*'WHAT WILL IT COST?" 121 



less, to three or four miles. And here, and only here, are 

 found the wild sour orange trees, either scattered thinly 

 about amidst the giant oak, hickory, bay, magnolia, and 

 palmetto trees, or else growing so closely together as to form 

 those famous wild groves of which every one has heard and 

 read so much in these latter years of the newly awakened 

 interest in orange culture. 



Happier than they knew were those fortunate first-com- 

 ers, whose early appearance on the field enabled them to 

 homestead the land on which these latent gold mines were 

 "wasting their sweetness on the desert air." To them it 

 was given to secure, for the nominal sum of fourteen dol- 

 lars, one hundred and sixty acres of rich lands, frequently 

 with hundreds or thousands of noble orange trees flourish- 

 ing in their midst, and all they had to do was to clear away 

 the underbrush, bud the wild stock with the sweet orange, 

 and lo ! in three or four years they were independent men, 

 and in nine years rich men, with the smooth stream of 

 their wealth constantly widening and deepening as time 

 rolled quietly onward. 



Those ' ' good old times " are gone by ; the area of wild 

 groves was always limited, extremely limited — and now 

 they are things of the past ; tamed, domesticated, brought 

 into subjection under the conquering march of civilization. 

 A few, a very few, are left still, but they are scattering, 

 and would not have existed so long, but that they lie so far 

 away from transportation centei'S as to be useless for years 

 to come. Hammock lands, after passing from the State 

 and General Governments into private hands, have always 

 been held at much higher prices than the pine barrens, and 

 this not entirely because the former are the richer lands, 

 but because also of a natural law which operates in the 

 commercial world wherever man buys and sells. 



When the demand for an article is in excess of the sup- 



