116 Domestic Mtices. 



" I believe I informed you that I had about twenty acres of land in 

 the city, with an orange nurser}^, and also one of mulberry. I found 

 the ditficulties connected with building so great, that I embraced an op- 

 portunity of ])urchasing a good new house, with a garden well filled 

 (yes, in January,) with vegetables ready for use, and we are now snug- 

 ly located in our own domicil, on the margin of the bay, within a hun- 

 dred feet of the sea wall, and in plain view of the ocean, and have 

 abundance of peas, turnips, radishes, cabbages, &c. &c. in the highest 

 perfection in our garden. I have got my planting and farming under 

 good way; have succeeded in hiring a few good men; have planted my 

 early potatoes, and begun to set out orange trees, and next week will 

 commence making garden for spring. 



" In this climate there are two regular seasons for gardening, and 

 peas can be raised every month in the year. I have them full grown, 

 and also in blossom, in my garden at this time. The orange, fig anil 

 olive thrive here well. The frost which, in 1834, for the first time in 

 ninety years, destroyed the orange trees, spared the fig. Little atten- 

 tion has been paid to growing them. I shall plant an acre or two in 

 fiffs, and ten acres in orange trees, this winter. This will not lessen 

 the value of the land for corn, vegetable or cotton crops. I can also 

 plant about five thousand mulberries along my fences, which, in addi- 

 tion to what I have growing, will furnish leaves say for two hundred 

 thousand worms. The leaves will be fit for use the first of April, or 

 perhaps the middle of March, and continue until the first of Novem- 

 ber, so that several crops of silk can be obtained during the season. I 

 hope to be able to test in a small way the ada])tedness of the country 

 to the silk business. I subjoin a statement of the temperature of the 

 weather, since the year commenced. You will be astonished that we 

 are here in the midst of summer, while you are shivering around your 

 fires, and pitying the poor who have none. The poor! what a country 

 this for the poor. It is a singular fact that there is not a beggar seen, 

 nor a person supported by charity, in this city. The aged and infirm 

 are supported by friends or relatives, and the healthy can raise vegeta- 

 bles, and take fish and oysters so easy, that begging would indeed save 

 them but little labor, and clothes to cover their nakedness is all that 

 they require. 



" You may think me dealing in fiction — not so, nor do I wish to rep- 

 resent this as a paradise; there are some discomforts; now and then a 

 mosqueto, an ant, a cockroach, a lizard, and a few other of the reptile 

 and insect families, more than desirable in summer, (not in winter.) 

 But even these may be thinned oft". A society in London for the pro- 

 motion of natural science, has sent out a Mr. Doubleday to catch in- 

 sects, who is now in the country; but if the bugs are as unwilling to 

 leave Florida as the Mickasoukies, and as good at hiding, he will get 

 but a few, and those by stratagem. 



* # * * * * 



"You may suppose, that although the winters here are so delightful, 

 the summers are the same as in New Orleans, or other southern cli- 

 mates. Not so. It is the exemption of this place from every kind of 

 sunnner fevers which prevail on all the southern rivers, which makes 

 it the fit abode for the invalid. I do not include the interior of Florida, 

 but this and some other points on the Atlantic coast. The whole low 

 country west of the St. John, and the low country of Georgia, South 

 and North Carolina, and even a part of Virginia, is so sickly dining the 

 summer months, that those who can, leave the coimtry, and retire to 

 the highlands, or to the seashore, and even some of the sea ishinds are 

 not considered safe for summer residences; but this place has been no- 

 ted as a healthy post. When under the Spanish, and during its occu- 



