Address of Welcome. 
Gen. Wm. H. Jewell. 
Mr. President , Ladies and Gentlemen , 
Members of the Horticultural Society 
of Florida and of the Nut Growers' 
Association of Georgia and Florida : 
Orlando is proud and glad to welcome 
you here. We open to you the gates of 
our city and the doors of our homes and 
of our hearts. We hope that your stay 
with us will be profitable and pleasant. 
We are sure it will be profitable, and we 
sincerely hope that it will be pleasant. 
We remember that you were with us 
some years ago when we were barely 
emerging from that great disaster that 
almost seemed to mean ruin to us, when 
the chief source of our income and pros¬ 
perity was swept away in a night, and 
we suffered great loss of property as 
tvell as of our prosperity and of many of 
our people who were forced to go else¬ 
where to seek a livelihood, but we pre¬ 
sent to you a new and transformed Or¬ 
lando and Orange county today; we pre¬ 
sent to you one of the most beautiful, 
pleasant and healthful cities in one of 
the most beautiful and health¬ 
ful states of this Union. We 
show you our improved streets 
almost throughout the whole extent of 
our city and our principal streets, as you 
have noted, paved with the best modern 
material now known, vitrified brick, with 
many miles of sidewalks that seem like 
walking upon the mosaic floors of bar¬ 
onial halls or princely palaces, with our 
residential streets lined with umbrage¬ 
ous oaks. We show you one of the fin¬ 
est school buildings in the State, only re¬ 
cently erected but now too small for our 
necessities. We show you the lots and 
fields, once vacant and barren, now filled 
with homes; comfortable, pleasant and 
many of them even handsome, and we 
hope to show you something o*f the im¬ 
proved country roads 'that we have built, 
and to take you to see our suburb, Win¬ 
ter Park, and that magnificent model 
packing house built by that noble-spirited 
gentleman, Mr. W. C. Temple, your vice 
president, and we hope to show you that 
splendid institution for educational pur¬ 
poses known as Rollins College. We 
hope to show you these things and many 
more, which will add to your pleasure 
and be profitable as well. 
We are proud and glad to have with 
us such a body of men and women as 
compose your organization; people who 
are devoting themselves largely to the 
promotion of the material interests of 
this great State. 
While the great disaster to which I re¬ 
ferred swept away our orange groves, 
we show you today that Orange county 
is raising more oranges than ever before; 
that it is the largest orange growing 
county in the State of Florida ; that it 
