Excerpt from Florida Its Climate, Soil, Productions, and Agricultural Capabilities
Florida, from its first discovery in 1512, has been in an unsettled condition, conquered and reconquered, ceded and receded, harassed by Indian wars, and when just entering on a period of stability and prosperity plunged into a civil contest, which decimated and impoverished her people. Ceded to the United States in 1821, and admitted as a State in 1845, her resources have remained latent and undeveloped, and her 60,000 square miles of territory comparatively wild and uninhabited until about the close of the late civil war. Since that period the intelligence of the world has been directed to this favored land, and thousands have annually sought health and pleasure and new homes within her borders. Other thousands will come, when informed of the advantages and attractions of this productive semi-tropical State, only awaiting capital and industry to render it one of the wealthiest and most prosperous of the Federal Union.
The peninsular portion of the State, known as East and South Florida, is some 300 miles in length from north to south, and averages about 100 in width, gradually narrowing towards its southern terminus. The Gulf Stream on its eastern coast causes the trade winds of the Atlantic to sweep over the land from east to west by day, while the returning cool breezes from the Gulf refresh the land by night. These daily breezes constantly purify and vivify the atmosphere, and prevent oppressive heat or sultriness.
Generally the lands bordering on the ocean and Gulf are level and at no great elevation above tide-water; midway there is a table-land elevation, reaching nearly to the everglades. The extreme southern portion is low, though, from recent surveys, it is found that it can be effectually drained and made available for cultivation.
No State in the Union has such an extent of coast, being nearly 1,200 miles in length, extending from Fernandina on the north to Pensacola on the west, indented every few miles by large bays, running inland in many places from ten to thirty miles, with large rivers like the Saint John's, Oclawaha, Kissimmee, Indian, Halifax, Saint Mary's, Suwannee, and Apalachicola, navigable from north to south, and easterly and westerly between the Gulf and Atlantic Ocean.
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