*•' WHERE SHALL I SETTLE?" Ill 



a landing on both of these beautiful lakes, and the traffic 

 of the hundreds of families who are scattered all along their 

 shores, and for miles inland. 



And now let us look at the country lying around these 

 lakes. Griffin, Harris, and Eustis, as a type of the rest of 

 this "piney woods" section, which includes no little ham- 

 mock land as well. 



The peninsula on which Leesburg stands extends north- 

 east from the city for eight miles and is, at one point, sev- 

 eral miles wide. Lakes Harris, Griffin, Eustis, and the 

 Ocklawaha River, are its boundaries, and a remarkable tract 

 it is, skirted along the water brink by rich hammock land, 

 often a mile or a mile and a half Avide, the center or back- 

 bone of the strip being pine ridges, overlooking beautiful 

 little lakes. 



On this weird peninsula were, a few years ago, the larg- 

 est wild orange groves in the State, with the exception of 

 one at Orange Lake ; these have all been budded with the 

 delicious fruit with which we are all so familiar. 



And now, starting from a point two miles from Leesburg, 

 on the shores of Lake Harris, one may see groves occupy- 

 ing hundreds of acres of trees in full bearing, and other 

 hundreds of acres of younger trees, the whole extending 

 in one unbroken line for several miles. 



It is an impressive sight, especially when one remembers 

 that only twenty years ago this whole region was one 

 great tangled wilderness. 



Then crossing this strip of land to Lake Griffin, what 

 do we see there ? 



Another vast wild grove, reclaimed and civilized — noth- 

 ing left as it was, except that the budded trees mostly stand 

 where they grew, and the giant live-oaks stretch out their 

 moss-draped arms with protecting care over their lowlier 

 brethren. 



