FLORIDA.


seventy feet above tide-water, and is noted for its health-
fulness.
 From Spring Garden we returned to Orange City, vis-
iting Beresford, Volusia, and Starke's Landing, all on the
lake. They are merely little landing-places, with but three
or four families in the immediate neighborhood, but are
the foci of quite a goodly number of families living back
on the highlands. At Starke's Landing we visited the
famous old grove of Captain Starke, and saw hundreds
of noble orange-trees twenty-five to thirty-five years old,
scattered about irregularly over a grand old lawn. Some
of them are fully thirty feet high, and bear crops of from


two to ten thousand
grand old English est
of Lord Beresford.
ments are yet to be
oranges, and it certain
ing such rich fruit.
that had just been t
and showed no signs


oranges each. This was one of the
bates of the last century, the property
Remains of his extensive improve-
seen. Here we saw hogs feeding on
inly seemed a shame to see them eat-
Here also we saw an immense tree
ransplanted with its crop in full fruit,
of injury.


 SAll that region is of hilly pine-land, with open growth
of trees and excellent soil, the exceptions of bad soil being
very few. And it undoubtedly is a very healthy section
,and quite free from insects, being high, well drained, pine-
timbered, and open to the pure sea-breeze all along its
eastern coast. Ormond, Port Orange, Daytona, and Smyr-
na, are all thrifty, enterprising, growing little hamlets, lo-
cated in the rich hammock-belt of land on the adjacent
ocean-coast, where they have the advantages of good soil
and both fresh and salt water; but the insects in the sum-
mer months make a residence there unpleasant except in
some specially favorable locations. Each has from ten
to fifty families of unusually agreeable, select people, the
nucleus of future pleasant communities. In fact, the peo-
ple of nearly all the villages and settlements throughout