90 HOME LIFE IN FLORIDA. 



CHAPTER VI. 



PINE LANDS AND HAMMOCKS. 



Florida, it must be remembered, is a large State; so 

 large and so varied in its productions that, to avoid con- 

 fusion, it has been by common consent and Governmental 

 authority subdivided into sections. Northern, Middle, and 

 South Florida. 



In each of these the character of the soil and landscape 

 is exceedingly diversified ; nowhere is it all pine or all 

 hammock, all lake or all river, all flat or all undulating. 



The report of one of the Florida Commissioners of Im- 

 migration speaks truly in saying: "There is one feature 

 in the topography of Florida which no other country in 

 the United States possesses, and which affords a great 

 security to the health of its inhabitants; it is that the 

 pine lands, which form the basis of the country and wdiich 

 are almost universally healthy, are nearly every where 

 studded at intervals of a few miles with the rich ham- 

 mock lands. These hammocks are not, as is generally 

 supposed, low, wet lands; they do not require ditching 

 or draining ; they vary in extent from twenty acres to 

 forty thousand acres." 



In no one respect has Florida been more systematically 

 misrepresented, both in malice and ignorance, than in the 

 matter of her soil. 



Unhappily, tourists as a rule see but little except that 

 which lies on the surface, and as a consequence their 

 report is almost invariably of a one-hued, "sandy, and 

 unproductive " nature. 



This is to be regretted, not only because it is only par- 

 tially true, but because it at once prejudices those w^ho are 



