236 Transactions of the American Institute. 



I repeat, it is safe ; and in a few years nearly all the capital and 

 most of the population on the St. Johns will be northern. The labor- 

 ing portion of Florida, have no money. The great want is capital, 

 and brains to direct it. The day of great plantations, however, is past. 

 They must be broken up and farming substituted. And men must 

 learn to work. At present, where 200 bushels per acre of sweet 

 potatoes grow with but little labor to cultivate, and none to preserve 

 over winter, families are destitute half the time. 



" Shall I take my Family ? " 



Three brothers, with about $1,500 joint capital, wish to go from 

 this city and start a place in Florida, if they can do so upon that 

 capital, but they propose to leave their families here until they make 

 something to support them there. That would be a fatal mistake. 

 Go on board a sailing vessel in October, and to Jacksonville. Rent 

 a house there until you can get one in the woods, and start a garden, 

 pigs, poultry, and have a cow. In March you will begin to live from 

 your own land. Ton will have a hard first 3'ear, and pleasant homes 

 after that. You may buy or rent an improved place, and grow some- 

 thing to sell the first season. Don't be discouraged if you do not. If 

 you do not take your families with you, it is doubtful whether you 

 will stay long enough to know whether the statement is true that you 

 refer to — that is, that one man sold ^22,000 of garden truck from 

 fifteen acres on the St. John's. I do not doubt its truth. 



To an inquiry of Mr. Lyman as to the age of orange trees, Mr. Solon 

 Kobinson said that previous to the great frost of 1855, which killed 

 the trees, there were some which had been in bearing one hundred 

 years. Mr. Fuller said that there were some orange trees in botanical 

 gardens in France which were 400 years old. Mr. Robinson then 

 spoke of peach trees, saying that they grow to enormous size, are 

 free of disease, and they bear so abundantly that the fruit is fed to 

 the hogs, while the people are so lazy that they get dried peaches 

 from !New York. 



Mr. IST, 0. Meeker. — I would like to inquire what is the prospect 

 of the posterity of the northern people going to that country. Are 

 they not likely to become enervated by the climate, and in the end 

 equally worthless ? 



Mr. Robinson mentioned the names of several gentlemen from the 

 north who have been there S'jme twenty, and others a less number of 

 years, but their families had not degenerated. ' Whether they were 

 farming or in business and living in towns, he did not state. 



