234 Transactions of the American Institute. 



Florida. 



Mr. Solon Kobinson, read the following paper as an answer to 

 many inqniries : " H. D. Dickey, Bedford, Cuyahoga county, Ohio, 

 says several families wish 'to emigrate to Florida, if they can gain 

 sufficient information in regard to the heat of summer. That seems, 

 also, to be a leading question M'ith all who write me, none of whom 

 can I answer privately. The labor is too much for my strength. If 

 the writers knew how little power I have for all my necessary labor, 

 they would not tax me to greater exertion. The climate is no hotter 

 nor harder to bear in Florida than in New York, only it is longer 

 continued, and Northern people, before they learn enough to suit 

 themselves to the new condition of things, are apt to suffer. All 

 tropical climates are enervating. Florida is not an exception, but it 

 is not, generally speaking, a sickly region ; yet immigrants should 

 exercise common sense in their locations, and keep on dry land, and 

 build their houses in pine woods, but never in a jungle of shade, 

 which keeps the house damp in the rainy season, which is the warm- 

 est and most sickly. The heaviest work must be done in winter and 

 spring ; the least in July, August and September. A farmer has 

 eight or nine good months, and if he lives there as he does here, and 

 exercises proper care, he will live longer and more healthy, on the 

 average, and far more comfortably than it is possible for any man to 

 live here. 



I wish people would try to learn that Florida is a wilderness ; the 

 most so of any of the States. It is a newly discovered country. It 

 has been only open to civilization two or three years. The State 

 owns a vast portion of the wild lands. The price is fifty cents an 

 acre. The United States land is $1.25, or next to nothing to the 

 actual settler. The Florida Eailroad Company, Fernandini to Cedar 

 Keys, gives land to actual settlers. Farms can be frequently bought 

 for less than cost of improvements, from live dollars to fifty dollars 

 an acre. If you want a choice location on the banks of the St. John's, 

 with a good house and a bearing orchard of orange trees, you will have 

 to pay a moderately high price. Good wild lands in large tracts, on 

 the river, can be bought at six dollars to sixteen dollars an acre. Any 

 where near that river is a good place for northern immigrants to 

 locate " for gardening purposes," or any other purpose. The safest, 

 most profitable, cultivated crop, in ni}^ opinion, is sugar cane. It 

 ripens as well on the St, John's as it does in Cuba. The land is not 



