8 



ORANGE CUI.TUKE, 



or seed, the wild fruit is sour, not sweet. 



Ponce de Leon and his successors, but most all of the unfor- 

 tunate French colony, barbarously massacred by cruel Menen- 

 dez, "not as Frenchmen, but as Lutherans," were directly instru- 

 mental in introducing into the " Land of Flowers " the noble fruit 

 that is rapidly becoming the chief source of wealth and happiness 

 to its adopted home. Briefly, the orange is not a native but a 

 naturalized citizeu of the United States. 



Looking back only a few yeai's, from our present point of 

 enlightenment, as to the inestimable value of this once neglected 

 tree, it is very hard to understand how it is that the native 

 Floridian did not long ago wake uj) to the realization of the 

 wealth within his grasp, of the golden apple lying neglected at his 

 feet. And yet there were, it is true, several causes conducing to 

 perpetuate this strange blindness ; for one thing, Florida, though 

 it contains within its borders the oldest city, by forty years, in the 

 United States, has ever been, owing to a conjunction of circum- 

 stances, one of the least known, and most sparsely settled of them 

 all ; owned first by one European power, then by another, before 

 finally passing into the Federal States ; torn and distracted by 

 Indian wars and raids, and lying in a remote corner of the Union, 

 completely out of the general line of travel, it is not to be won- 

 dered at that Florida was, except to a very few, a sealed book. It 

 is true that there were a few intelligent, wide-awake Southerners 

 who held the orange at an approximate to its true value, but these 

 men were content to set out and cultivate their trees on a compara- 

 tively small scale, and they never penetrated further into the 

 country than the St. John's River, and St. Augustine, where, too 

 often, a severe frost would injure the tender trees, and discourage 

 their owners. 



Beyond the points just mentioned, few settlers were to be 

 found, and those few, were, almost to a man, of a low and igno- 

 rant class ; men who were satisfied to saunter lazily through their 

 days, existing on " pork and hominy, " or whatever else was "easy 

 to grow^ and take care of itself, " in which category were included 

 vast herds of cattle, which ever and anon, they drove to the 

 nearest sea-port for shipment to the West Indies. To such as 



