water, stumps, stubble, and roots,
but with the advent of the dry season they became more easily passable.
The highway running through the centre of the town to and from the coast
was known as Central avenue, and the road passing through the centre at
right angles was called Dewey street. Around the intersecting point, the
exact centre of the town, space had been reserved for a large plaza.
Central avenue and Dewey street were each designed to be one hundred
feet wide, and were naturally the paths most used by the colonists. The
former actually extended from the rear line of the town northward to the
bay, five miles away, while the latter continued from the side lines of
the town out into the plantation lands to the east and west. The town
site was well chosen. It has a fair elevation above the sea, a firm,
hard soil, with steadily rising ground. The front line of the town is
about twenty feet above tidewater; the centre about one hundred feet,
and the rear line nearly or quite two hundred feet. Around the town was
a belt of land a quarter of a mile wide reserved by the company; then
came the plantations on every side.

When the committee finished the allotment of town lots on the morning of
January 15, it was found that nearly five hundred lots had been taken up
out of a total in all classes of about three thousand six hundred. The
colonists had not been slow in selecting corner lots, and the lots on
Central avenue and those facing the plaza on all sides were early
pre-empted. The colonists had faith that a real city would rise on the
chosen site. When the demand for town lots had been satisfied, the
committee began at once to give out the plantation land. The choice was
necessarily restricted to about eight or ten thousand acres to the west,
southwest, and northwest of the town, which was all that had been
surveyed up to that time. When this condition was discovered by the
colonists, the unsurveyed land to the north, south, and east began,
naturally enough, to appear far more desirable in the eyes of the
investors than that which had been surveyed to the westward, and some
refused to make a selection at all, preferring delay to a restricted
choice. The great majority, however, mindful that they were privileged
to change if the land was not satisfactory, went ahead and made their
selections. As a matter of fact, the surveyed tract to the westward was
probably as good as any, all of the land held by the company being ric