ge width of one mile, and resembles a little in shape a huge comma,
with the city of Key West for its head and a diminishing curve of low,
swampy chaparral and mangrove-bushes for a tail. The shallow bay of
pale-green water between the head and the tail on the concave side of
the comma is known as "the bight." It is the anchorage of the
sponging-fleet, and is the eastern limit of settlement on that side of
the island. Beyond it are sandy flats and shallow, salt-water lagoons,
shut in by a dense growth of leather-leaved bushes and low, scrubby
China-berry, sea-grape, and Jamaica-apple trees. The highest part of the
Key is occupied by the city, and the highest part of the city is the low
bluff on its western side, where the slender shaft of the lighthouse
stands at a height of fifteen or eighteen feet above the level of
tide-water. Owing to its geographical position in a semi-tropical sea,
just north of the Gulf Stream and within the zone of the northeast
trade-winds, Key West has a climate of remarkable mildness and
equability. Twenty years' observations show that its lowest monthly mean
of temperature is 70 deg. F. in January, and its highest 84 deg. in August--an
annual range of only 14 deg.. Between the years 1886 and 1896 the highest
temperature recorded was 92 deg., and the lowest 40 deg.--a range of only 52 deg.
between maximum and minimum in a period of ten years. New York and
Chicago often have a greater variation of temperature than this in the
course of ten days.

Equability, however, is not the only noteworthy characteristic of the
Key West climate. It is also remarkable for its sunniness in winter and
its breeziness at all seasons of the year. The average number of cloudy
days there is only sixty-four per annum, and between October and April
the sun often shines, day after day, in a cloudless sky, for weeks at a
time. But even more constant and continuous than the sunshine are the
cool breezes from the foam-crested waters of the Atlantic, which temper
the heat of the almost perpetual summer. From the reports of the Weather
Bureau it appears that the average number of calm days at Key West is
only ten per annum. In 1895 only three days were calm, and in 1894 there
were only twenty-seven hours, of day or night, in which there was not
breeze enough to ripple, at least, the pale-green water of the harbor.
For all practical purposes, therefore, the sea-breeze at Key West may be
regarded as perennial and incessant.