ollowed we felt its tonic inspiration and seemed to drink in
intoxicating draughts of health and spirits, and never more than during
the fifteen-mile drive between Black Creek and Kingsley's Pond.

Kingsley's Pond, the highest body of water in the State, is the first
of a long succession of lakes which, lying between the St. John's and
the railway, have only lately been, as it were, discovered by the
Northerner. It is perfectly circular in form, being precisely two miles
across in every direction. Like all the lakes of Florida, it is of
immense depth, and its waters are so transparent that the white sand at
the bottom may be seen glistening like stars. In common with the other
waters of this region, it is surrounded by a hard beach of white sand,
rising gradually up to a beautifully-wooded slope, being quite free
from the marshes which too often render the lakes of Florida
unapproachable.

One of the Northern colonies which within the last two years have
discovered this delightful region has settled on the shores of
Kingsley's Pond. Although an infant of only twenty months, the village
has made excellent growth and gives promise of a bright future. Farming
is not largely followed, the principal industry of these and the other
Northern colonists being orange-culture--a business to which the
climate is wonderfully propitious, the dry, pure air of this district
being alike free from excessive summer heats and from the frosts which
are occasionally disastrous to groves situated on lower ground in the
same latitude.

Though there are few native Floridians in this part of the country, the
neighborhood of the lake rejoices in the possession of a Cracker
doctress of wondrous powers. Who but her knows that chapter in the book
of Daniel the reading of which stays the flowing of blood, or that
other chapter potent to extinguish forest-fires? One does not need a
long residence in the State to learn to appreciate the good-fortune of
the Lakers in this particular.

Not far from the village, on the western shore of the pond, lives the
one "old settler." He met us with the hearty welcome which we had
learned almost to look for as a right, and sitting on his front piazza
in the shade of his orange trees, gladdening our eyes with the view of
his vine-embowered pigpen, we listened to the legend of the pond:

"Yes, I've lived yere four-and-twenty year, but I done kim to Floridy
nigh on forty year ago: walked yere from Georgy to jine t