186 THE GULF COAST OF FLORIDA. 



cent to the coast, which furnish rich pasturage for cattle 

 winter and summer. They are never fed or cared for at any 

 time. The owner simply turns his young cattle or breeders 

 into the woods with his brand on them, and once a year 

 thereafter generally in May or June- starts out with a force 

 of men on horseback, brands the calves, collects and corralls 

 the fat cattle for shipment. Several stock-raisers on this 

 coast have from 500 to 1,000 head of cattle in the woods all 

 the time. Havana is their principal market, a few head only 

 being shipped to Key West each year. Next in importance 

 to cattle growing comes the orange trade. 



Through the courtesy of Dr. J. P. Wall, editor of the 

 Sunland Tribune, I took a pleasant ride in company with 

 him through the country adjacent to the village, and was 

 thereby given an idea of the extent and number of its orange 

 groves. We went east on Florida avenue, one of the principal 

 roads leading into the country, a distance of two miles, 

 returned to within a mile of town where we entered Michigan 

 avenue, upon which we went south to Nebraska avenue. We 

 then rode east again three miles and returned to town. In 

 riding over these few miles we saw about five hundred and 

 fifty acres of orange trees. Many of these are young and 

 have not yet come into bearing, while many others are 

 annually yielding large crops of fruit. The majority of the 

 groves contain ten acres each, though others are much larger, 

 some reaching fifty or more acres. Each grove has with it a 

 neat cottage house, garden, outbuildings, and a few lemon, 

 lime, banana and other fruit-trees. New groves are being 

 planted each year, where the year before stood the tall pine- 

 trees, bidding defiance to the aggressive hand of the sturdy 

 woodman, and it is interesting to contemplate what a vast city 

 will in twenty years from to-day stretch away back from the 

 beach of Tampa bay, with ten to twenty acres in each lot, 



