mand for them increases.
Among the acquaintances whom I have made here, I remember many who, having
come hither for the benefit of their health, are detained for life by the
amenity of the climate. "It seems to me," said an intelligent gentleman of
this class, the other day, "as if I could not exist out of Florida. When
I go to the north, I feel most sensibly the severe extremes of the
weather; the climate of Charleston itself, appears harsh to me."

Here at St. Augustine we have occasional frosts in the winter, but at
Tampa Bay, on the western shore of the peninsula, no further from this
place than from New York to Albany, the dew is never congealed on the
grass, nor is a snow-flake ever seen floating in the air. Those who have
passed the winter in that place, speak with a kind of rapture of the
benignity of the climate. In that country grow the cocoa and the banana,
and other productions of the West Indies. Persons who have explored
Florida to the south of this, during the past winter, speak of having
refreshed themselves with melons in January, growing where they had been
self-sown, and of having seen the sugar-cane where it had been planted by
the Indians, towering uncropped, almost to the height of the forest trees.

I must tell you, however, what was said to me by a person who had passed a
considerable time in Florida, and had journeyed, as he told me, in the
southern as well as the northern part of the peninsula, "That the climate
is mild and agreeable," said he, "I admit, but the annoyance to which you
are exposed from insects, counterbalances all the enjoyment of the
climate. You are bitten by mosquitoes and gallinippers, driven mad by
clouds of sand-flies, and stung by scorpions and centipedes. It is not
safe to go to bed in southern Florida without looking between the sheets,
to see if there be not a scorpion waiting to be your bed-fellow, nor to
put on a garment that has been hanging up in your room, without turning it
wrong side out, to see if a scorpion has not found a lodging in it." I
have not, however, been incommoded at St. Augustine with these "varmint,"
as they call them at the south. Only the sand-flies, a small black midge,
I have sometimes found a little importunate, when walking out in a very
calm evening.

Of the salubrity of East Florida I must speak less positively, although it
is certain that in St. Augustine emigrants from the north enjoy good
health. The owners of the plantations in the ne