ORANGE COUNTY. 171

hours. It is its equable temperature and absolute freedom
from sudden changes that make South Florida so desirable
a region for people suffering with throat and lung affections
and catarrh. If the latter disease is curable, a residence
here will effect a cure.
 An idea prevalent, particularly in the North, is that our
State swarms with reptile and insect life, while the fact is
that in this locality at least we are as exempt.from both as
any in the cotintry. The writer of this article has yet to
see his first rattlesnake or moccasin, though he has spent
much time in hunting and fishing, and traversing the for-
ests, for the last year.
 We have mosquitoes here, but neither so numerous nor
troublesome as in the city of Boston. Sand-flies abound in
some sections of the State, but not here. Our land is what
is called high pine, dotted with hundreds of clear-water
lakes, upon the shores of which are the finest orange and
fruit lands in the world ; not only the orange, but the lem-
on, lime, banana, pineapple, grape, guava, citron, fig, straw-
berry, and all semi-tropical fruits can be produced in abun-
dance and with large profit. Turnips, squashes, beets, cu-
cumbers, cabbages, onions, and all vegetables are raised
quite as easily here as elsewhere, and find ready-sale in
Northern markets at remunerative prices. Cotton, sugar-
cane, tobacco, cassava, arrow-root, etc., can be profitably
raised. Transportation to and from the cities of New York
and Boston is cheaper from this point than from either of
those cities to the interior of Maine, New Hampshire, or
Vermont. For instance, the freight on oranges per box,
from Sanford to Boston, is sixty-five cents; barrels of
starch, eighty cents per barrel, and other merchandise pro-
portionately low. The St. John's River, navigable by large
steamers with which we are connected by twenty miles of
rail, opens to us, by water communication and cheapest
rates of transportation, the best markets of the world.
 "Much valuable land is now open to the actual settler,
and may be had by others from Government price, at points
remote from transportation, to five, ten, twenty, thirty, and
up to one hundred dollars or more per acre at points imme-
diately on the railroads, or lakes connecting with the rail.
Ten acres of land is amply sufficient for a grove of five
hundred trees. Here as elsewhere there is more danger of