17G YACHTING OX THE ST. JOJIXS. 



could easily feed the fire,, and ran the engine with less 

 trouble than he could get out of the fireman s way, so 

 that two men, one a competent and careful engineer, 

 and the other a pilot well acquainted with the channels, 

 could run a launch or small yacht with ease, and keep 

 her under way as many hours per diem as would be 

 desirable. 



Not only are the rivers and lakes of Florida attractive 

 cruising grounds, but the inlets and estuaries of the 

 southern coasts offer great inducements for the invalid, 

 the naturalist, the antiquarian, and the sportsman. In 

 the spring, when the sim begins to fall with a fierce heat 

 on the rivers, and despite all said to the contrary, docs 

 render too much exposure imprudent, the sea coast is 

 perfect. The finer kinds of fish are in season, and many 

 beach and bay birds are to be obtained. In April the 

 sea-bathing is safe and pleasant, and invalids and well 

 people will do a prudent thing who halt alongshore and 

 delay their return until such birds as the bobolinks and 

 orioles arc with them, and not risk the loss of all the 

 benefit of a long and costly trip by coming on with the 

 robins and blue-birds, who are beguiled by a few warm 

 days into shivering through many a long, bleak storm. 



Your correspondent was, later in the spring, one of a 

 party to cruise about the mouth of the St. Johns and the 

 Sisters Islands, and during the trip we landed on Fort 

 George Island, where we were kindly driven about by 

 the owner, who is engaged, with a number of gentlemen 

 of taste, in forming a little paradise. The island is not 

 large, about eleven hundred acres. The St. Johns out 

 let is on the south, Fort George Inlet on the north, and 

 the Sisters Inlet on the west. Seaward a densely 

 wooded bluff, eighty feet high, shelters from the ocean 



