing a large, yellow fruit, but that fruit 

 was exceedingly bitter and sour, and held by them in no 

 esteem. 



It was not until our unhappy civil war had come to a 



