the soil were the same as prevailed forty years earlier, and it
was not unlikely that the colored people, who for the most part had the
immediate charge of this work, prosecuted it, as yet, with less skill
than did overseers and planters before slavery was done away. Yet in
1890 the farm valuation of the South was found to exceed its highest
ante-bellum figure and almost to equal one-fifth of the entire farm
valuation of the country.

To the general backwardness of southern agriculture there was one quite
striking exception. The State of Florida underwent after the war a most
astounding transition for the better. Her total railway mileage of 416
miles when the war ended had grown to 2,470 miles by 1890. The farm
valuation was, in 1880, $20,500,000. The population in 1890 exceeded
that of 1880 by almost 50 per cent. Steamboats were upon every coast and
river. This was due not alone to the State's popularity as a winter
sanitarium for northern people. Florida was also the early market-garden
for the North. Its oranges largely supplied the trade, and were much
sought for their excellent quality. The State was excessively rich in
the finest ornamental woods, which were rapidly finding their way into
the market. Nearly all the crops of the temperate zone and the fruits of
the torrid flourished here with the utmost luxuriance, many of them
being natives, others taking to the soil with a greater friendliness
than they displayed for that whence they were transplanted. The State
bade fair to rival Louisiana in the production of sugar, and South
Carolina in that of rice, as well as one day to supply the entire
American demand for cocoanuts. The mulberry was indigenous to every part
of this new Eden, which promised to become at no late date an immense
producer of raw silk. Cattle fed and fattened everywhere without
shelter, in winter as in summer.

[Illustration: Small river reaching the ocean; palm trees in background.]
The Mouth of the Miami River, Florida

The future of the colored race no one could predict with certainty.
After the census of 1870, which reduced the percentage of our African
population from 14.13, the figure in 1860, to 12.7, many rushed to the
conclusion that these people might, in no long time, vanish from our
land. The census of 1880 dispelled this fancy, raising the percentage to
13.12. That of 1890 lowered it again to 11.93. Previously to 1870 the
race had been constantly decreasing in fecundity, but