mer area;
where some of them have outlets in the ocean far from shore, bursting up
a perpetual spring of fresh water in the very midst of the briny
saltness of the sea; where in times of low water, during a long
exhaustive dry season, men have gone under ground in one of these
subterranean rivers, from lake to lake, a distance of eight miles; where
the ground will sometimes sink and the cavity fill with water, until
tall trees, that had stood and sunk upright, will have their topmost
branches deeply covered; where rivers will disappear in the earth and
rise again, thus forming natural bridges, some of them a mile in
breadth; where, instead of spring, summer, autumn, and winter, there are
two seasons only--eight months summer, and four months warm weather;
where the winter is the dry season, and the summer almost a daily rain;
where, in order to take a walk, you first wade through a light sand
ankle deep and then get into a mud-puddle, and some of these mud-puddles
cover a whole county; where no clay is found fit for brick-making, and
people build houses without chimneys; where to make a living is so easy
a task, that every one possesses the laziness of ten ordinary men, every
one you wish to employ in labor says he is tired and would seem to have
been born so; where ague would prevail if the people would take the
trouble to shake; where a large orange-tree will bear several thousand
oranges--leaves, buds, blossom, half-grown and full-grown fruit, all at
once--and every twenty-five feet square of sand will sustain such a
tree; where, in many parts, cold weather is an impossibility, and
perpetual verdure reigns; where the Everglades are found, covering many
large counties with water from one to six feet deep, with a bottom, mud
covered, yet underneath solid and firm, from which grasses grow up to
the surface--a sea of green, and with islands large and small scattered
over the surface, covered with live oaks and dense vegetation; where
alligators, or gators as they are called in Florida parlance, possess
undoubted aboriginal rights of citizenship, and mosquitoes pay constant
visits and are instructive and even penetrating in their attention to
strangers."
An Irish paper contained this account of Mrs. Siddons's appearance:
"On Sunday, Mrs. Siddons, about whom all the world has been talking,
exposed her beautiful, adamantine, soft, and lovely person, for the
first time at Smock Alley Theatre in the bewitching, melting, an
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