22 LETTERS FROM FLORIDA.

the "castles" so often built and filled with happy ten-
ants ?
 The first visit to Florida seldom awakens much


enthusiasm. It requires
to the great dissimilarity


country and
green fields,
and harvests
broader civil
at the North


primitive,


the colder
the ripening
i, the marks
ization, which
SWe forge


uncultured


time to become accustomed
between. this section of our
regions. One pines for the
grass, the merry haymaking
of more rapid progress and
h form a prominent feature
t the olden times, when, in its
ate, it was as a country far


more wild and dreary than anything seen in Florida.
But now it shows what labor and skill, united, can do.
It has made our cold and rocky North bud and blos-,
som like the rose. Spread over Florida the same skill
and energetic labor that for the last century has grad-
ually, clothed and beautified the North, and in less
than one third of that time this State will Jbe like
the garden of Eden, and all traces of the ruin and
desolation which war has left will be for ever oblit-
erated.
 The first visits to this part of our land are more
frequently made for health than for pleasure; and,
not realizing how many things indispensable at the
North are unnecessary here, it is not strange that
for a while one longs for "the flesh-pots of Egypt."
With little or no expectation that it may be necessary


to repeat
cial inve
sure, or
dence in


the visit,
stigation
profit of
Florida.


there is no inducement for any spe-
as to the prudence, comfort, plUa-
securing a permanent winer resi-


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