154 ORANGE CULTURE IN FLORIDA. 



the orange, inclosed, nevertheless, fertile districts 

 where it might have thriven. But the state of cul- 

 ture of the tree at the present time in that country, 

 and the historic facts proving to us that it was not 

 naturalized there till long after, make us certain 

 that it was entirely unknown there as well as in 

 Europe. It is true, that at the time of the dis- 

 covery of the Cape of Good Hope, the Portuguese 

 found many citrons and bigarades upon the eastern 

 coast of Africa, and in the part of Ethiopia where 

 Romans had never penetrated ; but they found these 

 trees only in gardens, and in a state of domesticity, 

 and we do not know but that the Arabs, who had 

 cultivated them in Egypt, in Syria, and in Barbary,. 

 had penetrated into these countries in the first years 

 of their conquests. There remains, then, for us 

 only to seek the native country of the orange in 

 Southern Asia that is to say, in those vast coun- 

 tries known under the general name of East Indies. 

 But these regions were in part known to the 

 Romans, who, since the discovery of the monsoons, 

 made by Hippalus, carried their maritime com- 

 merce as far as Muziro (Massera, an island off the 

 south-east coast of Arabia), by way of the Red Sea, 

 the navigation of which employed a great number 

 of vessels, and whose commerce, according to 

 Pliny, should have been valued at fifty million 

 sesterces ($2,000,000) per -annum. Their fleets 

 had penetrated even to Portum Gebenitarum, 

 which appears to have been the present Ceylon ; 



