296 FLORIDA FRUITS ODDS AND ENDS. 



howled as fiercely as ever, sifting into every corner of 

 dwellings ill-prepared for visitors from the arctic zones, 

 and, strange to record, now and henceforth to the end, the 

 worst of its work was done with the wind sweeping up 

 from the southwest ; and it was such a gale, this that came 

 from our usually warm quarter, so pitiless, so bitter cold, 

 as no Floridian had ever faced before, nor is likely to ever 

 again on his native soil. 



Long before sunset ice began to form. In ordinary 

 storms the wind lulls as the sun sinks, but this was no or- 

 dinary storm, neither "rule, rhyme, nor reason" dictated 

 its course or actions. 



Another night, and what a fearful one it was, in-doors 

 and out! neither hope nor comfort, physical or mental. 

 Out in the groves, here and there, men flitted about large 

 fires, desperately fighting to the last, hopeless now of sav- 

 ing the orange crop remaining on the trees, and feeling 

 that they would be thankful if they could save the trees 

 themselves. In-doors water was freezing, not a thin skim 

 of ice, but strong ice that had to be broken with a hammer. 



Not for fifty years had Florida seen the equal of this 

 bitter storm ; it was the longest, the saddest night, that of 

 the 10th of January, 1886, that her present population 

 had ever met. 



Morning dawned : ice, an inch or more in thickness, cov- 

 ered all shallow, standing water ; every thing that could 

 freeze was frozen, in-doors and out of doors the hearts of 

 Florida's people also! Ah! those were times that tried 

 men's souls, times when they could only stand aside and 

 look on in desperate silence at the wholesale destruction 

 of the property they had toiled for years to accumulate. 

 For, note this fact, when the morning of the llth dawned, 

 with the thermometer nowhere in the State higher than 20, 

 and in most sections still lower, all the way down to 15, 



